The Courtyard’s Creative Ageing team worked in collaboration with the Masters House, Ledbury Nursing Home and Eastnor Primary School on a new and exciting poetry based project.
Inspired by collections of strange and curious objects gathered from across the globe by early explorers, this project invited participants to delve into our very own cabinet of curiosities and help us imagine the purpose and past of these intriguing items. The residents particularly enjoyed the surprise of unwrapping the mysterious items and it encouraged some very creative thinking as well as evoking sad, happy and nostalgic memories. There was also a lot of humour in the creative thinking too which brought about lovely interaction between the residents.
The school children went on a voyage of discovery, navigating their way around the strange and unusual objects in the treasury.
We explored different routes into poetry and used devices such as imagery, metaphors, similes and personification. Some children wrote poems looking at the objects in a variety of ways, while others cast themselves in the role of retailers selling their curious wares to potential customers! Each child followed his or her own direction to make it a fun, engaging, interesting and enlightening journey for all.
An extraordinary amount of poems were written, a selection were also displayed at The Courtyard and at The Masters House in Ledbury, where residents and the children were brought together to share their poems.
This project was kindly funded by the Glencora Fund and the Beckett Bulmer Charitable Trust.
