Category — Articles

Sing Out Loud Together is fun for participants Pat Turner and Molly Fitzpatrick, and uses the unique power of music to promote social engagement and wellbeing.

Students from The Knox School and residents of Australian Unity’s Victoria Grange in Vermont South are uniting voices and enthusiasm to form the Sing Out Loud Together choir, in a pilot program designed to build community connections across the generations.

The Sing Out Loud Together program, run by national not-for-profit organisation Arts Health Institute, involves students of the Knox School participating in weekly sessions with residents of Victoria Grange, learning songs from another era, the history of the music and enjoying interaction with their ‘buddies’ through interview and research tasks.

The course culminates with a choir performance at the school, along with a student-led project showcasing what they have learned from their older friends and the era they grew up in.

Arts Health Institute CEO, Dr Maggie Haertsch, believes the Sing Out Loud Together program has several benefits for both residents and students by connecting in a meaningful way through music and song.

While fun and engaging, the pioneering program is a structured, therapeutic, cognitively stimulating, group-based session held weekly with primary school students in the Victoria Grange aged care facility.  It requires the active participation of the older people and students together.  While it is within a group, individual needs strengths and musical preferences are a key part of the program’s design.

The Victoria Grange/Knox School program is the first Sing Out Loud course to be held in Victoria and is based on a successful program run throughout Sydney over the past 18 months.  The program has been the subject of a longitudinal study and is party funded by the Department of Health and Ageing.

As its Melbourne Winter Masterpieces offering for 2013 The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) has given us the opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the Hollywood costume creations that have made as gasp in favourite movies and on favourite actors over the past few decades.

The famous green velvet gown supposedly made by Scarlett O’Hara from her mother’s curtains in Gone with the Wind; Kate Winslet’s stunning costume designed by Deborah L Scott to express Titanic passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater’s stiff and structured character; and Judi Dench’s regal attire from Shakespeare in Love, which won costume designer Sandy Powell the first of her three Oscars, are among the 100 costumes in this glamorous exhibition.  Direct from the V&A Museum in London, with some very special Australian film costumes added, Hollywood Costume is curated by eminent Hollywood costume designer, writer and academic Professor Deborah Nadoolman Landis.

The costume pictured here will surely bring some wonderful film memories to mind – the floaty windswept dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Hollywood Costume is at ACMI, Federation Square, until 18 August.  Admission $19.50/$15.50.

From left: Elizabeth Jensen, President COTA Vic, Sue Hendy, CEO COTA Vic, Catherine Brown, CEO Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation,
Mike Zafiropoulos, Trustee, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation.

Council on the Ageing Victoria (COTA Vic), with the assistance of a grant from The Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, has launched an innovative plan to bring Victoria international recognition as an age friendly community.

The idea of building on the capacities of older people, working alongside society and governments to create Age Friendly Communities is an initiative of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

At a recent function at the Melbourne Town Hall, COTA Vic formally embarked upon the Age Friendly Communities project that will enable Victorian communities to join WHO’s Global Network of Age Friendly Communities, a program dedicated to the development of healthy and active ageing environments around the world.

COTA Vic is working with older people, local councils, seniors’ organisations, state government and business to identify what is needed to make their community age friendly.

Sue Hendy COTA Vic CEO says that it is time to change attitudes and tackle ageism, as the number of people over 65 years is predicted to double over the next 30 years.

“To achieve an age friendly community it will mean working for better access to good transport services, appropriate housing, age-friendly designed buildings, civic participation, employment, supportive health services and respect for older people,” said Sue Hendy.  “These are key factors for ensuring an age-friendly community that is safe and enjoyable.”

Catherine Brown, CEO of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, which has provided a grant of $300,000 over the next two years to fund the program, said that the foundation sees developing a more supportive and inclusive society as a priority.

“An age friendly community supports the health and wellbeing of older people, as well as promoting life opportunities and making our society more inclusive.  The Foundation is delighted to be the funding partner for Age Friendly Communities,” Ms Brown said.

•  For more about the Age Friendly Communities project see COTA Comment on page 4 of the April issue.

Lisa Tomasetti: Cygnets on 6th Avenue, photograph – inkjet pigment print, edition of 10, 80 x 80 cm (image size)

A series of photographs taken by an Australian artist on show at Collingwood’s James Makin Gallery this month, gives us an entirely new view of the Australian Ballet.   Removed from the controlled interior environment of the theatre our ballerinas energise the streets of some of the world’s capital cities.

Highly acclaimed Sydney-based photographic artist Lisa Tomasetti’s new exhibition presents photographs of the Australian Ballet taken in her role as tour photographer on the company’s tours to Tokyo, New York and Paris.

With her eye for the unconventional, Tomasetti’s images contrast the energy, grace and athleticism of the ballerinas with the solid, sometimes unwelcoming landscape of big city locations.  As the gallery notes suggest, the “juxtapositions contained in these works are manifold: the mundane reality of city living against the high gloss unreality of theatrical performance; the physicality of regular people, against the spectacular athletic prowess and sculpted forms of the ballerinas; and the oddness of the ballerinas’ stage costumes with their fine gauzy delicacy when seen against the dirty hues and unkempt appearance of the urban familiar.”

The exhibition, Behind the Scenes: The Australian Ballet on the International Stage will be officially opened by the Ballet’s artistic director, David McAllister and will run from 7 to 30 March at James Makin Gallery, 67 Cambridge Street, Collingwood. Tel: 9416 3966, www.jamesmakingallery.com