TAPPING THE CREATIVE BRAIN
Participating in the arts can help people with Alzheimer’s and related diseases forget what’s lost and enrich what’s left.
This summer, a choir of nonprofessional singers with dementia performed its 23rd concert at Saint Peter’s Church in New York City. Founded in 2011, the Unforgettables learn new songs for each performance—even though many can’t remember what they ate for breakfast.
Creative pursuits like singing and other expressive arts—including dance, improv, playing music and puppetry—are bringing new life to people with Alzheimer’s and related diseases, even those who were never “artsy” before.
“It’s the cultural cure,” says Anne Basting, a gerontologist and theater arts professor at the University of Wisconsin who won a MacArthur fellowship “genius” grant last year for her work in this area, including the imagination-based storytelling method called TimeSlips (timeslips.org). The arts bring people out of isolation, give them a sense of connection and improve their communication. “People with dementia are living in a world of metaphor and we just need to move into it,” Basting says.
Here are some other arts efforts. In Durham, N.C., the Nasher
Museum of Art hosted a threeday conference for museum professionals on art programs for people with dementia. “It’s joyful, not stressful,” says participant Debby Greenwood. “You can see so many things in art—and there are no wrong answers.” More than 100 museums now offer such programs.
In Wisconsin, the state’s new poet laureate, Karla Huston (below), is on a mission to bring poetry—hearing it, reciting it, writing it—to Memory Cafés (a kind of social support group for people with dementia).
A Chicago acting class teaches improvisation techniques to those with memory loss. “Improv requires you to be in the moment,” says
Memory Ensemble co-founder Christine Dunford of Lookingglass Theatre Company. One technique called “yes, and” encourages you to accept whatever your partner says as a way to smooth over frustrating situations, e.g., “Yes, I put my keys in the fridge, and now they’re cold!”