“It was a tonic, a joy, a release, a place to be recognised.”
Our Arts and Older People’s Manager Paul Kane was featured in the Baring Foundation’s Creative Ageing in Northern Ireland: A Celebration of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Arts and Older People Programme 2010-Present.
The Baring Foundation is an independent foundation which protects and advances human rights and promotes inclusion. From 2010-2019, the Baring Foundation’s Arts programme focused on creative opportunities for older people and for many years joint funded the Arts and Older People programme with the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and NI’s Public Health Agency.
Check out Paul’s interview below where he shared his Artist’s Perspective and his experience of the Hearth and Home sessions at Newington Day Centre.
How, why, and when did you start working with older people?
I started working with older people 13 years ago and developed the Music And Older people programme with Oh Yeah; up until then we had only ever worked with young people. We work with the most marginalised older people, those with later stage dementia and carers. I also run a small charity called OTH Music Collective that works with mature musicians.
In my tenure with Oh Yeah and as a freelance facilitator, I have worked in both rural and urban settings, in residential, day centres, community centres, parks, and many public places. I have done intergenerational work with people over 65 and children and young people. I have worked with a wide range of organisations including Prime Cut, CAP, Golden Thread Gallery, Beyond Skin, Alzheimer’s Society, NI Hospice, AGE NI, Dementia Wards, Kabosh, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, and more.
What impact have you observed/ experienced?
I once did a one-off session in a dementia ward in Belfast. Before the session I asked the head nurse if there was anything I should know in advance. She said that one lady screamed a lot and I should just be aware of this. A few songs in, the lady began to scream. At first I was concerned for her, secondly was it me causing this? And what could I do to help? It was as all of this was going through my head that I noticed that the lady was actually screaming a major third (a musical interval) to my singing and as the song went on, she fluctuated into a major 5th and then the main key of the song. We locked eyes and she briefly smiled. I smiled back and we carried on. Another nurse tried to stop her screaming, but I knew what it was she was doing: communicating.
She got frustrated and was eventually moved back to her bed. I explained this to the staff; I tried to help and offer some support. The lady could not communicate in any other way. I felt so privileged to have been a part of a communication. Given more time, might I have worked out what she was trying to say? It broke my heart to think that this lady, in trying to communicate, was being continually shut down. Yet, she had found at least one person who recognised her messages.
Please share an anecdote or two from your sessions
Mary arrived three weeks after we had started. She said she had been in two minds about coming at all; her husband was very ill and needed her support. She had been told a little about the project but she felt she could not sing, had never written a song before and that ‘her story’ was uninteresting and not worth anything. She was one of the quietest in the group until one day we started talking about ice cream. She both loved the stuff and the local Italian ice cream parlour – she loved the architecture of the place and commented that she was amazed at herself for talking so passionately about this. In fact the whole group joined in and it became the focus of a song we produced.
Mary said out loud at one meeting how involved everyone was and how we (the facilitators) listened and changed lyrics when prompted by the ladies. She said this was much more than a music session: it was a tonic, a joy, a release, a place to be recognised, a place where she was allowed to be herself. She said she had been to other carers’ groups but she came away even more depressed by other people’s stories. Every week she not only looked forward to the sessions but chatted to her husband about that they had been doing.
“This was much more than a music session: it was a tonic, a joy, a release, a place to be recognised.” - Participant
In the short review we had Mary said that she would really miss the sessions, that these had become some of the best two hours of her week. She got to make new friends and for a short time had a guilt-free few hours knowing her husband was only in the other room also doing a music workshop. She loved learning how to write a song, recording it as well as recording a spoken word piece for a podcast. She felt safe and encouraged not only by us, but by other participants. She said she was SO glad she decided to join the group – they will now continue to meet up even though the project has finished. She wants to be part of anything else we do in the future.
Photo credit: Bernie McAllister.
