The Hoppiness Project

What began as a resident’s joke about “growing beer” has blossomed into something rather special.

The Hoppiness Project started as a small pilot at Deerhurst Care Home in 2023. It then grew into a University of Bristol research collaboration in 2024, and in 2025 became a Community Interest Company, culminating in residents from St Monica Trust retirement villages co-designing – and growing hops for – a centenary beer, made with local brewery Wiper and True.

At the heart of Hoppiness are the sessions we run in care homes – which is where, in 2026, the project is returning, thanks to generous funding from The Shaw Trust.

The Sessions

Project Partners 

Hoppiness has been a truly collaborative venture from the start. A chance encounter in 2022 with a University of Bristol researcher led to a seedcorn grant from The Brigstow Institute, followed a year later by a second grant to expand the project’s reach. An interdisciplinary university research team came on board, as did designer Camilla Adams.

Other key partners initially included Bristol Hops Collective, a community of growers who have been supplying local breweries with green hops for a decade, and Left Handed Giant, who brewed the beer and hosted a brewery tour. We’re also grateful to the three care homes who made the sessions possible: Deerhurst in Soundwell, Meadowcare in Redland, and Beaufort Grange in Filton. Their activity coordinators’ enthusiasm was invaluable.

In 2025, St Monica Trust approached us with an exciting proposition: to formalise Hoppiness as a CIC (Hoppiness Brews) and help brew a centenary ale with residents across their retirement villages. We partnered with Wiper and True, who crafted a delicious modern take on a Best Bitter – it got great reviews and sold incredibly well. The profits go directly towards taking Hoppiness into more care homes.

Therapeutic Benefits 

Sessions weave together a range of interventions known to benefit people living with dementia. Reminiscence and sensory play run through everything we do, alongside social and therapeutic horticulture as a grounding force. Tending to the hop plant gives residents a genuine sense of agency – both over their own corner of the garden and as contributors to a wider community endeavour.

We also bring people into the care home – project workers and volunteers alike – helping residents feel more connected to the world beyond their front door.

Complementary craft and art activities ensure the sessions are accessible to everyone, and each one ends the same way: a communal sing-song and a shared taste of beer.

That final element matters more than it might seem. Alcohol is woven into the social fabric of many people’s lives, yet care home residents are often infantilised when it comes to food and drink choices. Conversation and reminiscence about beer and pub culture offers a way of exploring identity, memory, and life history – on residents’ own terms, without censorship.

Project Outcomes 

One of our main goals at the start of the project was to challenge or disrupt dominant cultural representations of life in a care home – something the project has achieved through media attention on a national level, including a Guardian reel which has been watched over one million times and a feature on BBC’s The One Show.  

The media attention has also allowed Alive to promote the importance of meaningful, engaging activities to a broad audience and to challenge misconceptions about older people, dementia, and care home culture. 

The project has a standalone website and an activities pack so practitioners can replicate our work. 

The CIC born out of the project also has a website: Hoppiness Brews.

All photographs © Camilla Adams, Jayden Allen and Guy Manchester