Hearts and Art

Hearts and Art

This episode is the first in an 8-part series on the arts features a discussion on how the arts (in any form) can create a sense of community and belonging and builds relationships amongst participants. Host Lisa Loiselle talks with Lisa Meschino who has seen this first-hand during her work developing programs such as Gather at the Gallery and as an artist at the Dotsa Bitove Wellness Academy.  Lisa holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and is a community-engaged visual artist and researcher living in Toronto. She has worked for many years creating art with people living with dementia and is developing an arts-based learning series in applied relational care at University Health Network (UHN), Toronto. She has unfortunately witnessed the stigma that continues to circulate in communities and discusses the importance of using the arts to help in the process of culture change.

Resources:

About Meet Me at MoMA Program:

1. Meet Me at MoMA website – Program Guide for home and community programs:

https://www.moma.org/visit/accessibility/meetme/modules/

 2. Meet Me at MoMA website - Pilot program and research document: https://www.moma.org/visit/accessibility/meetme/_assets/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/meetme/MeetMe_FULL.pdf

3. Rosenberg, Francesca (2009) 'The MoMA Alzheimer's Project: Programming and resources for making art accessible to people with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers', Arts & Health, 1: 1, 93 — 97

About The Dotsa Bitove Wellness Academy:

1. Mitchel, G.J., Dupuis, S.L., & Kontos, P.C. (2013). Dementia Discourse: From Imposed Suffering to Knowing Other-Wise. Journal of Applied Hermeneutics 2013 Article 5
2. Mitchell, G.J., Jonas-Simpson, C., Richards, J., Brown, S., Bitove, V. (2019). Creating a relational arts-based academy for persons living with dementia. First Published December 24, 2019 Find in PubMed: https://doi.org/10.1177/1471301219895647
3. Visual arts and transgenerational learning at the Bitove Academy: https://vimeo.com/540302311
4. About the Bitove Academy: https://vimeo.com/50757222

Gather at the Gallery program and group exhibition:

Meschino, L., & Dupuis, S. (2012, November). Experiencing relationality in an arts-based context for persons with dementia. Paper presented at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) annual conference, San Diego, California, USA  

Resources for this episode can be found under the following sections on our resource page:
-Arts & Dementia