Kristy Brugman brings creativity to the elders of our community, and creates bridges between seniors and young people.
She is working on the Remembering Our Canada project, part of organizer Trudy Pauluth-Penner’s Embracing Aging Arts Festival. The first part will debut at the Dave Dunnet Community Theatre at the new Oak Bay High School from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on March 7.
Folk musician Daniel Lapp and his group will present a musical journey across Canada, celebrating 150 years of nationhood. On display will be some of Brugman’s paintings, and also Tara Schenk’s large-scale recorded images, which were created at the Memory Café.
What is the Memory Café?
Throughout the past year, a group of elders from Oak Bay Lodge met students from Oak Bay High School. They sat around at tables in “intergenerational bunches.” The memories they shared about their Canadian experiences were then brought to the larger audience, and Schenk drew them on the spot, in large-scale sketches with words added.
These experiences were then transformed into dramatic scripts, which will be performed by community volunteers and students, in a presentation called Under-told Stories, at Oak Bay High’s new theatre on March 15. The performance is the culmination of a one-year project sponsored by a federal New Horizons for Seniors grant.
I met Brugman at Somerset House, a seniors’ residence on Dallas Road operated by Amica Mature Lifestyles, where she initiated a painting group with residents. It’s just one part of the spectrum of things she does.
“I am a community artist,” she said, “always creating something.” She’s in her 30s and has been working in the “long-term care” field for 17 years.
Brugman grew up in the Netherlands and found a career path in art therapy.
“Art therapy is a beautiful mix of psychology, biology and art,” she said. At that time in Holland, that therapy was integrated into the health-care system. Brugman took her four-year degree at the University of Professional Education in Leiden.
She then put in a few years working as a recreational therapist, with adults with acquired brain injury. Then, coming to Canada, she stepped away from therapy and become a community artist.
“Victoria — how much creativity there is here,” Brugman said. “A river flowing with possibilities. It awakened something in me.”
Her first job was with the Easter Seals camp at Shawnigan Lake, were she was immersed in a summer of creative programming.
“Everything was possible,” she said. There, kids and teens with every sort of disabilities got away for a week.
“They were totally involved, totally accepted for who they were,” she said. It was good for the kids. And for Brugman? “It completely changed my life.”
She was soon hired by Beacon Hill Villa, a long-term care facility in Victoria operated by Retirement Concepts. In the course of her work, she invited artists to paint murals, and one suggested an intergenerational collaboration with the residents. Paul O’Brien, a songwriter, there as an entertainer, mentioned that he was tired of the same old songs, and encouraged the residents to write and perform their own songs.
O’Brien and Brugman set up an on-site recording studio. People who had not played their instruments in years came out of the woodwork to join a session. The staff and visitors were amazed at the talent discovered in their midst.
“It was a high point of my career,” Brugman said.
Her intervention brought meaningful engagement to many people’s lives. Creative play — music, art, theatre and so on — provided an opportunity to make choices, something all too rare in long-term care. Everyone could see it was making things better, and the corporation brought in researchers who proved it was cost-effective. Brugman had seven happy years working at Beacon Hill Villa.
Since then, she has been a free agent. Recently, she led a weekly program for the Island Community Mental Health Alzheimer Support Program. She mentioned the group called We Rage, We Weep, which delivers art and music programs.
“These are creative approaches to the way we communicate and share with Alzheimer’s patients. Our health-care system hasn’t fully integrated these approaches yet,” Brugman said.
She recently created a canvas two metres square with a group of women ages from 89 to 99. One potential artist began with the complaint: “I don’t have a creative bone in my body,” but in the end proudly concluded: “I never thought I’d do that in my life.” Brugman glowed.
“When they forget their hesitancy to create, and discover what it is to be creative, that’s why I do this.”
Oak Bay’s Remembering Our Canada project is supported by the Eldercare Foundation, which funds helpful “extras” in six long-term care homes, including Oak Bay Lodge, the Gorge Road Hospital and Aberdeen. And after the curtain comes down, they don’t want this intergenerational energy to dissipate.
“How do we build ongoing relationships and solid programs which are going to continue?” Brugman wondered. She’d like to see a central hub, to make the most of all this volunteer and collaborative effort.
“I really love working with seniors,” Brugman said. “We’re all just navigating together. In the modern world, the wisdom of the elders is not really accessed, but in my work, I get to hear what they have done in life. These creative moments can be that doorway.”
Details: theheartinprocess.com.
