EMC2 and the Memory Cafe Alliance (2023+)
I learned something about naming projects from (lucky to call him) my friend, Gene Cohen. Give it a snappy acronym. So when I read the Memory Cafe Environmental Scan, and got obsessed that Japan had over 4,000 Memory Cafes to the 900 in the U.S…. I named the project Expanding Memory Cafes, Enhancing Meaningful Connection or EMC2. And I immediately emailed Susan McFadden and Beth Soltzberg and begged them to join me. Luckily, they agreed.
And luckily, the Ferry Foundations supported a year-long planning process to figure out how to grow Memory Cafes from 900 to 9,000. Memory Cafes are a life-line to people experiencing cognitive changes and their care partners. There they can find acceptance, friendship, and - yes - fun.
The result of the year of planning (with an amazing group of Alliance members and expert consultants) is a plan with five strategies and a lot of hope. You can find it here.
Care Showers (2023+)
When artists Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Anne Basting came together to catch up - talk naturally turned to caring for their mothers. Meuninck-Ganger was overseeing her mother’s hospice care in her home. Basting’s mother was just moving into memory care. When Meuninck-Ganger lamented that “when this is all over I will have SO much knowledge and no one to share it with…” an idea was born. The two set out to culture hack a new ritual into being - a shower to mark and support the transition into becoming a caregiver for an adult or elder.
Building on the existing rituals of baby and wedding showers, the artists hacked Evite event templates to create “Care Shower” invitations, registry systems on Amazon and Target to create a Care Shower registry, and traditional shower games toward adult caregiving - emphasizing the joy and humor in care while honoring the challenges and sorrows.
The first Care Shower was held on July 22nd at Madison’s Art Lit Lab, as part of the Aesthetics of Loss exhibit. It began with a raucous game of “Spill the Pills,” in which the 20 attendees raced to put 5 of the same colored tictacs into the plastic, weekly pill organizers without repeating two colors in a row. The winner yelled “Axithromyicin!” and was awarded a prize.
Anne and Jessica shared the origin story of the Care Shower, and the goals for culture hacking it into existence (“everyone should contact Evite and ask them to make this an option on their event templates!”). The group also made their own Care Cards (to create a space between Get Well and Sympathy on the card rack!) - and then shared Care Stories - that ranged from hilarious to deeply, deeply moving.
In the end, Anne and Jessica invited attendees to share their thoughts on how best to shape and evolve the Care Shower, advice already incorporated into the ritual as it heads to a second performance on November 4th at Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, MN (with the Aesthetics of Loss).
learn more: https://www.careshowers.org/
Within a Single Rose (2022 +)
“How beautiful it is... everything is connected.”
Within a Single Rose (WASR) is a devised theater collaboration between artists experienced in caregiving, elders with dementia living at home and their care partners. Inspired by archetypal themes in The Little Prince, a story by Antoine Saint-Exupéry, WASR explores themes of love, longing for home, connection with community, and using one’s imagination to see beyond the surface. We are developing and touring a series of creative invitations and prompts in music, poetry, visual art and movement that form the scaffolding for a performance that will be crafted and performed by the elders with dementia and their care partners with whom our ensemble collaborates. Together, through our open, improvisational process, we will design and create a whimsical world that transforms before our eyes.
Writer, performer and changemaker Dasha Kelly Hamilton joins me and several members of the team from Wendy’s Neverland, including designer Jeff Becker, music director Cheyenne Mize, and choreographer and dancer Iega Jeff. We’ll collaborate with the Wisconsin-based TimeSlips team of Sam Goodrich, Rob Knapp, and Jackie Kostichka.
Our aim is to create a performance model that brings beautiful and immersive art-making experiences to people with dementia and their care partners through the Memory Cafe network. Once we polish the form, other arts companies can follow the same path to bring participatory performance to people without the programming structures of residential care.
NOTE: we hit a snag with grants on this one… but it WILL happen!
