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We were sad to see the end of our Baking a Difference project working with Planet Leicester Bakers recently and so we chose to celebrate it in the only way we knew how – with an afternoon tea in a care setting. We welcomed activities staff and volunteers from other care settings across Leicestershire to enjoy cakes, scones and speciality breads.

Alongside multiple cups of tea, we enjoyed lots of catching up and conversations, as well as the showing of our film showcasing the project, which you can see here.

Older people who had taken part in the project were particularly pleased to welcome Cameron on the keyboard to accompany the tea party by playing some beautiful light classical music in the background too.

The final report of Baking a Difference will be available shortly.

The ‘How to’ videos are available here so that you too can learn how to exploit the loveliness of bread for the benefit of older people you care for or for your own enjoyment. Do please let us know what you think of the hedgehogs, snakes and science on offer!

Our thanks, as ever, to Michelle Stratford from Planet Leicester Bakers for all of her time, thought and skill in delivering this project in conjunction with our team, as well as to all the staff, residents and volunteers who have been involved over the last year or so too.

Art with Heart is a project focused on supporting those with dementia to explore arts and culture from around the world, including art, language and poetry.

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Learning for the Fourth Age were delighted to receive funding from the Leicestershire and Rutland Community Foundation to cover sessions in two care settings with a specialist in both dementia and creative arts.

Our thanks to Vicky Olivera for taking the time to plan, organise and deliver the sessions At Agnes House and St George’s care homes and special thanks to our volunteer Safooraa for supporting these sessions, which were well received by staff and residents alike.

We set up an art group with residents in William House sheltered housing unit (a part of Wyggeston’s Hospital) a few years ago and our volunteers and staff have supported the residents there ever since.

However, during conversations with the artists there, it became clear that many of them would like to learn new skills on external courses and to bring these back to the group, as well as to try and celebrate all the art that they have created and achieved over the years.

We were delighted to receive a grant of £850 from the Barchester Charitable Foundation to cover the cost of new art equipment, framing existing work so that people could share and celebrate it and to pay for courses in the community for the group’s artists to develop their skills.

Now the pictures are out of storage folders, framed and proudly displayed on walls around the sheltered housing unit that they all live in. Residents report learning new skills, improved social connections, a sense of pride in their achievements and enjoyment.

In the light of the recent “Care Home for Four Year Olds” documentary being shown on Channel 4, we are proud and delighted to be piloting bringing similarly heartwarming intergenerational work to care settings in Leicester.

So far, our Baking a Difference project is bringing together nursery children from Blossoms Day Nursery and South Lodge care home to make, create and eat gorgeous bread, as well as to share time, stories and new experiences together.

Having been busy baking, the nursery children brought in Diwali present of bread sticks dipped in icing and sprinkles (above) for the care home residents to enjoy.

Having finished a fun hedgehog roll baking session, Michelle from Planet Leicester Bakers tweeted: “Wonderful hour with nursery children and ‘The Grannies’ from a #BakingaDifference care home yesterday. They finished creating and decorated their hedgehog buns and then had a sing along while they baked. #carehome #dementia #community #specialtreat @Learning4thAge ” 

We are very excited indeed to see the project developing in this way and to be bringing generations together in this way in order to create, develop and strengthen community connections between people and places. We hope to be able to do much more of this during the project.

We were really pleased to be working closely with members of the local community to run sessions in three different care homes making Diwali garlands during the recent festivities. Working with fantastic groups of students from the University of Leicester, we were keen to ensure that the long cultural tradition of marking the Festival of Light was spread to an older audience here in the city.

Lots of fun was had by everyone involved in our Diwali wreath making workshops, including this duo in Evington!

An abundance of flowers were created in total and these were used as decorations at the university afterwards… (although residents of care homes have since been asking what happened to the beautiful flowers and whether they could have them back if they have finished being used for the festival itself as they enjoyed them so much!)

The close concentration (caught on camera) of these two wonderful older women in sheltered housing as they enjoyed one of our regular art groups. Over the years, we have seen that painting is therapeutic and mindful for many people of all ages but particularly for people as they age.

We are delighted to have volunteers visiting older people across Leicester and Leicestershire regularly to support L4A’s ongoing art and craft groups. From Market Harborough to Quorn, we will try to support care settings to provide learning and arts activities for their residents.

Collaborating closely, residents of one extra care unit each create a separate part of these designs using lino printing techniques and then combine them together to form a final finished piece that is more than the sum of the separate parts.

These beautiful birds have been proudly painted by Neil who really enjoys the regular art group we host in his sheltered housing unit, even if he is usually the only male attending it. He has proudly framed this series of gorgeous British birds he has produced and we think that he is right to be proud of his work.

Doreen is very proud of her sunflowers and spent time studying Van Gogh’s original in order to create her own interpretation here at her own art group.

Of course, at L4A, we don’t mind if you’re recreating original masterpieces or inventing your own but we are delighted to be supporting so many older artists across Leicester and Leicestershire to feel proud of what they draw, paint, sketch, print, chalk, ink and much much more with us each and every week.

We are always looking for more volunteers to support our art groups across the city and county, or even to start new ones so please do get in touch with us via email or here if you think you could help out at all, or if you would like to support our work in another way – we’d love to hear from you!

Here at L4A, we believe that there is a first time for everything and, when we strive to enhance quality of life in care homes for older people, we are keen to ensure that people think outside the box and remain able to try new things.

To this end, we were delighted to host a recent RVS (Royal Voluntary Service) ‘First Time for Everything’ session bringing together residents from Agnes House care home and William House sheltered housing recently in a shared autumnal painting activity.

As well as learning new painting and colour techniques, the session was a huge success in bringing people together, helping people to share new learning experiences and having lots of fun.

At L4A, we always love to work with other charities and organisations too so please do get in touch with us (here: info@l4a.org.uk ) if you have some areas of shared interest that we could work on together.

RVS (Royal Voluntary Service) is a national charity built on local volunteering, giving support to people who need it in NHS hospitals and communities.