Goddard House To Help Underserved Adults Through Art

BROOKLINE, MA — For the past five years The Goddard House assisted living home has been helping older adults living with dementia express creativity through a program called Opening Minds Through Art. The award-winning intergenerational program pairs younger people with those diagnosed with memory loss and focuses on creativity.

It's built connections and had therapeutic benefits for people living with memory loss.

Now, through a grant from the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, Goddard House plans to expand its program to help older adults living with dementia in under served communities nearby in Boston.

"Our goal, through providing access to the OMA program, is to help build bridges across age and cognitive barriers through the creation of artwork and new relationships," said Goddard House President Candace Cramer.

The Goddard House has made a practice of reaching out and partnering with underserved groups in the Boston area, especially since it closed its skilled nursing facility in Jamaica Plain several years ago.

When that happened, the assisted living facility's board, wanted to continue to reach out to older adults in the Boston community who were from communities that were underserved.

"We saw the benefit that all these arts and music programs were having at Goddard, and we said: 'how do we reach out to adults who are isolated and foster friendships?'," Cramer said.

They paired up with the Age Strong Commission, of Boston, and organizations like FriendshipWorks with on the ground experience working with elders who were more isolated in places like Roxbury and Jamaica Plain and Mattapan.

Those programs past few years have been successful, said Cramer. So she hopes the launching a version of the Opening Minds Through Art with that community will be also.

Developed at Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in 2007, Opening Minds Through Art pairs older adult artists with volunteers, student interns, and caregivers who are trained to help participants rely on imagination rather than memory and focus on strengths instead of lost skills.

The program is designed to enable people living with dementia to assume new roles as artists and teachers and leave a legacy of art.

"For the residents it's an opportunity to create and let your imagination go wild and to have someone there with you assisting not directing you as you create your art, at the same time there's this nice bond forming, and creating beautiful work that gets framed," said Cramer. "It's also for the families to see the wonderful work that's being created and to see a side they may not have have seen before, it's so uplifting to be part of the creative process."

Initially Goddard will work with organizations they already work with and set up a pilot session for about eight people in the fall. They'll learn from that experience and use it to build off of of that in the future, post pandemic, Cramer said.

“Art is a therapeutic tool for individuals living with dementia-related illnesses—it can stimulate the mind, uplift mood and self-esteem, and provide opportunities for self-expression,” said Alzheimer's Foundation of America President Charles J. Fuschillo, Jr.