Seed Grants – Arts in Residential Care 2024

A growing body of practice supporting “creativity in residential care settings” exists. At its core, this is about humanising care to support residents, staff, and beloveds. However, there is little that directly addresses any of the multiple griefs and losses connected with residential care, nor its associated bereavements, or directly address the challenges of bereavement faced by residents, beloveds or staff. There is also little creative work that aims to mitigate the impact of grief and loss on persons with a cognitive impairment in residential care.

Moreover, research resulting from surveys such as National End of Life, Time to Reflect and Dying Well at Home, show appropriate conversations about dying and loss in all its forms supports the humanising of care in residential care settings. Open discussion about end-of-life planning, cultural expectation and diversity in all senses can reduce stress at such challenging times. Often people lack confidence to do so. Creative approaches, or the use of the arts or cultural tools, can help.

We invite applicants to propose innovative projects developed from their own awareness and expertise. These might be led by an artist, musician, performer, creative or craftworker in collaboration with a residential care setting. Or they might be led by healthcare workers or teams in collaboration with creatives. Or they might be led by residents or kinship groups, including youngsters, with support.

In addition to the financial support Seed Grants offer, our Caru and Arts and Cultural Engagement teams will also:

• Provide bespoke mentoring to the Grantee and residential care setting.
• Address insurance, ethical, legal, privacy, and / or any related concerns.
• Create an evaluation framework to assess benefits and outcomes.
• Create an appropriate communication strategy to tell the story of this work.

Seeds Grants encourage creative exploration through “micro-financing and mentorship” in partnership with a residential care setting. Your aim may be to start a new project or help existing projects gain momentum. It may be an artist, creative practitioner, activities coordinator, healthcare worker, resident or kinship group who has a good idea. It may be something planned for ages or a new notion.  

Successful applicants will join a nationwide Peer Network for capacity building, and to connect these projects with quality improvement, staff engagement and care competencies. Therefore, we are looking for proposals from applicants willing to exchange information.