Arts in Healthcare Archive
Centra Health Foundation Funds AGAR’S Painting Classes For Seniors
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AGAR has instituted with partial funding from CENTRA Health Foundation a series of Acrylic Painting classes for frail seniors to be taught free of charge to participants by Amherst painting teacher and painter Charlene Ryan assisted by her husband Dennis Cooke. classes will take place ay seven Nutrition Centers in Greater Lynchburg run by Central Virginia Alliance for Community Living and at Amherst’s CENTRA/Fairmont Crossing. CENTRA Health Foundation will cover costs of art supplies and a modest art teacher’s fee.
Charlene Ryan is conducting a series of four sessions of acrylic painting classes at each of seven CVACL nutrition sites, serving individuals from Altavista, Amherst, Lynchburg (12th St. & Madison site), Appomattox, Campbell Café, Moneta, and Montvale. Ms. Ryan will conduct an additional six sessions at CENTRA Fairmont Crossing in Amherst, VA. Jerri Bishop from CVACL will coordinate the program at CVACL nutrition sites, and Rita Napper, activities director, will be coordinator for Fairmont Crossing. Painting Teacher Charlene Ryan belongs to the Amherst County Art Society and has been teaching acrylic painting for the Amherst County Parks and Recreation Department for seven years. She moved to Amherst, and joined the Amherst Art Society in 2005, serving as its President for four years, and heading up the Society’s annual arts show for five years. Her own painting work has been exhibited at sites including Nelson County Library, Nelson County Courthouse, Amherst County Offices. Madison Heights and Amherst Branches of the |
Senior painters at the CVACL Amherst-Lynchburg nutrition site in Lynchburg hard at work during the first day of classes with AGAR acrylics painting teacher Charlene Ryan. The gentleman pictured at right said to Jerri Bishop that he had always wanted to learn to paint, and this was his first opportunity. Amherst County Public Library. In summer 2019 her work is on view in a group show at Sweet Briar College’s Benedict Hall Gallery. AGAR will also continue its arts and health programs through performances at Fairmont Crossing and for CVACL special events and delivery of poems to meals on wheel clients of Fairmont Crossing, CVACL and Amherst Blue Ledge Meals on Wheels. |
AGAR AT MENTAL HEALTH CONFERENCE
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Lynn Kable and Naj Wikoff Represent National Organization for Arts and Health at “Stomp Out Stigma”
AGAR'S Lynn Kable joined NOAH Board member Naj Wikoff at a mental health and addiction conference "STOMP OUT STIGMA" at the Nelson Center in Lovingston, April 12, 2018, speaking about arts and health. National Organization for Arts and Health (theNOAH.com) is an organization that serves community healthcare organizations, hospitals, artists, arts therapists, arts councils, architects and designers working in the general field of Arts and Health. Mr. Wikoff was a keynote speaker who spoke about his work with arts and wounded warriors, first responders and veterans. Lynn Kable spoke about two projects AGAR had done with elders living with dementia at Fairmont Crossing Rehabilitation Center. The first provided concerts after dinner and before bedtime; evaluation showed residents had fewer behavioral incidents and "rang bells" for attention less often on concert nights. The second provided a quilting activity aimed at bringing residents together in an art activity with caregiving relatives, staff and volunteers. Mrs. Kable also spoke about two projects she had worked with in New York. One was a Hospital Audiences, Inc. |
health education project in which a psychiatrist conducted needs assessments and then wrote scenarios relating to unhealthy and healthy behaviors. Facilitators gave a short lecture with healthy behavior information. Trained actors used the scenarios to interact with students in schools, residents of shelters, and patients in mental health programs. The people attending the program were asked to give healthy advice to the actor. The actors were introduced as actors playing a role, and their bad habits were described. The audience volunteers played friends, mothers, spouses of the character.
Finally, Mrs. Kable showed excerpts from Demeter's Daughter, directed by Tamar Rogoff, in which the story of the Greek Goddess of growing plants and crops, Demeter, her daughter Persephone, and the ruler of the underworld, Hades was re-told in community gardens, store rooftops, abandoned schoolyards and community center steps on 9th Street and Avenue C. Dancers, musicians, and actors in the program ranged from well-known professionals, to performing arts majors at New York University, storytelling elders, teens from a dropout-prevention program and children from a headstart pre-school group. Also on the "Stomp Out Stigma" program speaking about community arts were representatives of Academy Center for the Arts Community Arts Program. |
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SUSAN CAROL PERFORMS AT FAIRMONT Harpist Susan Carol is conducting her vocal and harp music program, Music Care, once a month through AGAR at CENTRA/Fairmont Crossing Health and Rehabilitation Center in Amherst. She performs for groups and at the bedsides of residents. |
Shizuka Morishita’s Work in Japan That She Presented in the USA in 2012
While visiting Washington, DC, Lynchburg, and Amherst, Ms. Shizuka Morishita was able to give a talk at hospitals about and show the work she has been developing through Tanpopo in Japan. Tanpopo works with people with disabilities, primarily people with intellectual disabilities. In the Northeastern part of Japan where the tsunami and nuclear disaster took place, Ms. Morishita said there was then little work for people with intellectual disabilities, who had previously been employed by the seaweed and farming industries. Tanpopo created sheltered workshops in art and design. Participants in the workshop designed socks and scarves.
