Museum in Your Care Home: The Great British Seaside

As part of the Museum In Your Care Home campaign we invited residents from Piper Court care home in Stockton to share their fond memories of seaside holidays to be included in The Great British Seaside exhibition at Preston Park Museum and Grounds.

Through our ongoing work with older people we are developing multi-sensory resources and sessions to ensure that older people within our community are included in our exhibitions. We want to ensure that they are regularly included in our programmes and that older voices are heard and their stories recorded for future generations.

A busy image. A group of older people in wheelchairs sit around two circular tables. The tables have craft materials strewn over them.

Residents enjoyed listening to each other's stories and being inspired to create seaside themed collages.

Over four weeks the residents took part in creative sessions with Tees Valley Museum staff and local artist Sally Anderson to create artwork inspired by their fond and cherished memories of the seaside.

The group started their sessions by exploring objects such as postcards and images of local seaside towns from the museums. We also had items from seaside themed loans boxes and included a ‘guess the smell’ game. These all sparked many conversations about fish and chips, donkey rides and lemon tops. One lady even made everybody giggle telling a story of her younger years “I used to like going to the beach when I was a teenager and watching the boys coming out of the water – the boys used to have woolly trunks that soaked up the water and fell down as they came out!” Others told stories that the younger care home staff didn’t know about “People used to use the banks of the River Tees as a beach. The stretch between where the Tees Barrage is now and Newport Bridge, used to be used as a little beach and people went fishing along there.”

The hands of an older person draw a picture on a piece of paper in red pencil. To the right are more coloured pencils, above is two pairs of scissors.

A resident enjoying drawing their memories of bygone seaside holidays.

Over the next few weeks these stories were incorporated into creative activities such as making clay ornaments and exploring seaside colours when creating collages. The artist included their memories and designs in the final piece and their work in a scrapbook both of which are on display in the Beside the Seaside exhibition at Preston Park Museum until 29th September.

Part of a museum exhibition. A scrapbook lays on a red and white chequered tablecloth. In the background a colourful seaside collage sits on an easel inside a museum case.

The scrapbook and artwork on display in The Great British Seaside exhibition.