Handmade Wellbeing - Collaborative Learning in Craft and Welfare Interfaces
The main aim of the Handmade Wellbeing project is to enhance and expand professional competences of arts & crafts professionals to design and carry out craft activities in elderly care. Arts and crafts professionals are employed increasingly in challenging community engagement areas which are outside their traditional core skills and abilities. They are often employed to work in cooperation with other experts in specialist fields, especially in wellbeing and health-related services. Arts & crafts offer creative and empowering activities that should be provided in future Wellbeing and Care Centres. This sector could offer new kinds of employment opportunities to craft culture experts and artists, but abilities to work in cooperation with experts of other fields are also needed.
The project is carried out by four European partners from Finland, Great Britain, Austria and Estonia. Each partner will prepare arts & crafts workshops in elderly care and also short-term learning activities which the other partners will participate. One of the main ideas of this project is to study and share the best practices of learning. As an outcome, an educational model to coach arts and crafts professionals and educators to work with elderly in care is developed in cooperation with all partners.
The Estonian workshops were carried out between September and December 2016 in two types of elderly care institutions. We are very grateful for the warm welcome and support that we met in the two elderly care homes located in Viiratsi and Nõo, and the two elderly day centres in Viljandi and Tartu.
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