Vancouver Aquarium...

It's late, I'm in the offices at the Scotiabank Dance Centre here on Davie Street having just typed up a flyer advertising  a practical workshop here at the Dance Centre, to be given when we return from Penticton next week. Mary and I are offering it together - it being M's suggestion when I told her how good the meeting had been today. It's a last minute thing really but great to be able to have more time with folk in the arts/health field here. The round-table discussion with arts and health practitioners, artists, dancers and cultural planners went really well this morning. There was a lot of interest in what I had to say about my work and how it resonated with their own experiences and creative practice here in Vancouver and BC.

As I write this there is a meeting downstairs to decide what artists should do about the planned cuts to arts funding in BC province.  Both here in Vancouver and in Toronto I sense a general political trend going 'rightwards'...bike lanes to be cut, arts-funding cut. I have just read a fascinating report on the state of the arts and health generally across Canada 'Tip of the Iceberg' it's called and full of really insightful work on what's going on. Similar to the situation in the UK I think, with lots of projects springing up all across the country but lack of co-ordination at national and regional/provincial level and also it seems I am picking up a disconnect at federal level of the importance of the arts in helping support, maintain and develop what is a hugely multi-cultural and diverse society. The potential is huge that the arts contribute much more and get the recognition they deserve; especially in relation to the future need at federal and state level to do a lot more about the care of seniors and especially those with memory problems in Canadian socirty...

OOPs I forgot to say the trip to the acquarium in Stanley Park yesterday was wonderful and Amy really loved it..I shall endeavour to get different pics on here as soon as I remember to bring my camera and my body to this computer at the same time. Bye for now...

Toronto Rehab...& Vancouver!!

I am not concerned that I have no posts to my last journalistic attempts to capture the feel of the 'Maid of the Mist' experience and soon I shall need to start downloading some more pics to make it visually interesting. This takes time and internet cafes are not free....anyway the talk at Toronto Rehab went very well. It was an hour long last wednesday and prior to it Pia treated me to lunch at a great veggie cafe near where she works. She has just come back from a major conference on Personhood in Dementia in Sweden and apparently it was a great success. Pia and I have spent some time together talking about our work and what we are both seeking to achieve. I found her comments really helpful in relation to what I may be able to do back in the UK by way of a possible post-doctoral fellowship - if I choose to go down that road.

Now in Vancouver...Amy bashing me over the head with a brolly to get me off this machine right now - so that we can head off to Stanley Park and the world famous aquarium. Sight-seeing today....MUST GO>>>

'Maid of the Mist' and more.....

I was going to tell you about my day at Toronto Rehab on wednesday but this has been eclipsed by yesterday and thursday is very nearly headed for the mists of time! Oh how poetic...READ ON AND DON"T GO AWAY.

It was wednesday last I managed to do a blog and here we are, saturday early morning, before returning the hire car of yesterday and jetting off to Vancouver all being well. I was really really blown away by yesterday at Niagara Falls on A's birthday; that the day before and the one before that I musn't lose track of in this blog - or try not to lose track of - fat chance!!. Imagine being in a boat (Maid of the Mist) that can take several hundred people, the sun is shining one minute, you are dressed ( hundreds of you) in blue plastic sheets, the wind blowing hard and the plastic sheets sound like you're in a factory; and the next you are looking up at a wall of water that towers above you, can't see a thing because the spray from the falls are trying to beat your eyes out. The sound, the mist, the maelstrom of the water seething in whirlpools under the boat which is sedately sailing into, through and out of this maelstrom. The contrast with the Las Vegas cum Scarborough (UK) ( scaled up 100 fold) tatty tourist industry that has grown up around this magnificent and awe-inspiring spectacle - is extraordinary and for me simply awesome. I would not have wanted to miss the experience for anything. I gave up with the ruddy blue plastic and got completely soaked, but did it matter? Like hell it did. It was the best antidote for getting away from it all and experiencing nature in the raw, in its awesome power and making me and Mary feel blown away by it. I remember spontaneously singing 'My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean' followed by 'What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor' at the top of my voice, while leaning out over the prow of the vessel. Bit like the feeling in that old ( not really old!) Titanic film, instead you must replace 'young lovers', in your mind's eye with crazy old sod from England who's out to make a fool of himself.

