Creativity, Arts and Older People
A blog by David Slater
The American philosopher John Dewey defines the task: - ‘to restore continuity between refined and intensive forms of experience that are works of art and every day events, doings and sufferings that are universally recognised to constitute experience. ‘ It feels that with a procession of tables we have completed a small act of… Continue reading A procession of tables (Part One)
It's the start of the morning rush hour. In a bright red coat, the woman in her mid eighties, taking the 6.30am train to London Bridge didn't stop apologising. She didn't need to. I think we were all celebrating the quietly transformative effect that she was having on the beginnings of our days. The easy… Continue reading Care Setting
It’s almost midnight and the sounds of the organ from the chapel below are seeping up through the floorboards. We’re on the final leg of a midnight stroll, styled after the Midnight Runs from the imagination of poet and spoken word artist Inua Ellams. It’s the second of two journeys across our city, London. The… Continue reading Writing on Walls
I try to make contact but only ever get the automated voice of the answer-phone: ‘The person you are calling is unable to take your call.’ Meetings of the elders company have been depleted; it’s been a long winter full of heavy un-shake off-able viruses. At rehearsals have we adopted the ritual of conjuring absences,… Continue reading Rodney
Emma’s Blog: The Home Research and Development Day London 28.11.12 Yesterday I spent the day at the Albany Theatre in Deptford South London with David Slater from Entelechy Arts, Deborah Dickinson from Freedom Studios and members of Entelechy's Elder Arts group - Thelma, Sheila, Barbra, Margaret, Rosie and Gwen. We all came together to start… Continue reading Who Cares: Guest Blogger Emma Adams
Wednesday morning, east London, on the Docklands Light Railway swapping stories about compressed morbidity. I’m travelling with Maria Genné, artistic director of Minneapolis based Kairos Dance. Their award winning Dancing Heart programme works with frail elders in a range of care settings. We’re travelling through the autumn drizzle to drop in on a rehearsal at… Continue reading Keep on Dancing
In and around the neighbourhoods of Deptford where the company is based, Entelechy’s 21st Century Tea Dance programme has become an important and re-occurring event in the lives of many lonely and isolated people. For many, for whom the pattern of one day very much resembles the next, it has become something to look forward… Continue reading Loneliness
The office is full of words. Not the awkwardly squeezed arts meets social care kind of text of funding bids and evaluation reports, these are words that take you by surprise scattered on the dining table with the tulips and biscuit crumbs: ‘salt fishcakes’, ‘distressed daughter’, ‘embarrassment’. It’s the debris of yesterday afternoon's workshop with… Continue reading Death by Chocolate
The eight-year old participant says it all: “To me nothing could have been better: the noise and the bubbles because they look magic; everybody working together to create a new world.” We were in the main dance space at the top of the Siobhan Davies Dance Studios in south London. The event was conjured into… Continue reading Weaving
Creativity, Arts and Older People 