December was 'Alzheimer's Month' for the Up For Arts Team. We had discussed the possibiltities of an event and initially we were unsure how to proceed with this. One of our contacts at St Helens Council told us of a weekly karaoke event which is held at a local care home in Newtown-le-Willows. Helen and I duly attended and met with the group and the carers. It was very interesting to see how they used music to assist with memory and the positive response this prompted in the patients. Consequently we took this as our theme and decided to host similar events ourselves as part of the themed month.
Helen and I were successful in securing 4 venues in Liverpool, St Helens, Southport and Birkenhead which we managed to negotiate for free. I contacted local care homes in the respective areas and invited people to attend - the response from people was fantastic!
I attended the event at The Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool as the Up For Arts representative. My dutes involved managing the event, setting up the room, meeting and greeting and taking photographs. It was also imperative that I was on hand to answer any queries.
This event definitely helped to develop my communication and presentation skills. I was tasked with introducing the event and thanking the relevant parties (Alzheimer's Society, CHATS, etc) for their input and attendence. One thing I had not accounted for was that the karaoke host had not been briefed on the format of the days event. I therefore had to get my 'creative head' on as I felt that the event would have been a bit daunting for the attendees if we had run it in the 'traditional' karaoke format.
I felt it would be prudent to have a 'sing-along' type event, rather than one person being responsible for singing the songs. I spoke with the host and advised him of this and I also compiled a list of songs by taking requests from different tables and asking the host to play these. People soon began to join in and before I knew it, everybody was singing along and there was a really fantastic atmosphere.
I made sure that I also spoke with many of the carers and attendees so that we could get feedback on what we had done well and what we could make better next time. The response was overwhelming - people said that they hadn't enjoyed themselves as much in years and all of the carers stated what a pleasurable day they had enjoyed. Indeed we received many requests for us to hold a similar event again in the future, which we hope to do.
I found that the skills gained from my duty management experience at The Citadel benefited me greatly during this event. In particular, I felt that I was able to identify potential problems and re-prioritise at short notice when required. There were many responsibilities that I had on this day and I feel that due to my organisational and event management skills in particular, the event was an success.
Photograph of the function room in The Adelphi Hotel during the set-up of the event:
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