In contrast, and it was her birthday of course; Amy just hated it - didn't she!  'Dad, this is the worst day of my life!' scenario. This is what is so great about children. I loved it, she hated it, because she worried about getting her hair wet. No point in remonstrating back with, 'but we've come thousands of miles to see and experience this and all your fussed about is your hair!'. This is the reality Richard -  get real and just accept it if you can. I must say thanks here to the calming influence of my beloved.  I am over time gradually getting much better at this. Incidentally both she and I insisted on some big hugs while still on the boat, even if Amy didn't get it at all. She did get the chocolate ice-cream cone later on, and  that made her really happy - till she got 'colly-wobbles' from it later on. I call that Niagara's revenge! Also, to let you knowthat I boarded that boat feeling a bit grotty from the the driving and the 'tackiness' of the town; and both M & I came off feeling like we had just had an ecstatic experience - which of course we had....

Where did Toronto Rehab go?? Oh dear, I forgot that bit.

Dancing Doctor Strip(s)

Yoooo...that got you interested!! Thanks Kerry and great to meet you in the cafe this morning and again tonight quite by accident at the traffic lights...you saw the pun in my blog title and pointed it out over breakfast.

 This is the second time I am attempting this blog. This am in the library where such things as blogging are free I made a superb attempt at this...all flags flying..going at a rate of knots telling you all that's going on till SOD IT..if the screen didn't go dead before I could click on POST. I had run out of time and didn't notice the tiny window bottom left of screen that told me I was running out of free credit.What a blithering idiot I was!!

(Will not mention Barbie again as it's a killer for getting comments!! except to say that I cycled 4 kilometres tonight to get another B ...! & a 'furr-real' dog for A's birthday this friday..she's 8 on 24th and away from her friends. Have also booked the car-hire to take us out to Niagara Falls on Friday and into a smart hotel that night for a slap-up meal and swim in their indoor pool all being well).

Now to the news...phew. Yesterday ran my second workshop at the Reitman Centre for care professionals. It was very well received indeed, like the first. I did slightly different stuff, managing this time to have folk dancing in the space, completing my powerpoint presentation which I don't always achieve and showing that extraordinary ( and very moving) 10 min piece of film from the memory-bridge foundation about Gladys Wilson and Naomi Feil. At the end of the workshop I was presented with some beautiful yellow trumpet type tropical flowers...v beautiful and brought a tear to 'me' eye..coming rather a lot these days in Toronto. The experience is so rich and fulfilling and energising and creative for all of us, that at times I am quite overcome by it all. The Director of the Centre also made me a gift to thank me for all I had brought tot eh Centre and the team. I was deeply moved by this. The afternoon was really interesting too as I was able to attend a session for people with memory problems attending a support group. We were able to dance together and share memories of what it means to live in Europe, amongst other things.

I am so impressed by the high quality and comprehensive support the Centre is able to give care-givers and it got a mention in the days Globe & Mail which is continuing a daily series of fascinating articles on the subject by Andre Picard. More news tomorrow of all that happened today in meeting up with Pia giving another talk, this time quite formal, in a lecture theatre at Toronto Rehab on University Avenue, also well received.

Mary & Amy went to a women's only ceremenony tonight on our street run by a 'grandmother' of aboriginal descent to coincide with the equinox and blow-me if they didn't sing a song Cordelia had taught Amy at school...'doo wa witchy-a, witchy-a'..or something like that!! Bye for now.....phew....

Today...

It went really well and I'm really really chuffed with the response I got from all 14 folk who attended my 3 hour workshop this pm at the Reitman Ctre. I had some very moving comments from participants who said they had been very inspired by what I said and brought. My laptop and USB powered speakers worked very well too as I had to load lots of CDs onto I Tunes before coming over here. I'm really knackered again tonight which is hardly surprising, and very pleasantly so, as a kind Canadian left me most of a jug of his lager (on leaving) at the greek restaurant we went to in Greek Town tonight -  a very atmospheric part of town east of the centre. Mary's sister Eileen has flown up from Denver and Mary very chuffed to have her around and staying in the same guest-house as us for a few nights. Amy chuffed to bits at being taken off by here Aunt to 'Honest Ed's' and/or 'Sears' in town for a serious attempt a getting yet another 'Barbie'....she came away with 'Sweetie', she calls here...a dog that nods its head and tail when you push its back. Gives me the giggles in my current mood.

So folks off to get some sleep after a really great workshop where I tried out some new ideas and managed to create an experience that wove in movt & dance, singing, playing musical instruments, the power-point bit - only four slides...and the playing of a beautiful DVD about dance & dementia. BON NUIT...hope I get a good nights kip before starting again at 9am...too soon for my liking but such is the way...

