Museum docents welcomed a group of elderly community members and their caretakers Thursday morning in the lobby of the Phoenix Art Museum at a program for patients with mild to moderate dementia and their care partners.
For the last decade, the museum has aimed to bring reliable positive experiences through visual and performing arts to those who participate in the Arts Engagement Program. The program began in 2006 as a collaboration between Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and the museum, which now offers spring, summer and fall sessions with six interactive classes per session.
“It was a grant-funded program that we decided to work on a two-year pilot with, just to see what the benefits would be like,” said Christian Adame, assistant education director at the Phoenix Art Museum. “We saw such a great impact on the participants that we decided to absorb the costs in the education budget.”
When Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and the museum came together, they hoped to offer an alternative to the social isolation that people with dementia and their caregivers often face.
A priority of the program in its early days was to operate the program during normal business hours to provide participants with an effective daytime activity, said Jan Dougherty, a representative of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute.
“We wanted to create pleasant events where both the person with dementia and caregiver could go and experience fun, success and normalcy,” she said.
While the Phoenix Art Museum is one of just a few art programs in the Valley that offers activities for community members with dementia and their caregivers, Adame has begun seeing more opportunities develop at other cultural centers. Meanwhile, the Arts Engagement Program has doubled in size since its launch, which has encouraged the museum to add more tours as the demand has increased.
“Since I began overseeing the program, I’ve done a lot in trying to get additional research and training to be more comfortable with this population. The idea is that we’re getting them more comfortable in social environments,” Adame said. “We do evaluations, and we have so many success stories of how it’s changed the dynamic of relationships.”
Some of the activities that participants and their care partners take part in include “facilitated conversation” about the art, which can be writing exercises, and time to work with an artist-in-residence.
“(The museum) has a real hands-on approach, so it’s not just art appreciation, but you have the chance to make something too,” said Susan Thompson-McHugh, who has been bringing her father, Gordon Thompson, to the Arts Engagement Program for over a year.
Thompson, formerly a teacher at Central High School in Omaha, Nebraska, taught architecture and drafting for 33 years. It came as no surprise to Thompson-McHugh and the family when the art museum piqued Thompson’s interest.
“With the nature of my dad’s memory, this is one opportunity to share in a moment … to have a moment together, so that’s why we come,” she said. “It’s really valuable for families, and it’s something to connect over.”
Dougherty hopes to eventually bring the program to other Maricopa County locations.
“We are currently working with Desert Botanical Gardens and using a very similar methodology,” she said.
The Arts Engagement Program meets six times — every other week — over a three-month period. More information is available at 602-307-2032 or the museum’s website.
Contact the reporter at Holly.Bernstein@asu.edu.
