Essex CC – The art of building relationships

It’s easy to think that living in a place where your surrounded by other people, you would naturally make friends, build relationships and never feel alone. However, many older people living in a care home experience loneliness and can become socially isolated. They may have moved away from a familiar environment and as they’ve got older, their social circles have reduced.

That’s why for the past two years, we’ve worked with Anglia Ruskin University and some of the UK’s leading arts and health organisations to explore the power of arts and culture within care home settings, and how they can build and strengthen relationships between residents and care home staff.

What we found was that the arts – music, dance and crafts – have a unique way of engaging people, enabling them to express themselves creatively, build on their strengths and help them to connect with others in positive ways. We saw the breaking down of boundaries between residents, their relatives and staff, as well as residents and their wider communities.

The information we’ve gathered will now be used to inform future thinking around arts provision in care home settings as well as future programmes of work. You can find out more about what we found on the Explore Culture website, or by watching the film below.

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