Benchmark Senior Living Participates in Festival to Celebrate Residents

From Benchmark Senior Living:

In 2015, the Benchmark Senior Living launched The Benchmark Film Festival, a meaningful and purposeful program engaging residents in the six dimensions of wellness.

Each Benchmark community was given a simple assignment: create a music video with residents and associates. Residents were asked to choose a song, hold rehearsals, create props, collaborate with associates and volunteers to film and edit the video and hold a movie premiere to showcase their film.

Over 5,000 residents, associates and volunteers helped to create the videos for the film festival. The videos celebrate Benchmark residents and all those who live life to the fullest. They also show the impact that Benchmark associates have in supporting residents’ wellness and increase awareness of successful aging nationally.

At the conclusion of the film festival program, residents staged a movie premiere in their community to showcase the video. Benchmark then held an open voting, allowing residents, families and associates to vote for their favorite video. More than 2,600 votes were cast. The top 10 videos were voted on by Benchmark’s Senior Leadership team, who then voted anonymously on the grand prize winner. The grand prize winner won a community-wide party for their residents and associates.

Benchmark’s communities regularly work together to share ideas, develop monthly and annual calendars and communicate best practices. The film festival has proven to be a landmark program that continues to build community and engagement for thousands of seniors. The videos have accumulated nearly 12,400 views on YouTube as of July 2016. The program also won the International Council of Active Aging Innovator award.

Benchmark operates 51 communities in the Northeastern United States—in Connecticut and Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Companywide, services include independent living, assisted living, memory support, rehabilitation services and skilled nursing. With activities that promote socialization, recreation and wellness, Benchmark’s award-winning programming features two engagement models especially designed for residents. For independent and assisted-living residents, it’s called Live Now, Live Well™, and for memory care, it is Live Now, Live Engaged™. The goals in both are to help residents get fit, stay connected, learn, find balance, share talents and celebrate life.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock