While the Arts include visual art, music, dance, theatre, writing and other crafts; today I focus on the visual arts and one enterprising artist who has linked her own natural talent and love of art to the service of engaging older adults in art programs.
Cailey Massey is Founder of Artfull Enrichmentand she has a unique philosophy best captured by her motto “Art is transcendent of age.” Now in her fifth year 2021, I first met Cailey in 2017 after she returned from Alberta to Ontario. Back then in our first conversation we discussed the potential of her meeting a market need here, not simply to deliver art programs, but as she later told me, to also find “potential solutions that would lead to sustainable change in their creative culture.”
By that Cailey refers to creative culture in care homes, retirement communities, seniors or older adult community centres, which is what primarily Arts and Aging Day aims at. It is Cailey Massey’s composed and insightful thinking over many years as an artist and art teacher that, in my view, positions her to lead that sustainable change while at the same time respond to the views of older adults as they have voiced to her how see themselves, while exploring lifelong creativity.
Enriching lives through creative experiences…
Respond she did. Originally naming her business Artfull Aging, Cailey recently decided to change it to Artfull Enrichment. Last month when I asked her what prompted her to change the name, she said that as her company evolves, she is constantly looking to members in her programs for feedback to ensure that the company growth is reflective of the people using the programs. As Cailey commented:
“Over the years we found that the ‘Aging’ part of our name sometimes made our members feel siloed. Aging, by definition, is the process of getting older and although we are ALL getting older the term is often used when referring to people of a certain age demographic…we are supporting our members as individuals along their creative journeys, and not defining their experience by their age. We replaced ‘Aging’ with ‘Enrichment’ to emphasize the mission of our programs, which is to enrich lives through creative experiences.”
Further on that, some feedback Cailey shared interested me in that it shatters stereotyping, that somehow art is something you throw at older people as some kind of therapy for aging. In truth, some of the participant comments Cailey has heard regards the word aging caused her to reflect to me: “The rejection of the term ‘aging’ is rooted in ageism itself, especially when our society is so focused on anti-aging, it makes sense why people don’t want to be associated with the term.”
Artfull Enrichment into the future…
Over five years, through the art programs Artfull Enrichmenthas collected a large sample of interesting art works from the people in the older adult communities, and I was curious to ask Cailey the question – have you any plans for presenting a public and/or virtual exhibition of these works, perhaps in collaboration with local galleries, libraries, with maybe a featured talk with the artists?
Answer: “We have seen so many incredible artworks over the years! This fall we are excited to be launching a virtual gallery section of our members’ portal. All Artfull members will be able to submit artworks to the virtual gallery to share with their community. Although we don’t have any public exhibitions (yet), we have resources that support in-house staff in organizing art events and collaborating with outside organizations to showcase resident artwork.”
This brings us full circle to Arts and Aging Day Canada this Thursday. How will Artfull Enrichmentbe participating in this event?
Answer: “This is a fantastic event! We will be encouraging our members to get involved in the event independently or through a free virtual workshop that we will offer on Wednesday, September 22nd to all older adult communities across Canada (members and non-Members). Following the workshop, we will share photos of the art created with the Research Institute for Aging to celebrate Arts and Aging Day Canada. The details will be available on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages” @ArtfullEnrichment
