The Edenholme Project
Edenholme Poetry Project
This is a brief overview of a creative Community Learning and Development (CLD) project engaging with older people residing in a care home in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.
The project had two main strands:
Firstly, there were focus group sessions with residents and staff at Edenholme in September 2020 exploring their experiences of the pandemic. Sessions provided powerful feedback which informed Aberdeenshire's broader community impact assessment process taking place at the time.
Secondly, this resulted in the setting up of a poetry group with residents at Edenholme. This group became an opportunity for residents to express themselves collectively on a range of issues that mattered to them, including the effects of the pandemic and lockdown. Work took place to publish a booklet of the group's poems. That booklet was launched in a public celebration of the learners' achievement. There has been interest in the project and its means of delivery at a local, regional and national level.
Residents themselves expressed a need for and interest in the group. Their needs included:
isolation and loneliness particularly during lockdown
lack of stimulation to foster mental activity (an important means of stimulating memory)
need for purposeful engagement.
All of these needs were reinforced as the project developed.
In particular, through doing this, we were able to provide residents with a voice on things that mattered to them.
The project
This could sound pretentious but really isn’t.
Like all good things it’s remarkably simple, a practical response to circumstances of lockdown. One colleague was there and one wasn’t. Residents had certain issues which needed to be taken into account.
Because the sessions were conducted remotely it required an established framework for writing, such as 10 things you’d find, or love is, or what I like, which was designed to lead to each participant providing one or more lines which were then organised into an appropriate structure by the session leader. It was easy to operate.
Effect On Residents
Residents were able to meet on a regular basis and have contact with people from outside the home which reduced isolation. The activity encouraged reminiscence which had enormously beneficial effects in terms of memory retention and kept people mentally agile and healthy at a time when there were few other activities available. People were given a sense of the value of their own thoughts and opinions by these being used not only in the poems produced but also by their being used in community impact assessments which contributed to local authority thinking about the pandemic. More importantly it gave residents their voice and did so in a way that was stimulating and fun. Their achievements were celebrated publicly.
Despite the difficulty of the circumstances due to lockdown, the CLD worker and his virtual colleague devised a successful means of delivering this creative project remotely with only one of the two facilitators able to attend.
Their partnership with each other, and particularly with the residents, provided a template for possible future collaborative artistic or research work with isolated individuals or communities.
Methods
The circumstances of delivery meant that the writer was engaging virtually and the CLD facilitator was present in person. Given the issues raised by the virtual engagement of the writer and the diverse needs of the group, communal poetry writing seemed the most appropriate and impactful way of capturing the diversity of voices of those participating. The facilitator presented examples of poems and raised a topic in the form of a lead-in phrase, such as 'I remember...' or 'What I like…' and participants were encouraged to come up with at least one line in response. This ensured that everyone present was given a voice, that differing and contradictory views could be held within the same piece of writing.
The responses provided were sent electronically by the facilitator to the writer who then collated the lines into a meaningful order without altering residents’ wording, except occasionally to repeat a line. The impact of this method of production is enshrined in the power of the poetry produced.
This was a successful combination which arose from the impact of lockdown, but it soon became apparent that it could be used in other ways and with a wide range of possible participants.
The same positive outcomes - of giving the most marginalised, the most reticent a voice, of giving equal weight to all the views that might be expressed, of allowing people’s feelings to be heard as part of research into any given subject – can be achieved with any group, of any age, on any subject.
The virtual side of the original project can play a part but is not necessary. This can be done face to face. The process of communal creation of a poem which expresses participants’ attitudes, thoughts or feelings is a tool that can be used to amplify and give depth to any survey of community views.
The importance of the group to residents is best captured through one of their own poems:
Why I like Poetry
Poetry comes out of your heart
It sounds like faraway church bells
It makes things tidied up
And disciplines the way it is done
It brings faraway places to mind
It brings some symmetry to things
Hearing poetry makes me happy.
The project underlined the importance of engaging with this particular group and older people in general.
Enjoy the Launch Event
REACTION TO THE PROJECT
The project was nominated for a SURF Award by Yvonne Leathley The Care Inspectorate.
The idea of this project came from direct involvement of Community Learning workers with the residents themselves. Positive partnership working with Edenholme care staff was key to the practicalities of supporting the project. Colleagues involved in the concept, design and delivery had specialist artistic skills: the writing stimuli were delivered by a published poet and the illustrations by an Aberdeenshire community artist.
This project attracted interest from other care homes throughout Aberdeenshire.
The Care Inspectorate in Scotland supported this project through ongoing interest in progress, involvement in production and launch of the booklet and through promoting it to other national organisations such as Luminate Scotland.
Interest in the creative approach and methods used has also been shown by Alzheimers Scotland.
'This ladies and gentlemen was a truly inspired partnership between our community learning and development workers' - Provost Howatson