Features / Cheswick Village
Care home celebrates ‘newfound fame’
Staff and residents at Beaufort Grange care home in Cheswick Village, are celebrating their ‘newfound fame.’
An initiative that the care home took part in, The Hoppiness Project, was featured on BBC’s The One Show on Tuesday as part of its focus on dementia.
Ted Lasso’s Kola Bokinni, whose father lives with dementia, met the residents of Beaufort Grange in October 2024 and introduced the piece.
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Last year the Filton-based care home teamed up with local group Alive Activities, to take part in a gardening scheme designed to aid the health and wellbeing of those living with Dementia.
The idea was that residents grow hop vines in the care home garden, there they tend to them and harvest the cones for brewers.
The residents get to taste their labour of love at the end of the brewing process.
Ted Lasso’s Kola Bokinni getting to know the home’s carers
The mutually beneficial scheme which is a collaboration of Alive Activities and University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute built on residents’ considerable knowledge of gardening, helped nurture friendships and links with community groups.
It also included activities such as get togethers, singing and even a brewery visit.
The project responds to the stigmatisation and social exclusion that people with dementia often face by developing opportunities for social connection beyond care homes and through the co-creation of creative outputs that challenge deficit representations.
Research has proved that there are positive impacts of being able to continue to engage in life-long leisure pursuits and social activities when living both independently and in a care home.
Brewing is a full sensory experience, with the hops each having unique smells as well as taste.
Guy Manchester at Alive Activities is the co-founder of the Bristol Hops Collective, he has witnessed first-hand the profound difference green craft activities can make to people’s lives.
He set up Bristol’s first dementia friendly allotment, which has now grown to two allotments, one in Brentry and one in Brislington.
He came up with the idea to encourage care home residents to grow hops alongside Karen Gray from the University of Bristol, with the aim to empower and stimulate residents living with dementia and other progressive illnesses.
In August 2024 they got to tour Wiper and True. The brewery has great accessibility and staff with experience in engaging with people living with dementia.
Raji Sunil, general manager at Beaufort Grange said: “This was a fantastic initiative from start to finish, the residents really enjoyed looking after the hops, watching them grow and change.
“Their favourite part however had to be getting to drink the beer at the end of the project. It was so wonderful to see the residents featured on The One Show celebrating their achievements, that really was the cherry on the cake”
One of the residents of Beaufort Grange, added: “I absolutely loved taking part in this project, it was so much fun and I can’t believe we were all featured on the BBC.
“We have such a brilliant time here, it is a fantastic place to live, everyone gets on so well and there’s never a dull moment”
After the brewing process, residents got their own party to celebrate
Bristol Hop Collective have implemented this across Bristol. They’ve worked with Deerhurst Care Home in Soundwell and Meadowcare Care Home in Redland.
One of their main goals at the start of the project was to challenge or disrupt dominant cultural representations of life in a care home, researchers are currently working on a paper using data from the initiative.
They also hope the findings and partnerships will feed into on-going development of a larger co-produced grant focused on understanding and strengthening creative health and wellbeing ecosystem in Bristol.
All photos: Beaufort Grange
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