Dance for Parkinson’s Class – celebrating Parkinson’s Awareness Week
This week is Parkinson’s Awareness Week (11-17 April). We in the Elders team are turning our thoughts to it and similar neurological conditions which affect some of our members and volunteers at KLS. As we plan to come back to face-to-face support after lockdown we are thinking about how we can support people with Parkinson’s and other issues with mobility components.
Just before the first lockdown in 2020 we were delighted to hold our first Dance for Parkinson’s class at KLS. This class was something we had been working on for some time. Thanks to a small grant from Wandsworth Clinical Commissioning Group’s Community Grants Programme we were able to set up a pilot.
Unfortunately the Pandemic meant that we were unable to continue our face-to-face sessions but we continued to support our dance class members with weekly telephone support calls. During these calls we encouraged each other to continue dancing, celebrating our triumphs, and laughing at the times our arms, legs and feet didn’t do what we wanted them to do, while never giving up. We produced a taster DVD with our colleagues Dawn showing sequences of exercise and Lisa recording them. A volunteer created the DVD. We sent this to our class members so we could all follow the dances at home, while still feeling part of the group with our friends.
We are looking forward to returning to our face-to-face sessions in the near future and showing off our ‘moves’. Laughter, support, fun and friendship are as much part of our Dance for Parkinson’s Class as the dancing is.
Join in
If you would like to know more about this class or would like to join us please contact:
Dawn Killeen
020 7223 2845