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The designs were “adopted” and sewn by the popular upscale store, Takashimaya, where they were sold to benefit their designers under the brand name “Able Art.” This arrangement pleased everyone, because people in Japan are happy to be able to help those living in the affected areas of Japan, according to Ms. Morishita. Tanpopo has collaborated on several exchange programs on caring for caregivers and gardens in healthcare. On this visit, translation assistance was provided by Fumiko Radile of Madison Heights, who also recruited assistance in Washington for the visit.
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In 2012 Shizuka Morishita of Tanpopo-No-Ye Foundation in Nara City, Japan was invited to attend a conference at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Ms. Morishita, who is a longtime colleague in arts in healthcare, or as they call it in Japan, “Art Meets Care” asked Lynn Kable if she could arrange for translators for her for the conference, and for some visits to healthcare facilities in the United States while she was here.
Lynn Spoke with her friend and colleague Professor Fumiko Radile to see how they could arrange for translators, and Professor Radile was able to help through the assistance of two wonderful women, Mikiko and Momoko, whom she was able to contact through the Japanese/American Care Fund. |
Lynn arranged, thanks to Ermyn King, a colleague from the Global Alliance for Arts and Health (formerly the Society for the Arts in Healthcare) visits in Washington, DC to the new National Intrepid Center of Excellence (for treatment of Wounded Warriors with Traumatic Brain Injury), and to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. We were able to visit the very impressive art therapy and service dog programs.
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Lullaby Project
 Adrienne Young Ramsey sang her original music In 2009 AGAR conducted its Lullaby Project to try to find out if live music concerts on the “Neighborhoods” of Fairmont Crossing after supper would have a positive effect on persons having "sundown syndrome. Musicians came from a variety of sources: local symphony members, a Nashville |
singer/songwriter, a blues band. Musicians reported to AGAR and evaluator Judy Rollins, PhD they enjoyed giving back to the elders who had done so much for the community. The staff reported that the residents slept more peacefully on the nights when there was music before bedtime, and there were “fewer call bells ringing.”
Musicians were found through the local symphony orchestra, local choruses and church choirs, through the Sweet Briar College Community, the James River Blue Grass Association, and by recommendation from other AGAR musicians and the project director. There were also fewer "incident reports" on evenings of concerts by concert attenders. |
Fabric Memories Project
 Caregiver Hazel Wood Thompson, created this quilt patch utilizing her photo as a young married woman, gray lining from a family coat Hazel herself made, and pink fabric from a dress sewn by another Wood sister for Hazel’s daughter’s wedding. Photo: Susan Pugh  Community visitors and staff enjoyed seeing quilt patches and images at 5th Anniversary Exhibit |
In 2006-2007 artist Nancy McDearmon, a painter, printmaker and art teacher, conducted AGAR’s “Fabric Memories” Project at Fairmont Crossing Rehabilitation Center. This was a project designed for family caregivers, staff and volunteers to be able to work side by side with residents. Nancy asked families to bring in family fabrics that brought back memories, as well as family photos. Photos were scanned onto fabric, and quilt patches were assembled from the fabric to surround each photo. Nancy McDearmon brought her Mother, and Mother-in-law Louise McDearmon to help on the project as her assistants. Lynn Kable interviewed the quilters (on video) as they worked. The final quilts and video stories were exhibited at the Amherst County Museum and at Fairmont Crossing for the Rehabilitation Center’s Fifth Anniversary.
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Beyond Katrina
In 2007, a visual art and poetry exhibit titled "Beyond Katrina" was developed by residents of shelters in Central Louisiana after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and toured widely under the auspices of Central Louisiana Arts and Healthcare. AGAR sponsored the exhibit at University of Virginia Health Systems Hospital in collaboration with the University of Virginia Health Systems Hospital Art Committee. Exhibit took place in hallway gallery outside surgery waiting room in hospital where we estimate it was seen by an audience of 15,000.
Collaborative Project on use of Horticulture and Gardens in Healthcare Settings in the USA and Japan
Miyagi Cancer Center Palliative Care Unit – Bon Odori Festival
In 2005, before the formal incorporation of Amherst Glebe Arts Response, Inc., Lynn Kable worked with Rebecca Massie Lane of Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA, to design a project through which Lynn Kable,
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Donna Meeks, Groundskeeper and Garden Designer of Sweet Briar and Frances Butler, longest service Hospice Volunteer went to Japan to do a collaborative project on use of horticulture and gardens in healthcare settings in the USA and Japan. The U.S. representatives spoke at forums in Osaka and Sendai, and visited hospital gardens and horticultural programs in various parts of Japan including, Kansai Rosai Hospital, Osaka; Osaka Prefecture Medical Center for Respiratory and Allergic Diseases, Osaka; Suwa Chuo (Central) Hospital, Nagano; Miyagi Cancer Center Palliative Care Unit, Sendai; Miyagi Children’s Hospital, Sendai, and Honami No Sato Clinic, Furukawa-City.
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