Thank you for your ongoing support through 2022. As the year approaches its end, we would like you to join us in celebrating our combined achievements from the past 12 months.
Rosetta Life – 2022 from Rosetta Life on Vimeo.
Odysseys performance arts & ambassador programmes
Our partnership with SHAPER, the arts in health research grant funded by The Wellcome Trust and delivered through Kings College London, continued. Next year we look forward to sharing the outcomes of the Implementation Science research that has examined how arts and health programmes can be upscaled nationally. After two years of online working we were delighted to return to face to face workshops and were able to deliver two live performance programmes. In February we shared a new performance piece inspired by the work of Helen Frankenthaler at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and in the autumn, we took the show, A Newfound Mind, with a cast of 35 London Ambassadors, to a live audience of 200 at the Greenwood Theatre London.
Image: Spirals, Camden Roundhouse – London ambassadors.
The Wishing Well
In early 2022 we presented a co-created devised dance performance, to a packed house at Rich Mix London. The Wishing Well was co-created with patients from Accelerate CIC, who are living with lymphoedema. In August, the same group joined a week’s dance residency at The Place, London, where they added puppetry, costume and set design to their dance performance skills and developed key ideas for their next performance project.
Image: @Foteini Wishing Well Cast – Accelerate CIC patient group
Room2Dream
With a project grant from Arts Council England and support from Footworks, we produced our first 360 immersive film. We collaborated with 14 international and UK partners, in seven partnerships, to explore writing poetry, sharing songs and 360 filmmaking.
Composer Jocelyn Pook and sound designer Steve Parr created a response to the young people’s stories on the theme of home and their immersive sound piece is a remarkable testimony to the power of the young people’s ideas and words. The film was nominated for the Jury Award at the UK FullDome festival in Plymouth and we hope to tour it widely in 2023.
Image: Bartholomew school viewing the film at in a full dome, Market Hall Plymouth.
A Small Mouse in a Large World
We worked with Bristol University, Southmead Hospital and Bristol After Stroke to develop a dance film to help widen awareness of vision impairment that many face after stroke.
Heart of Care
We delivered dance sessions with Bristol Black carers who have gone on to design a national project with us, with partnerships nationally in Tyneside and London, and internationally in India and Rwanda to raise the profile of unpaid carers. We are looking forward to developing these partnerships in 2023. For more information please see
www.heartofcare.net
Sometimes I Dream I am Dancing
In Reading, Ambassadors Performed their original performance, A Pilgrim’s Tale, at the University of Reading – they even filmed a boat trip along the Thames as part of their process and included film and animation in their final performance.
Throughout the pandemic we held online sessions and created monthly newsletters to keep ambassadors connected to each other. The Reading ambassadors curated an anthology of poems and artwork submitted by the national network of ambassadors, entitled Sometimes I Dream I am Dancing. The anthology was launched on National Poetry Day. It is a remarkable testament to the resilience and creativity of the communities we support. You can download a copy here or order one by emailing info@rosettalife.org
Image: Poetry anthology front cover – image @Hazel Hammond
Social prescribing: Healing Landscapes
We worked with the Museum of Rural Life in Reading to engage local organisations in poetry inspired by imagined, recollected and physically immediate landscapes as part of their Thriving Communities programme. We look forward to expanding these collaborations next year.
Image: Sonia and Martyn, University of Reading.
In Buckinghamshire we worked in the community with people who had experienced a stroke, supported by local musicians. Participants included the wonderfully talented staff choir at Wycombe Hospital and once again we were delighted to support their Christmas concert.
Our artists continued to deliver sessions on stroke wards in NHS hospitals in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and London, supported by the ambassadors who brought their creative skills and lived experience of brain injury to the hospital wards
New team members
In 2022 we welcomed Mairead Ruane as Ambassador support coordinator and Karen Warner as Finance Manager
Mairead Ruane
Ambassador support coordinator
Karen Warner
Finance and Operations manager
Karen has been working in the voluntary sector as a finance manager for over 20 years. Primarily working with charities with a speciality in dementia and has transformed our financial operational procedures this year
Donate
You can fundraise for Rosetta Life or donate directly here; all donations support us in growing the work, delivering programmes on wards and in the community and supporting people in attending sessions where mobility or personal circumstances may limit access.
https://www.justgiving.com/rosettalife
Image: Spirals, Camden Roundhouse – London ambassadors
Sponsor
Would your organisation like to sponsor our charitable work in 2023? If you represent or know of an organisation that is looking for a charity partner and the opportunity to support a fantastically ambitious small charity that is making a real difference to people’s lives, please contact us at info@rosettalife.org
Funding our work:
Thank you to the following for supporting us in 2022:
