A social care provider, Optalis, has introduced a poetry project to encourage staff and customers to discover and share life experiences through poetry.
The project was launched on World Poetry Day (21 March) across Optalis’ Older Peoples’ Services in Windsor and Wokingham and poems will be submitted until mid-August.
World Poetry Day is a worldwide celebration of poetry and all things poetical. It’s about everybody sharing poetry, reading poetry, writing poetry and enjoying poetry.
Optalis is asking staff and customers to share childhood poems, associated memories and encouraging them to look at nostalgic pictures and record their thoughts.
The poems will be part of a poetry book, ‘Rhymes of Our Times,’ which will be published in October. All profits from the sales will be used to purchase equipment and resources for the benefit of Optalis’ customers.
Belinda Dixon, Optalis Service Manager, said,
“We are committed to providing meaningful activities that will engage our customers and introducing projects like these brings new challenges and enables them to gain new skills. We are really looking forward to reading many creative entries and I’m sure they’ll all be so captivating to read.”
Optalis’ Windsor Day Centre also runs Dementia poetry sessions each week for their older people groups.
Optalis strives to make a positive difference to the lives of customers, offering genuine choice and enabling them to fulfill their potential.
