so there's two things i want to record today there's a bit where it says um in the chorus sing together in sweet harmony so i'm going to see if we can do two-part harmony there so the first one is going to be instead of that melody sing together in sweet harmony it's gonna be sing together in sweet harmony so um let me play you that bit on its own for a second sing together so everyone's singing sing together in sweet harmony they're going up there i want you to go sing together in sweet harmony
okay yeah so i'm gonna record that okay here we go that's when all our voices sing together in sweet harmony very good a diagnosis of dementia can be difficult and life-changing and the challenges of memory loss can be very frustrating but a loving and supportive community can go a long way to helping us all live our best lives in toronto canada an academy for arts and intergenerational learning is on the cutting edge of a new philosophy of relational caring that prioritizes compassionate mutua
l relationships for nurturing a sense of belonging and purpose here at the academy everyone is considered a teacher and a learner rigid schedules and tests are thrown out the window to make room for discovery and life and professionals in the fields of visual arts music and dance use the arts as a medium for creating deep connections and supporting engagement and life enrichment and in the time they've been creating community here the team behind this one-of-a-kind academy have discovered that n
ot only is music a wonderful way to enrich one's life for many of the people here academy members and artists alike music is life one two three four [Music] right good okay so let me just set it up to record that's gonna sound wicked two three four today grammy award-winning musician and songwriter simon law is recording his latest song his musicians and co-writers are the members of the datsubitov wellness academy the dots at bittoff is a place that uses art as a medium to develop authentic rel
ationships what that means in practice is that we are all interested in being able to find points of connection through creative mediums the dots of bits of wellness academy is unique because of our philosophy and our structure and that we are an academy of teaching and learning and we're focused on relationships and engagement and life enrichment we believe that a person is a person not a person is a patient a person that you respect a person that you can share laugh and tears and joys and sadn
ess and emotion that is the belief and the philosophy that we have i could answer that could you could you could you group to that that feels good to me hey although their unique relational caring philosophy encompasses all the arts music is everywhere at the academy from music-filled mornings to ukulele groups and sing-alongs to special performances to the almost daily dance parties music plays a role in everything we do here from the moment that people come in we call it playing the dj where w
e put music on as soon as people get here to fill out like to create a mood or an environment for people to come and enjoy like conversations with coffee and crossword puzzles and then it trickles into the ballroom as we call it because there's always dancing always singing along and and dance yeah dance is a big part of our community and if it's dancing you want then academy member robert is the man you need to see music to me is like when you're eating a nice piece of creek or something it's j
ust comes to me and i just love it [Music] once the music starts and you get up and you start to move and it just moves you and you might not get all the words but you can remove it and the thing there is music for me is to understand what's going on enjoy it and don't go and spoil up the party how music moves him it's it's very physical it's this beautiful kind of uh how it speaks to the feet you know and he is a guy who totally embodies that robert well robert is my dance partner and i absolut
ely adore dancing with him because he's one of the participants that actually expresses um the rhythm of the music in his soul to me music is the greatest equalizer if you put people together whatever language you speak or won't speak and you play the right music we all get together we dance we pat each other on the back you know when we exhort ourselves really get excited about music and music is really fit to be loved by everybody people who don't love music or haven't had the opportunity of g
etting there they have missed a lot because music enlightens alone he's really curious about people and he really takes the time to know people and i know the folks i don't know all names i don't not good at remember names but i know all the all the faces and i can say hi how are you doing today i'm one of those fellows if i came and sat by your chair and a few minutes pass and nothing happens then i try to open up a conversation or at least to show somebody that i know you're there and i know w
e have here and robert's not alone in this thinking music at the academy is the glue that holds everything together i think what our work here at the academy does through the arts and specifically music is transformative we have seen people come in shy hesitant and come and regain their sense of self and certainly as rewarding as i've seen it be for participants it's equally rewarding for the people that work here what we give we get it's definitely a a two-way flow of i would say magic there's
no question there's therapeutic value to it it's not a formal therapy program here it's relational caring so we are people relating to people using the arts to build a bridge and create relationships that are meaningful respectful dignified loving [Music] i don't know where i'd be without music really as i've got older i feel tremendously grateful to be able to make music i love performing i love singing and whatever but the actual creation of music is is is just this incredible joy to me and i
gets gets gets better as i get older so uh you know maybe less people listening now but doesn't matter i just love creating music and and the opportunity here here at bit of to create music is is is amazing i just love that and i'm so glad that i'm able to actually create original music here that's really special that's the waveform of what you played and um that's you that's you playing the drums and percussion there so let me just play it to you simon has been creating and recording a song wit
