Connect the Dots Charitable Trust works to improve older people’s lives through creativity and Chartwell supports their Make Moments programmes. Make Moments works to connect and engage older people, and people living with dementia, with the rich and diverse art & cultural opportunities Auckland has to offer. 

As they describe on their website, Connect the Dots’ trained and passionate arts educators deliver facilitated art tours and art making workshops at local arts venues. “The discussions and supported art making engage participants in intellectual stimulation, cultural engagement and social interaction. This project aims to make connections between Auckland’s public galleries and organisations that support the needs of elderly members of the communities, particularly organisations working with people with dementia.”

Chartwell supported Connect the Dots Director Andrea Gaskin to take up a Winston Churchill Fellowship in 2019 to travel to the UK and Japan to study Creative Ageing programmes. Her investigations into these programmes along with a 2017 research study conducted by Sarah Stewart, a PhD student in the English Department at the University of Edinburgh, showed that engaging in arts discussion and art making can provide older people, and people living with dementia, tangible benefits. To be active and involved in the local community not only provides an opportunity for social connection, intellectual stimulation and personal expression, but also works to increase feelings of self-worth.

The Toi Ako programme was a recent mentoring programme, which sees 14 Kaumātua partnered with six practising artists for ten workshops of art making. The Kaumātua, many of whom are living with dementia, worked with their Artist Mentor over time to explore and develop their own visual language and to create works for a group exhibition. The exhibition opened in early 2020 and the opening is pictured below (Photo Credits: David St George)

Chartwell’s Sue Gardiner wrote Exercise for a Creative Life, the introductory essay for the exhibition catalogue.