“There’s No Place Like The Aldbury”

To celebrate World Book Day, we spoke with our residents and staff and agreed that the perfect choice for us would be the most well-known book and film across all generations, “The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz”.

The book was first published in 1900 by author Lyman Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. In the book, Dorothy wore silver shoes, but the costume designer changed them to ruby slippers to take advantage of the new technicolour process.

As you can see from the photo, we created the rainbow, character costumes, props, and yellow brick road with the help of our residents during our activities, and our staff sourced and made costumes too. This became an ongoing project that involved the whole house and was a huge team effort and a fun day.

Our home manager, Gemma, dressed smartly in her top hat, coat, and tails, played the great, all-seeing wonderful wizard. Team Leader Sue was the cowardly lion, companion Melissa was the sweet Dorothy, senior administrator David played our scarecrow, Health Care Assistant Kenneth was in the role of the tin man, and hairdresser Candy played the good witch Glinda, accompanied by her beautiful dog Roxy as Toto. Companion Cara played the Wicked Witch of the West, and she was accompanied by her housekeeping team of flying monkeys, Karen Sutton and Angela Shuttle, as well as our very own companion puppy, Dave. Housekeeping staff Simone Bernard played the tornado, flying through all of us.

As you can tell, we had such a great day!