Yesterday in the park...

Received an invitation from Jenny (Occ. Therapist) who works p/t at the Reitman Centre to come out, visit her home in the Greek Town area, east of downtown and for Amy to meet and have fun with her daughter. The two girls are the same age and they really enjoyed themselves, as we all did in a nearby park. The weather was sunny and warm. Mary & I sat and talked with Jenny about her work and her approaches with people with dementia at the centre and a really interesting current collaboration with a chaplain, in running a group there. I am being invited to join this small group on thursday and I look forward to it very much and permissions have been asked and given for me to attend. I also met Julia and family in the park who also works with Jenny at the Reitman. Julia is a theatre director and researcher into art/health based research and has done some fascinating work on using health-based research, the results of which then get transformed by her and a working group of actors into a play. The play is then shown at differing stages of development to the various focus/interest groups that contributed to the original health research. The play is then performed by way of contributing to getting health researches disseminated in creative ways to people who may have no knowledge at all about the subject. This is of particular relevance to me as I'm hoping to set something similar up when back at work and Julia has agreed to collaborate with me on its development. Exciting stuff!!

Am now off to prepare for my first workshop today at the Reitman Centre at Mt Sinai Hosp ( 2-5pm). It is my first real foray into meeting and working professionally with folk here, presenting and transposing the use of movement, dance, music, song, reminiscence etc with a mixed group of folk including care-givers. I really hope it goes well and am somehat nervous about how it will be received. I know this is what I've come to do (but in confessional mode right now) however there is a big sense of the 'not-yet-known' about it.

It is Dementia Awareness week all week here in Toronto and the paper 'The Globe and Mail' are running major articles on the subject every day this week. It is a brilliant time to be here in fact. I am buying the newspaper and getting myself familiar with its contents. My sense is that in the UK we are ahead of Canada in this respect; as yet they have no 'National Dementia Strategy' and yet from the first article on Saturday the journalist was identifying points 1to 8 I think it was? that would contribute to the development of a canadian dementia strategy. Anyway more of this when I have had time to digest the material. Canada is having similar problems with the extraordinary rise in numbers of people projected to get this condition and from what I can gather, (together with the press interest) have not decided at federal or state level how best to respond.

That's it for now. I'm also needing to do some dancing just for me....will try and find a contact improv class/workshop or jam here if there is one?

Yesterday at Baycrest

Went back there as I realised I hadn't seen the community day services and should have! Met with Faith at 10am having cycled up the long Bathurst Avenue from downtown (having only spoken with her the day before, receiving a warm invitation to come take a look). Faith is the Program Director for 3 facilities all under the same roof at Baycrest but with different names (Parklands, Woodside and Mountain-View I think); am working from memory right now and no notes to help prompt me...anyway, an impressive program of day activities for those with and without cognitive impairment. The more cognitively impaired attend the Mountain-View day centre which is on the ground floor of the main building, and on entering the participants in the program have a small lobby with a big fish tank in it. Faith explained that people like to come and sit by the tank during the day to listen to the sound of water circulating around and to watch the fish. It is smaller in size in comparison to the other day centres, but intimate and cosy and a large group were doing music to movement as I arrived...that was good to see, and they were enjoying the experience I think.

As I write this I'm aware that not many folk may read my blog and am wondering slightly what is the point if few are taking a look at it. I shall proceed but if you do read this drop me a comment as it helps motivate me to keep going or tell me how I can make it more interesting?

So, it was a really interesting time spent with Faith and I have a lot to take away with me. Unfortunately the 2 other day centres I mentioned were not open yesterday so I only saw M-V in action. The single most important learning for me is that Faith is seeking to use more movement and dance work at the centre and I naturally invited her to come to my workshops at Mt Sinai Hosp and Toronto Rehab next week, as that may inform her a little more about what could happen and what my own work is about. I was also very impressed with her work to shift the focus away from activities such as bingo and hair-dressing ( much as people like them) towards ones that may help older people be and feel more fulfilled in the life choices they are making about what to do next or what opportunities still exist for them to participate in. As an example she is aiming to bring body-massage in to the centres and also to support the development of 'Mindfulness' groups. This is great stuff and very relevant for my own work in the Calderdale day centres back home.

Today (saturday) we've been down at the harbour-front at a Colombian Festival watching dancers perform, listening to colombian musicians and soaking up the atmosphere. Am considering going to see a new film tonight at the Film Festival here called 'Black Swan'. Anyone know it???