£10,000 heritage project delves into the hidden lives of residents and their 19th Century home in Hillingdon.

These past few months we've been supporting residents at Parkfield House Nursing Home in their Portrait of Parkfield project. The group, known as the Parkfield Peckers, were awarded £10,000 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Together with artists they've taken part in weekly creative workshopsto explore the lives of former residents and the history of the home in Uxbridge.

There's been portrait work, visual arts, ceramics, story-telling, poetry and animation ovet the past five months as the group take part in cross-generational sessions via Zoom with children from Glebe Primary School.

Hannah Wood, from Equal Arts, is supporting the group. She said: "There is a huge interest and enthusiasm for exploring heritage and love discussing the areas they grew up in and how they’ve made us who we are.

“We’ve been inspired to delve into the history of the area after looking at the many books written by resident Philip who sadly passed away this year. Many residents have their roots here and have vivid memories of how the area has changed over the years. The project is a fantastic opportunity to creatively capture the history of the community.

“Based on residents’ wonderful poems created with Daisy Barrett Nash, Year 6 pupils put together a short performance via Zoom for residents. They loved reading and acting them out. It was heart-warming to see the pupils completely rise to the challenge and see how proud they were of themselves for doing something so positive and making a difference.”

The latest stage of the project has seen the group working with Eve Kennedy creating short animations to help bring their poems to life.