h the members of the academy you see the line going across simon does many different things here as you can see and one of the most important things that i think that he does for us is he helps us compose songs come on you can move to that i invited him to create a song for our music research on musical engagement and the meaning of music in our lives you know as soon as i heard that i thought wow that's so that's so such fertile ground because you know i i see all the time how important this is
to folks here but what we're going to write a song about this you know we're going to write a song about music itself i first and foremost i had these lovely sort of brainstorming sessions where i just asked everyone to to what does music really mean to you how does it how do you relate to it what does it how does it speak to you and all these wonderful things came up and i just made several big charts of all these lovely phrases you know and the ones that really sort of covered everything made
it into the song and i'm i'm so proud of how it's it's really is a a beautiful piece of collaborative art you know while music in many other spaces is used as a tool or clinical intervention at the datsabitov wellness academy music is so much more our intention here is to create a space where relationships are in the fore where they're most important and so music we're seeing is an incredible medium for creating a space for those relationships when we use music in a non-clinical setting or we u
se music to create relationship it speaks to our inherent connection to music as human beings our pulse is our internal metronome our breathing is rhythmic the way our voice sounds is melodic this makes music in many different contexts the perfect ingredient to create relationship-based learning wellness engagement it's a really lovely way to bring people together in a shared space and it doesn't necessarily have to have a clinical goal when you're in a more diverse and community oriented settin
g where there is mutual learning taking place music brings people together in a whole different way that's a little more broad and a little more far-reaching if this was a music therapy setting there might be a goal such as anxiety reduction or pain management but when you're in a group setting and people are listening to music together and sharing and laughing and engaging it speaks to the power of music to um address our humanness and bring us together academy member shirou knows the power of
music music is my whole world oh my god [Music] music is something that you get joy out of it makes you happy and and takes the sad part away she feels music deeply i know that and if i catch her eye or she catches my eye we always exchange a little smile she's such a joyful person she just loves being here she loves sharing her life experiences with everyone she loves the music and she's just a joy to be with i would say to the people and to the world music is something that inspires you and yo
u're doing it from your inner soul i sing songs in in in my my kitchen when i'm when i'm cooking i i will i will just sing it to you quickly [Music] music is um makes me feel good yeah okay it's another morning of coffee and crosswords at the academy and the conversation has turned to the importance of music joy happiness that's when i get happy and here everyone's encouraged to get up and dance yes and most people do i just like being real yeah well since i started here my kids actually believe
that it's better and you got you people have been my critiques by saying oh you're such a good dancer dad and i said i don't think anything's changed for me using is a way of bringing back memories for me some i don't want to remember yeah but they come anywhere music is a way of telling me it's time to take a nap i don't know when i go home if you had to fill in the blank music is soul connection i was born in grenada and grew and developed and lived in grenada i had a good part of my liveliho
od in jamaica where i met hazel my wife and i've been living here in canada for i would obviously say over 10 years and i'm only 51. what sorry 51 years 10 flies when you're having fun retired physician and surgeon robert lives with his wife of nearly 55 years hazel actually we met on a university trip to cuba and this was in 1960. i got to know her because by some accident her flip-flop was mashed and she tripped i don't know this guy was there she turned around and it happened to be me and i'v
e been getting flip-flops from then and i love them i really like the whistle i like to hum and i like to sing that came from my mother she was always humming and whistling and doing a little ditty in the kitchen and um that sort of grown me we still keep my my music going with whatever whatever i call singing i do it here with hazel in the on the keyboard and for that i'm very grateful i want to do it for years and years and years still [Music] he sings in the church christ so every afternoon i
usually have to work with him on the anthem that's coming up for that sunday so that he can know it really well and i like it when i can sing yeah and i know the pieces and my thoughts comfortable i really enjoy them yeah as a matter of fact the church organist rachel said recently said you know robert has a nice voice but he only sings out when he knows the thing well so if he doesn't know it really it's really soft [Music] oh my son he's a darling i'm telling you he's here i know lives with a
nd is cared for by her son kareem she was always always very caring if you can tell from my size food was a big part of life she loved to bake and so we see a lot of a lot of goodies and i was somewhat overprotective of her sometimes and probably still am to some degree he was a sweet good sweet little baby and he grew up with love and affection from his dad when his dad was alive at that time i married his father but unfortunately he died of a very young at the very young age and that makes me
a little sad also because he was a love of my life and the children i i overcome that when i had my kids and everyone you know i was 15 he passed away the day after my birthday it was it was not an easy task whatsoever but i made it work for my mom she went from being essentially like i said a housewife although she did have a job uh to becoming the sole breadwinner um and for me from a cultural context um i took on the role of the man of the house but far too young to do that um but it it staye
