Finding ways to keep busy in lockdown hasn’t been easy. Many people ran out of things to do after the first few weeks, particularly those living in a nursing home. Fortunately, one group of elderly residents has found an excellent way to keep themselves entertained, and that’s by recreating famous album covers.
Lifting Their Spirits
The idea to redo these covers came from Robert Speker, the activities director at Sydmar Lodge Care in Edgware. It’s his job to keep the residents happy and engaged, something that’s been difficult in the current crisis. With everyone isolated from their loved ones, he wanted to try and lift their spirits. That was when he realized that his photography skills could come in handy, so he brought his camera into work and got creative.
A Fun Little Project
Speker is apparently known in his community for doing things “outside of the box,” so when he suggested recreating album covers, it didn’t seem that crazy. A lot of the covers he chose were relatively easy to recreate, such as Adele’s ‘21’ and Taylor Swift’s ‘1989.’ He also added a personal touch to the images by swapping the names of the artist with the nursing home resident in the photo. It was a fun little project that not only got the senior citizens involved but also attracted a lot of publicity.
Viral Sensation
The album cover recreations went viral after Speker uploaded the pictures to his Twitter account. People were quick to like his posts and wanted to see the images made into a calendar. That would certainly make for quite the Christmas gift, and it would also help the nursing home’s money-raising efforts too. A GoFundMe was recently established by Speker to help support charities aimed towards Alzheimer’s and dementia.
Given how much people loved this photo project, we have to wonder if Sydmar Lodge, or maybe other nursing homes, will do more of them.