The regular Handmade craft session runs year round during term time and when lockdown started and the gallery closed on the 18^th March we still had two weeks of sessions left to run. As we had already booked the artist for those sessions we decided to create a video workshop which we could share online.

One of the first things we did in response to the lockdown was to establish communication with the regulars who attend the Handmade sessions. We did this through a combination of ways including; email, phone call and social media and following on from those conversations we set up a WhatsApp group and this has become the core group that we have worked with throughout the whole lockdown period.

After establishing regular contact we felt that it was important to keep the pattern of the Handmade sessions going. The project re-launched as #handmadeathome and set up on zoom and ran sessions every Friday afternoon up until the 10^th July.

After each session we put together a workshop step by step instruction sheet of the workshop and this then went on the Age Friendly Whitworth facebook page and was linked to the Whitworth’s social media.  This enabled the activity to be shared with a wider audience beyond those that attended the zoom sessions.

From the end of July through August we ran a summer project in partnership with local group, Unity Arts and this culminated in the creation of an installation for a socially distanced event, Little Fest in a local park.

Since the end of the summer we have continued to run the friday sessions and are now also offering a monthly session open to anyone over 50+

“It was brilliant to have the sessions during lockdown, to keep the creative juices flowing. It was a small group, but it was great to see everyone each week, to catch up and chat about current worries, particularly around Black Lives Matter and of course, how we were all feeling about the virus/lockdown.
It was a really good, supportive group to share news and worries – particularly as some in the group experienced bereavement at the time. I found it very helpful talking about my mother and what she was going through with her health issues. I gave her the paper flowers we made after she came out of hospital, which she loved” (Marcia)

Claire Cowell: Age Friendly Coordinator claire.cowell@manchester.ac.uk