The Arts and Older Adults

Liana Cusmano

Literary

I was raised in a large Italian-Canadian family, where intergenerational learning and cooperation were a significant part of my every day life. As a teaching artist, working with older adults is close to my heart. It allows for participants to bring their varied lived experience – both recent and less recent – into their artistic projects and interactions with others, and this is my favourite part of working with this particular age group. Having worked with seniors through the QWF Storyscaping program and through Montreal’s exChange project, I have found that the elements that make a workshop successful are clear instructions, ample time for questions and sharing, positive feedback, and flexibility – slowing or quickening the pace of a workshop as needed.

Sample workshop:

Participants will warm up with a free-write and the following prompt: “When did everything change?” The bulk of the workshop will be the development of a spoken word poem based on the concept of “home”. Participants will be asked to describe a physical place that most feels like home to them, and to describe it using their five senses. They will then edit their poem by including literary devices, and decide on how they will perform the piece (using tone, volume, inflection, gestures, etc.) before being invited to share all or a portion of their work.

Materials:

Tools to write with – paper and pencils, pens, and/or crayons

Available for:

In-person workshops, On-line workshops

Language(s) of facilitation:

English, French, Italian

Project type:

Older Adults and Intergenerational

Contact:

liana.cusmano1995@gmail.com

(514) 895-5170

Montreal

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

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