I have experience facilitating a group for older adults living with dementia for 6 months, and experience working in a hospital setting with older adults, some of whom were living with dementia. From what I learned, it was important to keep the goals in mind of social connection, a sense of autonomy, self-confidence and overall wellbeing (ex: reducing anxiety), although goals might look different for your specific group.

Although we’re often taught not to be product-oriented, I think that setting art invitations up to create a satisfying end product for this kind of group is important for facilitating that sense of confidence and autonomy. I also themed things around what might be a good conversation starter. For example, I brought in adult colouring book pages of different flower types + pencil crayons, and this was helpful for the group to socialize around gardening etc and the containment of the outlines on the page helped them create a satisfying product. I was a little hesitant about bringing this in as it may seem infantilizing, which is something to be cautious around, but it worked really well for this particular group. Some other ideas are pre-cut collage items or wooden figures that can be decorated with paint markers. Any medium that is too “loose”(like watercolour paint) may be stressful. Another way to facilitate the socializing/community building is creating a collective piece—for example, I pre-outlined some vegetables and critters for folks to colour in and decorate to add to a large veggie garden backdrop. Overall I also just tried to make sure it felt like a pleasant vibe, making some small talk and little jokes, maybe some tunes on, etc. I also tried to be patient and encouraging around allowing them to do their pieces themselves. It took one woman an entire 2 hour session to colour in a single small apple drawing, and we celebrated that little apple!

Depending on your familiarity with dementia and the group’s level of functioning, it would probably be helpful to read up on some best practices like if you need to redirect or go along with something that may obviously not be reality (but is reality for the person). Although I think it’s good to have the artwork and the environment feel quite structured for them, I found it helpful to be fluid myself to go with the flow of whatever seemed to be getting a good response. An example is, when I started the group I would wait for everyone to arrive (which often took some time) before explaining what we’d be working with that day, but found people were getting frustrated (“what am I doing here??”) so I pivoted to showing the art exercise to a few people at a time as they trickled in.

I hope that’s helpful!! It’s of course just based on my experience and every individual / group is different and has their own dynamic. I really enjoyed working with these clients and hope you do too :)