Author: Isobel Wise

Helping us continue to light up later life, we’re enormously grateful for the support from our funders. As we take a moment to thank them for their generosity, take a look to see how their support funds our important work.

The Garfield Weston Foundation
An enormous thank you to the Garfield Weston Foundation for their fantastic support; we’ve been granted an incredible £90,000 over 2 years towards Alive’s core costs, which is absolutely amazing and so needed. We can’t thank them enough!

Awards for All – The National Lottery Community Fund
We’ve been awarded a £20,000 Awards for All grant towards our Brentry dementia-friendly allotment. This will make such a difference to the people who rely on our weekly gardening sessions, so huge thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund and players of the National Lottery.

The Finnis Scott Foundation
Thank you to the Trustees of The Finnis Scott Foundation for their wonderful support of our Talbot Road allotment. We’ve received a lovely grant of £1,000 towards adaptive equipment for our gardening sessions for older people and those living with dementia.

Big Give
Helping us reach our Christmas fundraising target, we’re incredibly grateful for the support from Big Give, automatically doubling all donations towards our community gardening work, raising £6,175.

For more information on how you can support our charity, reach out to our Fundraising Manager via fundraising@aliveactivities.org or call the office on 07861 385 543.

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At Alive, we believe later life should be full of light, laughter and meaning, and our Trustees play a vital role in making that happen.

We’re looking for new Trustees to join our Board and we’d love to hear from those with a real passion for supporting older people.

Download our Trustee Pack for 2026 below.

We would love if you had experience in marketing, legal, or fundraising but if you have other skills, please do get in touch. We’re keen to diversify our Board and warmly encourage applications from people of all communities, cultures, ages and walks of life. What matters most is your passion, perspective and desire to help older people live life with joy, creativity and connection.

If you care about people, enjoy strategic thinking, and want to use your skills for good, we’d love to hear from you. Please see our Trustee pack for more information.

To find out more or express your interest, please contact: isobel@aliveactivities.org

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We were thrilled to welcome the ITV crew to one of our Lullaby Circle sessions. Joining us live at Glebe House, we chatted to presenter Josie Gibson about the true magic of our intergenerational sessions that bring babies and local care home residents together.

A huge thank you to Josie and ITV, the mums and babies that attended, and the lovely residents and staff at Bristol Care Homes.

It was an honour see our original initiative warm hearts across the nation.

Find out more about the This Morning feature here.
Find out more about our Lullaby Circle sessions here.

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Introducing Bridging the Gap! Our brand-new intergenerational YouTube channel created by young people in schools and older people living in care.

This channel is designed to be a space of sharing and connecting with each other. Please enjoy these videos, share the channel with others, and learn about the daily life of people from different generations.

Watch the channel here.

Young people tell us about their learning and what it is like to attend school in the modern day, while older people living in care share their stories and day-to-day life. Staff also tell us of their experiences working in school and residential settings.

If you work in an educational or care setting and are interested in submitting your own film to be uploaded to this channel, please email bridgethegap@aliveactivities.org

Through our current intergenerational project, STANd (Strength Together Age Network development), we collaborated with Bristol schools and care homes, supporting people of all ages to tell their stories and daily lives.

A special thank you to:

Oasis Academy Brislington
Stoke Bishop C of E Primary School
Waltham House Care Home
Robinson House Care Home

In collaboration with:

Tot Foster – Film Maker and Producer
Sally Townsend – Community Development Coordinator at Alzheimer’s Society
The National Lottery Community Fund

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We’re looking for new Sessional Workshop Facilitators to join our friendly team at Alive.

If you’re someone who wants to make a real difference to the lives of older people, by providing Men’s Clubs in care settings and the local community, check out the job description below and get in touch today.

We welcome applications from all members of the community but, due to the occupational requirement of this role, we are actively encouraging applications from men.

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Help us give the gift of gardening to twice as many older people this Christmas and see your donation matched £1 for £1 thanks to the Big Give Christmas Challenge.

Alive’s community gardening groups provide important spaces of support and friendship for older people and those living with dementia.

From 2-9 December, donations towards our groups will be automatically doubled – at no extra cost to you.

1.4 million older people in the UK report that they feel bitterly lonely.
A staggering 49% of them saying their only company is a pet or the TV.

Alive have been using gardening as a therapeutic tool for over a decade. Welcoming older people, those living with dementia, and their carers, our groups have created safe, accessible spaces of joy and connection.

The benefits of nature-based activities for older people are well documented, including improvements in emotional state, physical health, verbal expression, memory and attention, wellbeing, independence, self-esteem, social interaction and a sense of belonging.

For many of our members, our community gardening groups are a vital lifeline.

