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Covid-19 hasn't stopped Entelechy Arts helping people to collectively navigate the often uncertain and unpredictable journey into older, old age. David Slater reflects on the impact of their work.

In the 1980s as a young theatre maker I apprenticed myself to a group of women in their eighties and nineties living in the old docklands communities of Bermondsey south London. Born in the late nineteenth century they had survived everything that the twentieth had thrown at them: two world wars, the unimaginable poverty of the 1930s and finally the gentrification of their old familiar neighbourhoods. They sang, told stories and danced through their later years . We formed a theatre company and went on tour. One night, on stage at the Centre for Policy on Ageing after a triumphant performance of their latest show, a tragic comedy about the pain of moving into residential care, Nell Coombes, their oldest member, had a sandwich and a cup of tea with her friends and died. At that moment of community and connection, of love and recognition, the arc of her life finally came to rest... Keep reading on Creativity, Arts and Older People

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Finding your way back out (Creativity Arts and Older People)