Seasonal Greetings Card Competition 2018
Each year we love to run a company-wide competition for everyone to get involved with and 2018 was no different! Our Avery Seasonal Greetings Card Competition was held over all 54 care homes and the four Hawthorns retirement living communities, giving residents an opportunity to use a wide range of individual skills, show off creative talents and promote teamwork too.
The idea behind the competition was for residents to draw and design their own cards, with one winning design from each home to be submitted and printed for them. Residents were encouraged to create their artworks with their families, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren, or with children who regularly visit their home. This included local schools, nurseries, members of the Scouting and Girl Guiding families, and student volunteers who were all invited to our homes to join in the fun too.
It has been a great activity that has brought everyone together at such an important time of the year. The competition provided many social, psychological and physical benefits for our residents’ well-being through self-expression and fun through arts and crafts, support by engagement with children of all ages. The card designs included everything from traditional drawings to glitter, paint to 3D objects and stickers. Some depicted reindeer, Christmas trees, Santa, elves and log fires, and all were created using a myriad of skills and artistic flair.
The competition generated a great deal of enthusiasm and we received so many fantastic entries it made judging very difficult; we had to extend it to include a joint third place! Our judges agreed that the winning cards were outstanding with truly festive designs.
We are delighted to announce that our winners were:
In joint 3rd place: The Hawthorns Clevedon and Milton Court Care Home
Our judges liked how these two cards clearly showed inter-generational involvement.
The Hawthorns Clevedon’s card was designed by Tom Knight, a pupil at Mary Elton Primary School, who got creative depicting a Christmas Eve scene.
Milton Court’s design had children from Acorn Day Nursery make fingerprints in red and green paint, before residents Gwen Rodgers and Valerie Kemp cut out the paper into an elegant Christmas tree design.
In 2nd place
Newcross Care Home, created by Elsie Parkinson
Newcross’ design certainly caught our judges’ eye and they particularly liked the use of colour and creativity in resident Elsie’s card.
In 1st place
Darwin Court Care Home‘s wonderful, traditional Christmas tree design, drawn by resident Margaret Harrison
Our judges loved this design, which showed great artistic talent from Margaret! Here she is being presented her winning design.
All homes had their chosen Christmas card design printed to use as their Christmas card this year and Darwin Court’s winning entry was used for the Avery company card of the year. Well done to everyone who got involved and especially to our winners. Thank you for all of your entries, we have some great artists out there!
Article by Claire Harne, Regional Well-being & Activities Co-ordinator for Welcome Home Issue 8.
