Stroke group - taking things into their own hands

Painting together

At our last session before Christmas one of my stroke-group clients asked me whether he could bring his birthday present along to the next block in the New Year. The present was a painting class by artist Bob Ross with all the materials. My client asked me whether I could buy some canvases, one for each of the group members.

I readily agreed and had the canvases ready for the next sessions. I also dug out the lovely easels that I had bought with a donation for art materials received a few years ago and I also reached deep into the arty cupboard for the best paint brushes.

This was not the first time that I had helped a group of people paint along to Bob Ross whose painting techniques and art classes on television were very popular in the 1990s. It is over fifteen years ago that my colleagues and I and a few adult clients propped the plinths up on end, tied our canvases to them and spent a wonderful evening painting along to a Bob Ross video. I am sure that I could uncover the very similar but at the same time quite different set of paintings that we produced.

When my stroke group arrived for the first sessions of 2015 there was my client with his case of paints, video, brushes and all the paraphernalia needed for painting and to his and my delight the whole group was raring to go. I was surprised because we had two new clients, but they too were up to the challenge!

This project was a huge step forward from the painting projects that I did with the stroke groups when I was training at the Pető Institute. This was what the clients called ‘real art’.

They were all incredibly proud of the results that turned out much more varied than my previous attempts at Bob Ross classes many years ago. Most of the present stroke group have artistic leanings, sew and paint and create at home, and I think they found it difficult to follow exactly what Bob Ross told us to do, they wanted to put a bit of themselves into the paintings, which they certainly did.

This was everyone's favourite

It is lovely to see that the clients in the stroke group are beginning to bring their own projects into the group, to try out with their fellow group members, in the same way that the school children in the afternoon group do. The children have just organized a Star Wars fan-club visit, they cook together, have make-up sessions together and we are creating a garden. Each project is motivated by a special interest of one or two individuals.

 

The InBestForm inclusive disabled/non-disabled group for elderly clients was designed so that it could carry on in a similar way to the projects that I have described above: self-motivated and planned projects that the clients themselves can organise. 

As you can probably guess it was not only the adults who wanted to paint along with Bob Ross, once the school children got a hint of what was going on (the canvases where standing on their easels drying when they arrived) they wanted to have a go too.

This was the result of a few hours work by our 9-year-old boy with muscular dystrophy, it is my favourite -

Notes

Bob Ross -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3RYOawNITs

Change…

… an ineffable but perhaps a vital part of the process of upbringing

I had some lovely hours one morning in December and some more that afternoon.

It was the lovely afternoon hours that I had originally sat down to write about but before putting pen to paper I suddenly realised that the whole day had been rather good. I shall stick with my nice afternoon-hours story to start with.

I think that I have written before about my making stuffed-toys project, today it continued in leaps and bounds.

Four pre-school children came to paint animals with me. They want to have the finished articles scattered on the seats in the parents' room in their new conductive Kindergarten, which is almost ready to move into. The children are looking forward to this move but with some apprehension too. I am pleased that they will at last have a lovely new and bigger space to work and play in, but I am not happy to see them go. My room for conductive groups does not, unfortunately, go with them.

I am staying put and after the move I will not be able even to watch the children playing outside any more from my window. Yes, you could say I am more than a little bit sad at the prospect of the children being only twenty yards away, knowing that they will not be popping in to see me in the same way as they have been for the past five years, bringing me a baked apple, a homemade biscuit or a freshly painted picture to see.

Singing while we work

As my four artists produced an amazing nine animals between them they chatted and sang to their hearts’ content – Oh, how lovely it is that we have an integrated Kindergarten!

While they sang about the Christmas bakery, making up their own words to a popular children’s song, singing about what we were doing and naming those who were working around the table, we painted and painted and painted. It seemed like we painted for ages but it was in fact only sixty minutes.

In their songs the children moved from the bakery to the artist’s studio, to the garden and eventually back to the bakery. Whilst catching their breath between verses they chatted with me while I helped to squeeze the nearly empty tubes, washed brushes and at the same time felt almost redundant. These five-year-olds were so jolly, so confident and oh so very independent. They oozed confidence in carrying out their arty work, not once asking for artistic advice, only for help to squeeze out the last drops of yellow.

(Yellow is always the first colour to run out in our paint-boxes, probably because always lots of sunshine and also the odd lion, are painted. It could be black that would run out first if I ever bought any. I was asked for black several times today, but I had to let the children know that here, we always mix the darkest colour possible ourselves from different amounts of many of the other colours.

Great inventions

 

So, while it was decided that the horse's hooves could in fact be painted with glittery purple, just as though he had nail varnish on, plans were hatched.

We made plans for the most amazing inventions imaginable. The motivation for our Heath Robinson inventions was our wish to share each other’s company after the move –

One little boy had asked – “Susie are you moving with us?”

I answered that unfortunately I have to stay put, but I told them all that we could still visit each other. I explained that we would not be too far away from each other and the children would only have to put on a coat and change out of their slippers to nip across to me, unless of course we came up with something else!

The children did not need anymore of an invitation to put on their thinking caps. With all thoughts of singing about the Christmas bakery forgotten they invented a fantasy slide to bring them to my room. When they mentioned it I first envisaged a slide like in our playground but I soon realised that these little ones had set their sights on something grander. Something more like those that can be found at a swimming pool would certainly be more suitable for their purpose as the children between them had decided that they would like to arrive in a side window which would mean travelling down many twists and loops in order to arrive there. With the slide's construction discussed and solutions found on how to visit me the questions then came about how they would get back.

At one point one of the children forlornly said to the creative young man who had initiated our Heath Robinson conversation – “We will only be here till the summer so do we really need that slide?”

“Off course we do” – was the general consensus but the problem still was what would the children do about getting back again?

Landing on their feet

I offered to build them a rocket but this was quickly rejected in favour of a human cannon that would shoot them right through the roof and back to their Kindergarten. I was so impressed, especially by the demonstration of how they would land safely on their feet. All this imagining, inventing and adventure was taking place at the same time as we were producing lots of lovely pictures that we will turn into stuffed-animal cushions!

It is important that these children have the link that our creative work forms, a link that bridges the gap between the new building and the old. Our project, painting, sewing and stuffing toys, will ease them through the changes and retain a link to their “old” life and experiences, linking them to their old environment so that with or without slides, rockets or human cannons they will still continue to visit and spend a creative hour or so with me!

The next big step in these children's upbringing will be eased, also a vital process in upbringing.