The day we were influenced by MOMA

A year or two ago I attended a talk by a lady, Carrie McGee, who worked at the New York Museum of Modern Art here in the UK. They described a project where people with dementia were brought into the museum and had talking sessions around the artwork on show. More can be found at the MOMA website www.moma.org. This really helped them regain some of their ability to converse and was very inspiring. It made me think of how when I had mental health problems I retreated inwards and didn't interact but by becoming involved in art opened up and aided my improvement.

With this in mind I used a pack I downloaded from the MOMA site and adapted it to use with WellArt group. We had slides of the artwork and looked at a selection based on the theme of music and rhythm. It was a really good session as everyone was soon joining in and chatting about the images with careful questions leading them into discussing different aspects of the pictures.

At the end we has a creative session where the group produced images in the style of one of the artists but based around the theme of music. We all really enjoyed it and came away feeling great.