d with me for a long time so a significant impact i was close to my dad is to skip a lot of school to be with him and hang out with him so that was tough stuff took me a long time to to get over that yeah it's not easy uh quite honestly it's it's probably one of the toughest uh things i've had to do and one of the toughest things for me to learn to come to grips with and so i've gone from sort of sun and loving sun kind of thing to being a provider and a caregiver and i lose sight of the fact th
at i also need to be a son the times when she's at the bit of is when i feel the most comfort and relaxed because i know that she's probably having a good time she feels part of the people there they don't make you feel any different than anyone else they treat you very friendly this is a very loving environment and i i'm so glad and so thankful that that we found this program to be honest with the recording nearly complete simon is back in the studio mixing the song yeah so when we were startin
g to think about the song we had this idea of the uh meaning of music and what is the meaning of music in our lives and um a lot of people were saying you know music lifts me up the music it take it takes me higher it makes me feel better and so that was the kind of lead off idea that music takes you higher and um and so i i had some chords that i was messing around with at home that had that sounded something probably like this [Music] it's kind of uh things that the kind of chords that i mess
around with at home and um and then i so i i sort of thought about this music takes you higher music opens up your mind uh that was the other another thing how it sort of opened up opened up your experience opened up your mind so those that was the first two lines so i i went home i remember and i just started thinking about a melody something like this music takes you higher [Music] opens up your mind i remember the next time i i went in someone said i think it doesn't just open up your your mu
sic doesn't just open your mind it's your heart it's to do with your heart as well it speaks to our hearts so it changed that line and it ended up being something like music takes you higher music opens your heart and mind it was a long it was a long just a long creative process i didn't sort of hurry this in any way i started bringing in my computer and my recording equipment and we recorded all the singing is is everyone for the bit of singing together um there is percussion in there uh some f
olks have learned to play ukulele i've got ukuleles in there it's like everyone bring bring their talents you know it was a sort of real kitchen sink approach what have we got right like and then my mind just goes crazy with figuring out how we can get we use all these elements i love that process you know really do someone said the other day you know they really own the song it's it's owned by everyone you know and um so yeah this sort of collaborative writing a song with a big group is not som
ething i do in my normal work it's usually one or two people but it's a thrill to do i i really love it but even before his time at the academy simon had first-hand experience of the power of music for people living with memory loss i have a personal journey with alzheimer's because my father was diagnosed with it at the age of 67 i think it was so quite early so that whole period that lasted through till till he died earlier this year at 80 age of 83. it was a very long journey you know and um
and so i was always interested in in dementia but also i knew how how music uh spoke to my dad recently the academy has expanded to double their size this newfound space allows an opportunity for more members and larger activities today they are celebrating the opening with a special performance by a world-renowned cellist from the glengold school of music using music to make a connection with people or to move people in some sense is basically the goal and that's what i love to do more than any
thing actually and we have our performer here richard who is going to be performing with his beautiful cello so we welcome both of them greatly to our day of performance at the benthov academy and this is our first performance since we've opened our brand new space so it's a celebration as well if you meet young musicians the main thing that they want is exactly what this is a room full of listeners so this is our perfect environment at any time if when i was with my dad if i put on particularly
bach's music spoke to him profoundly the arts and again specifically music is a language unto itself it is timeless really and i it feels like music where it lives in our minds is different than some of the other [Music] functions and everyday activities that we do and it lives there forever and it's part it defines who we are it's connected to our heart and soul it feels like that's what i've witnessed i remember one time lying having a nap with him lying down in the afternoon and we just we o
ften would have um music on all the time actually just classic fm or whatever it was this is in england but um a piece of beautiful piece of box piano music came on i don't know which one particularly but and dad was listening to it and he just sighed one of his sighs of just delight and then and then he said to me it sounds just like it's just like a stream just like water and bark's music kind of tumbles over itself and goes on and on and on doesn't really you're never quite sure when it's goi
ng to finish you know because you think it's coming to an end and then oh off it goes again and it's like a little brook you know babbling away and it was um a very beautiful moment of how it really spoke to him you know and i remember that very clearly that little moment [Music] the experience of engaging in music can be non-verbal if people can listen to music together and not feel that they have to retrieve any kind of information through language that can be an inviting and inclusive way of
connecting with another human being but further to that if someone can access a memory through music that can be a very rewarding experience and a very comforting experience not only for the person themselves but for the people around them [Music] [Applause] al power is an internationally recognized expert on transformational models of care for older adults living with changing cognitive abilities one of the biggest barriers to well-being for people living with dementia is the sense of stigma th
