SUSSEX.- Works of art are being created by people living in a care home in Hove, Sussex, to help decorate their new surroundings as their home is redeveloped and expanded.

The project, by Sussex Partnership NHS foundation trust in partnership with Brighton Museum, is the first stage of an ongoing art venture to take pride of place in the soon to be opening Lindridge in Laburnum Avenue, Hove.

Lindridge, which is being redeveloped on the site of the Downs Nursing Home and Neville Hospital, is a new type of care home which will provide a range of services to meet the growing demand for the care of people with increasing complex long and short term health and dementia needs.

Lindridge is being opened in stages as the site is developed. The next part of the home will be opened in June.

Sussex Partnership and Brighton Museum have invited in professional artist Annis Joslin to work with residents on pictures about their hobbies and interests. Annis will then join together the pictures people have created to make unique pieces for display in six units at Lindridge.

Home residents, whose accommodation will be refurbished in a second stage of work at Lindridge, are being given access to the museum’s digital archive of photographs from Brighton’s past and incorporating them in imaginative works using collage, painting or print-making techniques.

Artist Annis said the residents select images of personal interest, weave stories around them and start to build their own pictures.

For example Rose Buckingham used to have an allotment on what is now the site of Lindridge. She was drawn to pictures of a garden and beautiful flowers and placed colourful flowers from a present-day photograph into the basket shown on an old black and white image.

Annis said: “There can’t be a good product without this process of meaningful engagement which is open to all. Within this project, some residents choose the images to be included while others tackle the more intricate building of a picture.

“I feel we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible with collaborative working. It is for us all to watch the art work grow and we are all looking forward to the next phases of our project taking shape.”

Activities coordinator at Lindridge Stacey Witterick said residents do lots of arts and crafts work at the home but this project was something quite different and they were learning new techniques, like screen printing, which could be used again in the future.

She said: “We have done a lot of reminiscing as we look through the photographs. People spot places they recognise or that prompt memories of their own past – one gentleman identified where he used to live from an old photo of Brighton seafront.”

Stacey said everybody was looking forward to seeing the completed works displayed on the walls of Lindridge.