Please help us reach our fundraising goal by 9 December, donate via our Big Give page here.

To find out more, contact the team on info@aliveactivities.org or 07861 385 543.

Sprouting from an idea in one of our care home sessions and growing into a fully-fledged tipple making national TV headlines, we’re thrilled to that Hundred Not Out is now available to purchase.

Starting life at our dementia-friendly gardening sessions, Alive helped St Monica Trust commemorate their centenary with a beer made by their residents.

Working with them to plant and harvest their own hop plants, we then entrusted the folks at Wiper and True Brewery to work their magic. The result is a beer co-produced, from beginning to end, by over 200 older adults and people living and working in care homes.

Light, crisp and made with love every step of the way.

Hundred Not Out is the outcome of a creative collaboration that involved older adults, people living with dementia, and local care teams. From nurturing hops in the garden, to deciding on a name for the beer, the process was a partnership of joy and purpose, and can now be purchased online, right in time for Christmas.

Hoppiness Brews, a new CIC, has now been launched to be able to sell the beer and bring out new products in the future.

The innovative project combines gardening, brewing and the reminiscence associated, to enrich the lives of people living with dementia. It comes out of Alive’s work – and in particular that of our very own media star, Guy Manchester – over the last three years, developing our Hoppiness Project:

“Along the way, we’ve delivered therapeutic multi-sensory activity sessions for residents with a diagnosis of dementia which, as well as fostering socialisation and a sense of identity, have also triggered happy memories of earlier get-togethers, including in a place most of us visit at some time in our lives – the pub! It’s been an amazing collaboration and I can’t wait to take it further.”

Co-production remains central to the project, and with residents now asking for a non-alcoholic beer and a flavoured gin, please watch this space!

To keep up to date with Hoppiness Brews, please follow us on social media @hoppinessbrews. You can also learn more on our website where you can subscribe to our newsletter.

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What a year it’s been for Alive.

As always, we’ve continued to bring joy to thousands of older people – both in care homes and throughout the community. We celebrated our 15 Year Anniversary and had a new Chair of Trustees. We opened another hospital garden plus a second allotment. And we’ve seen this incredible work reach millions of people through huge media coverage.

We are so proud of everything we’ve achieved. Thank you to all those that support us, through the sunshine and showers!

Click the front page below to read Alive’s Impact Report 2024-25:

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This week, we celebrated two years of our Sanctuary Square hospital garden at the BRI and toasted to another year of funding from Bristol & Weston Hospital’s Charity.

Enjoying wonderful tea and cake, we also unveiled the amazing mosaic created by BRI patients living with dementia, in collaboration with UHBW Artist Residence Jo Sinclair, and local artist Vic from Bluebell Treasures.

Arranged by Poet in Residence Beth Calverley, the poem written by patients, staff and volunteers was also proudly mounted outside for all to see.

A huge thanks to BWHC, the Dementia, Delirium and Falls team, our volunteers, and all those at UHBW for a brilliant two years of connecting older people on the hospital ward to nature (and each other!).

May Sanctuary Square continue to bloom!

Find out more about out gardening initiative at Bristol Royal Infirmary’s Sanctuary Square here.

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In light of #WorldAlzheimersDay, our CEO wrote about the importance of coming together – one of the most vital things we can do.

Dementia is the UK’s biggest killer. One in three of us born in the UK today will go on to develop the disease, and every three minutes someone is diagnosed with dementia in the UK. These are frightening statistics.

But together, we can improve the lives of those living with dementia. Together, we can create a support network for our army of carers. Together, through research, we can defeat it. We can’t do it alone. It will take a society working as one – in funding, in research, in care – to create a world that isn’t so devasted by this disease.

This year, our ‘Let’s Talk Dementia’ event was a positive example of what partnership work can do. Three small Bristol charities working together to educate, support and shine a light on dementia.

“I learnt so much today, I’ve found some more supportive groups and I didn’t know about all the symptoms either,” one attendee told me.

Our work with the NHS and Bristol & Weston Hospitals Charity through our gardens and intergenerational sessions is improving the quality of life and engagements of patients during their stay in hospital. Very often reducing their length of stay and just bringing joy and light into a difficult situation as one lady said: “this has really made me smile today. I love coming off the ward and doing something fun.”

But we can’t do this alone. We need society to talk about dementia more. Everyone’s understanding of dementia has to be improved, so symptoms can be recognised and an early diagnosis sought. 

Carers need to be adequately supported and understood to prevent breakdown. Those living with dementia need to be treated with dignity and empathy. We need to ask what people want and need and feel – and not assume we know.

We all need to change our thinking and support those who are living with dementia to lead lives as full as possible. 

It’s time to act, and it’s time to ask, but we need to work together.

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