at is created around the illness stigma is huge i don't think you can overestimate it in the world of dementia and a lot of it comes from the way we have medicalized the condition um not that it's not a medical condition but we focus so intently on disease on what is missing that we only see the person from the very narrow lens of disease disability decline and so it makes us do a lot of things that are very limiting to the person we underestimate their capabilities we shut them out or take deci
sions away from them early on we tend to shun people because it makes us uncomfortable or we assume that they can't engage in certain things we tend to blame their distress on the brain disease instead of looking at the larger context to see if it could be something that would bother any of us in the same situation and we tend to rush to medications when there are many other non-medical solutions that can help people to live better i think i i feel like there's there's some key people in this pl
ace that are sort of that embody the sort of energy and the vibe and alan's certainly one of those guys yeah music is a message sent to the brain to enjoy happiness [Music] uh well i like i i like to paint i do some artwork uh i like music i like to listen to music i play harmonica and i try to play a guitar i haven't played it thoroughly but i'm working on it alan oh alan he's so lovely what should we call him we'll call him the surprising chef cook the shirt cook or cook the snook alan is a bi
g teddy bear but a stand-up comedy teddy bear he is so funny um he he's also so so sweet i uh go to the beethoven center and i enjoy the uh the arts program there because i'm an artsy person so i enjoy that in that period of time during the day and they go four days a week so it keeps me busy and let's keep my wife out of trouble alan lives with his wife myrna i met al first when he was 20 and i was 15 and his first love was my girlfriend so we used to be at the same parties as me and when they
broke up i had to hear his tearful story and then we met again when we both worked at yorkdale i was in high school at the time and then i didn't see him forever i went to a singles barbecue which i've never in my life done because i want to introduce a friend of mine who was a widow to another friend who was a widow and there was a crowd of people around something and the some thing was al and when he saw me he came over he was all excited and we left and went dancing and that's how we met agai
n amen this is the day that al and i got married and it was 30 years ago and it's always so nice to look back because we were so young and vital and active at that time both of us was lovely you have to respect each other's space i think that's the most important thing you have to have a sense of humor and you have to stop trying to make somebody what they're not you accept them for who they are and that's the secret of a good marriage and we use good glue i think when you live with different fo
rms of dementia when you live with memory loss there are still some very important reasons why music is so engaging and so powerful so the great thing about music with dementia is that there are many broken connections with dementia but there are just millions and billions of connections in there that are not damaged but if you engage with music all of a sudden those connections are still very powerful and they open doors to memories to speech to engagement in ways that you are unable to do with
more traditional interactions while his memory may not be what it used to be alan's years of working as a designer have translated to a home filled with his beautiful paintings i was trained as a draftman i worked in an engineering office in the industrial field and became a designer like the would design things right at that time like control panels and instruments that worked on the equipment i make a point of taking al out as much as possible because being with other people is very very help
ful for him and changing the view is very important we go to so many concerts i like classical i love classical i can't say al loves classical but he will go with me i don't like it i just listen to it and we both love latin music and it's just very much part of our lives the arts i pop music i like jazz dixieland jazz uh basically that that makes me what i like he learned the guitar on his own and like many things he does he learned it and he put it away and it was in the storage and then he st
arted the betav and the first day literally he came home and said where's my guitar sits in the storage i want to get it down i want to get it restrung and it's been in the apartment ever since and he plucks at it and i i think it's amazing i love it but he just keeps us so much a part of it it's who he is the music the dancing the art it's him he's an artsy and he's happy there he really is happy [Music] did play anything special just so strumming right a new addition to cheru's home has her be
aming i've been happy with her having the children and my daughter-in-law and we're having a a wonderful time and the little one here he is so amazing and is a little shy yeah he's a bit shy look he's wide awake so this is zachary and this is the joke and this is my wife's shirt she's got my back she actually does she always does it's an amazing experience to to be able to have to be blessed with being able to have a family um and i was worried she might never get a chance to see them and i alwa
ys remind kareem how lucky he is that his mom lives with us right that it's nice to have your parent live with you the idea of engaging with a person living with memory loss as just another person as an equal is not as common as one might think the dots a bit of wellness academy is at the leading edge of culture change within dementia care that focuses more on relationships than diagnoses the academy is unique in that our focus is about relationships and engagement um i find other places the foc
us is more about someone's cognitive ability how do we fix that how do we make them better versus accepting a person for who and how they are and that let's just be in relationship with that we see the person for who they are and in the moment that they come into our space and because we do that with one another as well as the academy members their family members the transportation drivers that come in they have a really hard job so it's it really truly is creating a community that is a family i
