Art project yields conversations and an exhibit on aging and disability

VSA Alabama wins international award for innovative programming.

July 20, 2011

TROY, Mich. – One in eight older adults has Alzheimer’s disease, and every 69 seconds someone in the United States develops this debilitating, life-altering disease. There’s no cure, no treatment. But in Birmingham, Ala., VSA Alabama is making sure the disease and others like it don’t define the sum of a life.

VSA Alabama, an affiliate of VSA The International Organization on Arts and Disability, developed Take a Walk In My Shoes, a project and exhibit that uses art to bridge generations, celebrate the experiences that make a life and draw attention to memory-stealing diseases like Alzheimer’s. Earlier this year, it received VSA’s International Award of Excellence for Innovative Programming.

Birmingham high school students and seniors suffering some form of memory loss worked together to create an art installation called "Take a Walk in my Shoes" to raise awareness around the impact of memory loss and the diseases that cause it. Students donated shoes used in a multi-media art installation.

Take a Walk In My Shoes brought art students from two urban high schools together with older adults – all suffering some form of memory loss – at two adult day centers. Using shoes to represent the phases of youth and wooden walking canes to represent the adaptations and challenges of aging, they painted, glued and talked about life.

The students learned there is more to the older adults than frailty and disability. The elders learned there is more to their young visitors than attitude and the Internet.

“I think there is something about unlikely populations sharing stories with one another that really resonates with people in this age of technology,” said Buddy Palmer, president and chief executive officer of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham. “The notion that we can still lay hands on each other and be face-to-face is important for our humanity.”

The exhibit, which made its debut at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, is the story of their conversations. It consists of 11 wooden silhouettes that are painted in shades of gray and adorned with the customized shoes and canes. A video documentary plays in a continuous loop, capturing the spirit of the sessions that led to the art.

The project was funded by a $10,000 mini-grant from The Kresge Foundation. It was one of nine organizations in the city that received a Kresge Community Arts grant through the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham.

“Small, urban arts organizations serve a particularly important role in bringing the arts – and the community engagement and economic vitality that comes with them – to areas where the need is deep and the funding pool shallow,” says Regina R. Smith, arts and culture senior program officer at Kresge.  

“We were delighted Birmingham embraced this opportunity to use arts and culture to address pressing community issues.”

“A lot of the students are getting ready to embark on their own paths,” added VSA Alabama art therapist Allison DeCamillis, who led the sessions. “The older adults, a lot of them have mental impairments and difficulty expressing themselves, but they also have these great moments of clarity. There’s wisdom that comes out of them all the time.”

Sometimes the most meaningful conversations include very few words.

One student, DeCamillis said, had lost her grandfather to Alzheimer’s disease. She and her partner rarely spoke as they worked on their part of the project, but neither seemed to mind the quiet. Later, the girl told DeCamillis how healing it had been to just sit together and paint.

VSA Alabama Executive Director Patti Lovoy said the project took on a life of its own. Community involvement exceeded expectations and ranged from the exhibit space at McWane Science Center to interest from the Birmingham Public Library and the Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama Walk to Remember. The award acknowledged that the project could be replicated on a much larger scale.

The grant gave VSA Alabama’s five-person staff the means to do something it might have otherwise never been able to do.

“It definitely has gotten people talking,” Palmer said. “Certainly for VSA Arts of Alabama, the fact that the project really had legs and received national recognition for them was a tremendous and unexpected seal of approval. It really has lit a fire under them to explore further and do more. This funding was not a huge amount, but I think it really has created ripple effects far beyond what any of us expected. So the conversation continues.”

Kresge’s grass roots mini-grant program challenged residents and organizations in five economically challenged cities – St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, Birmingham and Tucson, Ariz. – to use the arts to address community issues. A pilot program, it ends in 2011.

For more information, contact Cynthia Shaw, cbshaw@kresge.org or call 248-643-9630.

The Kresge Foundation
3215 West Big Beaver Road
Troy, Michigan 48084

248.643.9630 telephone
248.643.0588 fax

Tags: