Age Friendly Whitworth
The Whitworth’s Age Friendly programme was developed in 2009 alongside a city-wide cultural offer that aimed to use art, culture and creativity to make Manchester one of the best cities in the world to grow older in.
The Whitworth is committed to working with and for older people on an Age Friendly cultural offer and at its core, is the Handmade. Free, hands-on and social weekly art sessions led by a brilliant team of older artists.
As a response to the lockdown in March, we kept in touch with the regulars who attended Handmade and the project re-launched online as #handmadeathome using the Zoom. These new digital sessions ran weekly workshops up until July.
“I have found our Zoom meetings to be so beneficial. It has allowed us to continue to be creative at home but in a group, using the sort of materials we have at home, or are easily accessible from local shops” (Handmade regular)
Over summer we worked with on a partnership project with a local organisation, Unity Arts. The group worked with an artist to create an installation which went to a local park. The installation was accompanied by socially distanced workshops with 50 older people participated in the project.
“We did a really good variety of art projects that were timed well for each of the sessions. It was great to have people in the group leading some of the sessions too. It was also good to see everyone’s work on Facebook and WhatsApp afterwards – so many wonderful, unique and colourful creations” (Project participant)
We are now holding monthly open live online sessions back on Zoom and hope to run sessions that are live streamed from the Whitworth when we are able to get back in the gallery and welcome people back.
If you are an artist or student over 50 and would like to be involved contact Claire Cowell, Age Friendly Whitworth Coordinator, on email: claire.cowell@manchester.ac.uk
For more information see the following: