{"id":1546,"date":"2013-05-21T12:17:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T11:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/?p=1546"},"modified":"2015-03-26T07:51:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T07:51:25","slug":"its-worth-singing-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/its-worth-singing-about\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Worth Singing About"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Arts<\/a>Rhona MacLeod sent us this great article on using singing to foster relationships between children and elderly people. It’s a lovely story.<\/p>\n

CHRIS HOLTEN reckons the best thing about the Sing Out Loud Together project<\/a> was watching his Elder buddy John Roberts bust out some moves to the Beatles\u02bc classic Yellow Submarine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI showed him some of my moves too,\u201d said 12-year-old Chris.<\/p>\n

Year 5 and 6 students from Kempsey West Primary School joined with the Booroongen Djugun Aboriginal Aged Care Facility to create the Sing Out Loud Together Choir, which culminated with a performance at the school on 7 August.<\/p>\n

The inter-generational pilot program saw students, including Dunghutti boys Chris Holten and Ryan Baines, paired with a \u02bbbuddy\u02bc from the aged-care facility.<\/p>\n

For eight weeks students met with their buddy, learned songs and the history of the music and interviewed Elders for a research program.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the first day we didn\u02bct talk that much, but once we started to get to know each other it was fun, teaching each other different things,\u201d Ryan said of his buddy John Dashwood. \u201cI learned lots of stories about his life, it was very interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Program director and Arts Health Institute (AHI) CEO Dr Maggie Haertsch said the program had been a complete success.
\n\u201cIt was beautiful, just beautiful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the Elders were lonely and in a wintery environment not mixing, so they would be really excited on Tuesday mornings when the children would come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was structured around singing but there were lots of questions about life history, and the children created beautiful posters that they gave to their singing buddies. There was a beautiful respect.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u02bct teach empathy and compassion, that comes from doing, and the children were waiting on the Elders at morning tea, looking after them and wanting to make sure they were all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sing Out Loud Together program was created by the AHI and uses music to promote social engagement, elicit positive emotional and behavioural responses and stimulate cognitive functioning in both healthy elderly and people with dementia and to engage with young people.<\/p>\n

Final concert
\nAt the final concert, students and Elders dressed up in feather boas and bowler hats and also presented their project about their buddies and the era they grew up in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were so proud, with their chests out, the kids couldn\u02bct stop smiling,\u201d said Dr Haertsch. \u201cThey were also really focused, wanting to make sure they were looking after the guests coming in to their school.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt really special, after the children had been going to the Elders\u02bc place all these weeks and it was a big effort for the Elders to come, some on walking frames. \u201cWhen a person gets older they can be very nervous going to an outside environment, worried that people might not treat them with dignity or respect, and they can lose confidence, so we were relying on the confidence of the kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a really huge change in the Elders. One woman who had been very shy and would only speak if she was asked a question gave a speech about the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the other Elders spoke about us giving back, planting words of wisdom in the kids\u02bc heads.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic connects people, connects memories, and the way we did this was based on the Elders\u02bc favourite songs so they didn\u02bct have to learn anything new.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to the success of these pilot programs, the AHI will be rolling the program out nationally.<\/p>\n

For Chris and Ryan, the concert and project were the end of the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a barbie and a bit of a yarn, they were all smiling,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were happy, that\u02bcs when we had to hand over to another class,\u201d Chris added. \u201cWe\u02bcre going to miss them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rudi Maxwell, The Koori Mail, published Wednesday, 22 August 2012<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.artshealthinstitute.org.au\/News\/Media\/It-s-Worth-Signing-About.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n

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Rhona MacLeod sent us this great article on using singing to foster relationships between children and elderly people. It’s a lovely story. CHRIS HOLTEN reckons the best thing about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-news","category-uncategorized","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1556,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/scotlandsings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}