Hastings care home residents get a taste of life as a pop star

The talented team at Hastings Court on The Ridge have written a song and created an accompanying music video, inspired by the home’s motto, ‘Live, Love and Be Loved.’

The video sees residents fulfilling long-held ambitions such as ‘riding’ a motorbike and performing to huge crowds as the drummer in a band. Lifestyles manager, Kimberley Mann, said the project had brought every one closer together.

She said: “‘Live, Love and Be Loved’ is at the heart of our parent company, Oakland Care’s, mission and the video shows how we live that every day.

“It was so much fun to do! The whole home got involved – the residents wrote a lot of the lyrics and sang together while our Lifestyles Assistant, Chloe Oliver-Taylor, used her degree in music to create and record the music.

“Our head chef, Danny Selley, loaned his motorbike to our resident Daisy Drew, so she could pretend she was out on the open road. Brenda Whicker lives with us and hadn’t driven a car for years, so she features in the video at the wheel of an open top Fiat – just on our car park.”

Staff from head office wanted to be part of the video too, which was put together by actor, director and TV scriptwriter, Daniel Peacock, who’s been part of the home’s Lifestyles team for 18 months.

“I took the job as something to keep me occupied in between writing and I fell in love with it,” said Dan. “The people living here have so much creativity, so many interests and so much energy that you never know what they’re going to come up with.

“It’s their ideas and their desires that shape our activities here. Our job is to help make those ideas a reality. I never dreamt I’d be creating a pop video working in a care home!”

The video has been posted on Facebook and has been viewed more than 7,000 times. Home manager, Georgina Gamble, said residents get a great deal of pleasure out of watching it in the home’s cinema room.

“‘Live, Love and Be Loved’ was not only a wonderful thing for them to do, it’s become a cherished memory that they can watch over and over,” she said. “People often think that coming to a care home is the end of their creative life but here we’re constantly giving residents the opportunity to try something they’ve never done before – even in lockdown.”

Last year the team at Hastings Court, which offers residential, nursing, memory and respite care, created virtual holidays for residents where they could visit countries around the world.

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