Oxford care home residents recreate famous portraits for charity calendar
Full report by ITV Meridian's Kerry Swain
A care home in Oxford has made a charity calendar featuring the residents dressed up like famous portraits.
14 residents at MHA Brookfield care home at Little Bury replicated the famous paintings and feature in different months of the year.
Resident Andrew Reese, 57, has been living at the home for more than 18 months and appears on the cover of the calendar.
A table cloth wrapped around his head transforms him into Dutch painter Jan Van Eyck.
Andrew's smile shows how getting dressed up for the project has strengthened his spirit, which he said "helped us and made us feel a lot better."
Andrew Reese, resident:
Dave Fox will appear on the March page, devoted to him as a convincing Man with Pipe painted in 1918 by the Italian Amedeo Modigliani.
Last year, he was transformed into Henry the Eighth and had his beard dyed orange for the role.
Dave said: "The girls just come along and prettied me up, that's the easiest way to describe it, then they just took the picture. I actually went out yesterday to the local market I even got recognised by a couple of people."
Dave Fox, resident:
The idea for the calendar came from one of the residents and has been carried out by staff and volunteers, like Rebecca Phillipson, who took and edited the pictures.
Rebecca said: "Vicky was getting the person, wrapping them up in bits of fabric and I was saying we need a bit more of the red there and we need a bit less of the blue here, he needs to look up a bit, or down a bit or a bit to the left or a bit more of a smile."
Victoria Davidson, activity coordinator said: "This is the second time we have done something like this at the home, and I am very impressed with how the pictures have come out.
"They're not special costumes they're just blankets and scarves and for the medals we just printed them off the internet and cut them out and stuck them on. It was something we all really enjoyed."
The pictures have been put up in the reception of MHA Brookfield at Little Bury, so people walking through can stop and look at them. The calendars can also be bought from there.
After two years of lockdowns and isolation, the money from the sale of the calendars, will be used to pay for fun activities for the residents to enjoy.