t becomes a second home [Music] back home road scholar robert is in a reflective mood oh i could get a little extra sleep in the morning and so forth but i miss my patients i had a good time being a practicing physician it was really really a calling and i enjoyed and sometimes i wish i could do it again but that's rather silly we can pass that stage the fact that robert can no longer work provide for his family have really taken a toll on him emotionally my difficulties is some difficulty is no
t a total difficulty the only thing i hope that really really really bothers me and gets to me is that i can't drive anymore and i'm lost my i miss my friends my patients that's a big that's a big hole in my life not be under not being able to to drive puts a lot of stress on hazel my health all in all people who don't know my condition would think i'm a great normal guy because i try to live normally but there are the two things that are not really i'm unhappy about my brain seems to for me to
be normal but the medical people have made a diagnosis the treatment is quite easy for me at this point and i'm doing the best we go to sing we dance we love each other love each other eat i still do the cooking there hazel i do the cooking and my children don't react strange nobody will react strange to me all i want is my life to be like it is now and if i could just get to if i could only drive again you know if i could only but that's done i think unfortunately so i have to settle on his rem
inds me settle on tells me the good things that i have still after months of writing and recording the song is finally finished and simon is here to play it for the academy members for the very first time i was just in england for a couple of weeks working there on a project and i you know so it wasn't coming here and i find i miss the place actually and it's so lovely to come back and see everyone again this is the finished version so i'd love you to just listen to it if you want to just listen
and maybe not sing along that's fine but if you want to sing along too that would be that would be perfect um yeah let's have a listen [Music] the rewards are to see the very heart of what music means to you know it's an important thing for most of us you know whichever way we experience music in our lives but you know this is the fundamental shows the fundamental power of music to transform a human being you know and to see that the hidden day out is is a privilege and an honor you know and to
be part of creating music that does that that's the that's a beautiful joy of mine i mean i mean i love to create music that's the biggest thrill for me and to create this song that we've been working on and now it's sort of developed into this quite this beautiful big sort of orchid you know and it's um it's just glorious you know [Music] [Music] memories here comes the chorus [Music] when [Music] i i think now i see more here i see more how music really touches and moves people and the profou
nd nature of that than i i i've ever seen anywhere else and you know i've seen thousands of people dancing to song that i've written or whatever and that's amazing feeling don't get me wrong i love all that but it's sort of this sort of thing where you just um you see how it touches people [Music] [Applause] [Music] what we're saying too is if music is life what are we doing to support life then everywhere yeah so we want to with this research we want to provoke others to consider that you know
we don't yes we've come to a new understanding and one of the exciting things that we're seeing with this structure and philosophy music emerges as life and so if music is is life then how can we support it everywhere as opposed to only being used as a tool or as therapy music is the only way we repeat emotion that's a beautiful mini saying that music lifts up my spirit here we go [Music] music [Music] ready [Music] i think if if anyone kind of visited this this place you'd see that music is fun
damental to the way the vitov works and what we do here even if it's not a particularly music based program that's being offered it's there'll be music involved in some way and um i just think it's it's a wonderful uh art form for bringing people together i don't know if there's any better really it just sort of [Music] it it brings people together you know and it just whether you're singing together whether you're just simply listening together whether you're creating it together whether you're
playing some music together you're dancing together it's it's this sort of binding beautiful thing that that brings you in you know [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] give yourselves a big clap oh it was a beautiful beautiful moment a lot of uh a lot of great sort of memories and experiences putting the thing together and um to share it now with everybody and uh you know it's it's especially poignant because there's a few folks who are no longer with us that are have sung on the t
une even spoken in the middle section so um it's a i'm very proud of it and i think it's really speaks volumes about our work here you know and the community that we have here when i when i share it with the folks i can see how much they are um part of it how much they feel ownership of it and um that's a really lovely thing to be part of [Music] i am not afraid of being old now i love being with these people i love being with with people who are you know um having this experience and um i want
to walk with them that's just what i want to do until until then i'm like i think i i think it's taught me immensely about um being able to live in the present moment i think that's something which you know dementia can teach us all actually you know it's a really profound thing that if you spend time with someone with dementia that's the only place you can really be and it's um it's a good place to be you know and when you hear the music how do you want to move sexy when we're all together here
in this room and we're singing and we're dancing what's that like for you for me i feel i'm in heaven and i feel happy it takes the sadness away truly speaking [Music] so alan if if there were no music in the world what would that be like for you i'd ham maybe when the birds sing the word makes me beautiful the birds make nice music you hear that this is all wrong music is all wrong and somehow or another some people find a way to make music [Music] well if you not if you don't know how to sing
and all that you're losing out baby you're losing out you
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