IN THE COMMUNITY & CHARITY PROJECTS

 

CARE HOME APPEARANCES

The Elders love to make friends with other elders. They have visited many Care Homes and similar facilities, including:

    • Ashgrove Care Home, Hounslow
    • Benson Millstream Centre, Wallingford
    • Brinsworth House, Twickenham
    • Cloisters Care Home,Hounslow
    • Maryville Care Home, Brentford
    • St Helier Residential Hotel-Style Care Home, Folkestone
    • St Mary’s Convent, Chiswick

LOCAL CHARITIES & COMMUNITY PROJECTS

The Elders and I volunteer with a number of local charities:

FRIENDS OF CATHJA – Therapy through creativity

A barge called ‘Cathja’ is home to a local charity for people suffering from enduring mental health problems. I am a Trustee of this innovative and caring charity. I use the roof of the barge as an exhibition space. Elders display themselves in a variety of tableaux,  highlighting national or world events, or merely their own whims and fantasies.

 

 

THE MULBERRY CENTRE – for anyone affected by cancer

I am working at the Mulberry Centre, a local charity for anyone affected by cancer. In addition to hosting monthly mandala workshops, between 2019 and 2022,  I worked with a team of members to create a ‘Mulberry Centre Mandala’ for the Centre. Members worked hard to create around 150 individual pieces that had meaning for them. One member wrote the following dedication for the piece:

The Mulberry Mandala (Tina El Hossiny December 2019)

Mandala is the Sanskrit word for circle. It has no beginning or end and no defined edges and is charged with its own energy.

Sue Cooper, the artist, is inspired by colour. She envisaged creating a huge mandala but could not conceive of having the time or the energy to do such an undertaking. The Mulberry Centre has brought together her inspiration with the collaboration of total strangers who are all facing aspects of cancer with its challenges.

The mandala colours radiate out in concentric rings – reds to yellow/orange; green/blue; to deep red/purple. It is finally edged with Matisse-like figures dancing between Mulberry heart-shaped leaves, especially dyed a deep mulberry red in raised felt to hold the eye.

The initial inner rings are in support of all the Mulberry Centre offers but as the larger rings burst out, so do the images upholding growth, life and creation. Images sometimes meditative, sometimes abstract, sometimes using daring colour contrasts. The mystery of the mandala is that it holds together despite being fragmentary and personal. Each piece is individually made yet somehow unites as one in the emotional bands of colour.

‘Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast limitless circle. We stand in the centre of our own circle and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life’. Pema Chodrun

 

 

 

RE ENGAGE – providing vital, life-enhancing social connections for older people

I drive real-life elders to tea parties!  Whilst the focus needs to be on our guests, The Elders come along from time to time to entertain and make friends.

OTHER COMMUNITY PROJECTS

I have painted and installed a series of 12 mandalas in the Chemotherapy Unit and waiting area of the West Middlesex Hospital. This is to brighten up the surroundings and give patients and staff something to enjoy,  whilst waiting, during treatments and while working.

 

 

The Elders were pleased to fund raise for local charities while celebrating The Coronation,

 

As well as visiting Care Homes, The Elders enjoy visiting hospitals and rehab facilities.  Below, meet my  great friend Daisy, an inspiration for The Elders. She was a great fan,  and several of them stayed with her at times. To amuse Daisy as her powers began to fade,  I began to visit her in hospitals with the Elders. They were so popular with staff and patients  and often ‘did the rounds’ with one of the nurses.