Past Projects - 2020 Year
In 2020 we had started to launch new projects working with older people in our community, but as we all know in March 2020, our plans changed and we looked at new ways of staying connecting with participants, especially those who lived in isolation and most venerable during this time.
Cancer Cafe
Working in partnership with Macmillan Cancer support created the Cancer Café - a creative space to allow those who had experienced cancer to come together share and give a voice to reflect on experiences and connect with others. We posted this activity in March 2020 due to COVID 19.
Writing Workshops
In January 2020 we continued to support our creative community by offering a 6 week writing workshops by award-winning author Alun Gibbard who shared some guidelines on writing autobiographies.
Stories by doorstep / Phone/ Zoom
In early 2020 we had just launched our new stories by doorstep, reaching older people in rural parts of our community in Carmarthenshire. This was in partnership with Carmarthenshire United Support Project. But in March 2020 we transferred this project to the phones in response to COVID 19.
PSU designed this creative pilot project to tackle loneliness and isolation amongst older people. Stories to the Door (STTD) took referrals from the organisations in CUSP. Thanks to good results from the pilot, PSU launched ‘Stories by Phone’ in April 2020, diversifying delivery to overcome the constraints of lockdown. As the pandemic continued, and increased isolation still further, PSU secured funding from the ACW Stabilisation Fund to continue and develop Stories by Phone independently, as one of their raft of community arts for health & well-being projects.
Stories on Prescription
What started out as Stories by door, stories on Zoom led to need for Stories on Prescription working with the local health, Hywel Dda.
Spoken Word Saturday Online
We knew how much people still wanted to connect through this challenge time, so we shifted our monthly social storytelling event, Spoken Word Saturday online. We created an online zoom space for our community to connect and share audio and visual spoken word snippets.
Intergenerational Project
As well as adults and vulnerable isolating we wanted to support our young people in our community too.
In April we worked with young people in schools in our community and connected them with Care Homes to create an intergenerational storytelling Project through Zoom and phone calls.
Our in-house practitioners Karen & Carys ran a sensory storytelling session with residents at Llys Y Bryn and pupils from Coed Cae Schoool, Llanelli.
Pupils from Coed cae School, Llanelli & Residents from Cilymaenlwyd Care Home/ Story gathered with storyteller Phil Okwedy, which was supported by Beyond The Border International Storytelling Festival.
Spoken Word activist artists, Rufus Mufasa held creative sessions with Alumni young people from Mess Up The Mess, and created a chat Pack that was sent to Ty Dyfrryn Residential complex in Ammanford.
Spoken Word & Landscape Art at Bwlch Youth Club
Later in 2020, we ran a project with artists and young people in Morfa and Bwlch. This was an opportunity to research traditional stories of the area, meet and speak to residents in the Morfa Area. Local people worked to create landscape art with Bill Taylor Beales and illustration art with Mr Plob, as well capturing stories with Spoken word activist Rufus Mufasa.
'To Be In The Now' A partnership project with Swansea Council & Sound Memories Radio
PSU working with Cheryl Beer who is the director at Sound Memories radio to create a dementia inclusive life story project empowering older people living in Swansea, their families and their carers to enhance community communication, resilience and connectivity and enable older people living with dementia to be part of their own solution.
The aim of the project was to create an alternative approach to dementia inclusivity and strategic dissemination.
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