Meet Me at the AlbanyMeet Me at the Albany (MMatA) is a creative arts club for the over 60s based at the Albany Arts Centre in South East London. MMatA meets every week on a Tuesday, and offers a year round programme of a diverse range of activities, from poetry to music, sculpture to circus skills.

Launched in autumn 2013, MMatA is supported by Lewisham Council’s Community Directorate. The intention is to enable isolated older people to become involved in creative workshops, experience performances from leading artists and provide a social and vibrant atmosphere for participants to enjoy.

Coproduction is at the heart of MMatA. The project is co-created by two organisations: the Albany (a performing arts venue and creative centre in Deptford) and Entelechy Arts (a participatory arts company), which David Slater, director of Entelechy Arts feels generates a sense of shared ownership and perspective key to the collaborative feel of the project. The model is one in which emerging older artists are supported to become co-producers alongside established artists and isolated older people, with the diverse range of art forms on offer ensuring there’s something for everyone.

Participants have gone on to support the development of performances and projects that go beyond the MMatA group; for example, one group of participants worked alongside older peer mentors to develop a nomadic performance art piece ‘Bed’, which explores the role of visibility and loneliness in the lives of older people. ‘Bed’ has been performed around the streets of Deptford and will be taken to the 2016 Brighton festival. Another group have begun working with the Community Team at the Southbank Centre, to assist with their work with isolated older people in the area. They used performances of their poems to broaden the Southbank team’s understanding of the needs and aspirations of their often marginalised peers. As such, MMatA has become a catalyst for enabling older people to realise their potential and become recognised and valued players within their own communities, creating different possibilities of what it might mean to grow old in our society.

MMatMA has a close relationship with the local authority in Lewisham. MMatA is supported by the council’s Communities that Care Investment Fund, which was designed to support voluntary sector organisations to address challenges such as social isolation, increasing frailty, declining mental health and the ability to access services and programmes faced by many older people. The relationship with the authority has been cultivated over a number of years, and dates back to Lewisham Council’s strong emphasis on grant-giving to arts and cultural organisations in the area. This has translated into a diverse arts and culture landscape in the area, with a high concentration of arts council National Portfolio organisations and an enthusiasm for the work of arts and cultural organisations with the authority.

The outcomes of the project are currently measured largely through quantitative data (numbers of participants and numbers of sessions) but work is being undertaken to explore more qualitative methods of measuring MMatA’s impact.

In addition to the collection of quantitative data the outcomes of the project have been measured using standardised questionnaires such as the Quality of Life questionnaire, the Duke Social Support Index, Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale and the Geriatric Depression Scale.

www.meetmeatthealbany.org.uk