The Care Hubs of Arts & Creative Excellence initiative 2020/2021 will generate arts and care skills in six regions across Ireland beginning with artist residences from January 2021 and will bring the benefits of arts participation to up to 125 older people who either live in or visit care facilities and 125-250 staff, families, artists and the wider community.

• Liz Clark will start her music project Homeplace with participants from Castleisland Day Care Centre, Kerry and Raheen Community Hospital, Clare, composing a song, connecting us to our homeplace and our relationship to it.  At the end of this project, the participants will perform this song, engaging the local community choir/ local musicians to showcase the work to the wider community.

• Maud Hendricks and Bernie O’Reilly (Outlandish Theatre Platform) will explore with residents of two healthcare settings, St. John’s Community Hospital, Sligo and Killybegs Community Hospital, Donegal, a pivotal moment in the lives of the residents. Through an exploration of this moment, they will co-create an installation piece to share amongst family, friends, carers and the wider public.
• Philippa Donnellan and Olwyn Lyons, working with Clonskeagh Community Nursing Unit, Dublin and Naas Day Care Centre, Kildare, will be inviting everyone to take a step in a new direction and to share an idea or their own moves. People will have the chance to exercise, engage and artistically explore – and to celebrate their life and work in a series of specially choreographed performance events in story, song and dance.

Artists will complete their blended residencies through dynamic methods where they ae unable to enter care settings fully or at all. Interactions will be done online and via in-person visits where possible, depending upon government guidelines.  

Commenting on the residency programme, Dr. Tara Byrne, Arts Programme Manager, Age & Opportunity said: “When this series of residencies ends in May 2021, we hope to have embedded a culture of arts participation across the six care settings, reconnecting residents back to their community and, through the training provided to both staff of care settings and local cultural institutions, to have created a hub of arts and creative excellence in each region.

The impact of Covid-19 will be with us for some time, but we hope these residencies will be part of the process helping us to interpret, to heal and to creatively reconnect with each other as we emerge from the shadow of 2020.”

Funded by Creative Ireland’s Creativity in Older Age Programme, with support from the Arts Council of Ireland.