BRITDOC Films launch Ping Pong Care Campaign

BRITDOC Films, the distribution arm of the award-winning BRITDOC Foundation, have launched the Ping Pong Care Campaign across the UK and Ireland in an attempt to encourage care homes, health centres, residential villages and day centres to screen the feature documentary Ping Pong as an inspiration for more active lifestyles in our senior years.

This week has already seen a special screening of the documentary, which follows eight players with 703 years between them competing in the over 80’s World Table Tennis Championships in Inner Mongolia, at the Richmond Villages in Oxford with another screening set for Friday at the Abbeyfield Care home in Cambridge. Both screenings are supported by the English Table Tennis Association, who are providing coaches to run activity sessions, and the film’s star Les D’Arcy will be meeting the residents in Cambridge.

The campaign will see care homes equipped with all the resources they need to initiate table tennis activity within their venues, including a DVD of Ping Pong, a license to exhibit the film at their facility and a portable table tennis roll net pack to enable play on any flat surface. The Ping Pong Care Pack can be ordered from this coming Monday (8) at www.pingpongfilm.co.uk

“When considering the release of Ping Pong it was always vital to ensure that the appropriate audiences would get a chance to see this film. From the outset we began to build partnerships with those organisations who could help take the message of the film to older people in the UK,” commented Sarah Mosses, partnerships manager for BRITDOC.

Emma Spragg, head of wellbeing services at Age UK, added: “In distributing the Ping Pong Film Care Packs through our network of local Age UKs and Fit as a Fiddle Groups we hope to inspire people to keep more active in later life and try something new whilst having fun.”