Seagull Theatre secures funding for care home concerts
The Seagull Theatre, in Lowestoft, has secured £2,000 of funding from Suffolk Community Foundation to stage sing-along concerts at the town’s Kirkley Manor Nursing Home.
The 12 monthly concerts will be led by performers Stephen and Paul Ames and Natalie Willis from the arts organisation The Voice cLoud.
The Seagull’s assistant manager, Des Reynolds, said: “We are delighted to have secured this funding to continue our work in supporting older people and people living with dementia through arts projects.
“The concerts will include a huge variety of songs, spanning the decades from the 1940s and 50s through to the 60s and 70s.”
He said the theatre’s work supporting older people had begun in 2017 when a touring company Vamos put on a masked theatre production for care home residents living with dementia.
“It was so clear the extent to which the audience benefited – people who normally hardly spoke started singing along - it made us want to do more,” he said.
Today, the Morton Road theatre’s dementia support includes a range of activities from a memory café and chair fitness class to Music for Wellbeing and a Sunday Classic Film Club.
Julia Keeble, hospitality manager at Kingsley Healthcare’s Kirkley Manor, in Kirkley Park Road, said: “Music is tremendous therapy, especially for people living with dementia, and has the power to really connect and bring back many happy memories.”
She said Kirkley Manor residents would not be the only ones to benefit as she would also be inviting people from the local community and clients of Kingsley Home Care to the concerts.
