Cognitive Dynamics Launches Bringing Art to Life Chicago

Friday, June 10th, 2016

Cognitive Dynamics Foundation has launched Bringing Art to Life Chicago, an innovative art therapy program for persons with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.  The program will be based on the past 5 years’ success of Bringing Art to Life in partnership with the University of Alabama Honors College in the service learning course, UH Art to Life.

The program will bring art therapy and the opportunity for empathic, intergenerational relationships to persons with dementia and students in the Chicago area, as well as education and support for their caregivers.

Our team includes Project Directors and former UA Art to Life students, Angela Ray and Cyrus Alavi, Lead Physician and Rush University Neurologist, Neelum Aggarwal, MD, and VA Lead, Kevin Hull, JD.

The program is supported in part by the High Socks for Hope Foundation, a nonprofit started by Chicago White Sox pitcher, David Robertson and his wife, Erin.  The photographs below were made at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago at a recent fundraiser hosted by High Socks for Hope.

For more information about the program, please contact BringingArtToLifeChicago@gmail.com.

BATL Chicago team Angela Ray, Neelum Aggarwal, MD, and Kevin Hull, JD

BATL Chicago Project Directors, Angela Ray and Cyrus Alavi

Chicago White Sox pitcher, David Robertson, wife, Erin, Angela Ray and Neelum Aggarwal, MD

Cognitive Dynamics and UA to Host Art Gala

Friday, April 8th, 2016

To all former students & participants in the Art to Life program at the University of Alabama Honors College:

PLEASE SAVE THE DATE: APRIL 19, 2016 – 6 to 8 pm
Ferguson Center Gallery on the UA campus
751 Campus Drive West, Tuscaloosa, AL 35404

Art to Life: A Celebration – A Short Film

Sunday, April 3rd, 2016

This video by Lauren Musgrove documents a celebratory dinner held on 12/8/2015 for the University of Alabama Honors College service learning course “Art to Life,” developed by Cognitive Dynamics Foundation in collaboration with the University. The course pairs undergraduate students of diverse majors with persons who have Alzheimer’s disease or other causes of dementia in an empathy and relationship-building art therapy, reminiscence and storytelling experience. To honor their participants, students host an end-of-semester gala at which leather-bound legacy books from LifeBio.com are presented to the participants and their families. These books contain student letters, poetry, participant art and life story material. Students also give the participants the art they have created over the semester, and share stories and words of thanks to honor and validate the personhood of their new friends.

Click on the link below to watch the 6 minute video.

Art to Life: A Celebration

Dr. Potts Interviewed for U.S. News and World Report Article

Tuesday, December 30th, 2014

Daniel C. Potts, MD, FAAN was interviewed for an article on the use of poetry and other creative arts in the care and treatment of persons with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.  The article, released today, was written by Kristine Crane, a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News.

The piece highlights the work of Mind’s Eye Poetry, an innovative organization founded by Molly Middleton Meyer.  Meyer’s inspiration comes from personal experience: she lost both her parents to Alzheimer’s disease.  A self-described “closet poet,” Meyer decided to get a Master of Fine Arts in poetry, and she now facilitates poetry workshops with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients nationwide.  During a workshop, each person contributes at least one line to a group poem – she’s facilitated more than 700 poems this way.

Dr. Potts was asked to comment about his father’s creativity which revealed itself after the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, and which provided the spark to start his own creative fire.  Shortly before the elder Potts’ death, Dr. Potts started writing poetry as a way to combat the stress of his father’s illness.  He and his family published The Broken Jar in 2006, a volume of his father’s art paired with his own poems, and donated the book and all proceeds to Caring Days Adult Dementia Daycare Center in Tuscaloosa, AL, the facility where Mr. Potts learned to paint.  Cognitive Dynamics was founded to bring similar opportunities involving the arts to others with dementia and their caregivers.

As an arts advocate for the American Academy of Neurology, Potts also notes much clinical interest in the healing power of the arts. “People on the front lines are pulling the science and the art together because they are tapping more deeply than most of our therapies,” he says. “We’re going to have to tap deeply into the spiritual and emotional to make a difference in our care.”

The article may be accessed in full at the following link:

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2014/12/29/unlocking-the-inner-poet-how-poetry-helps-people-with-dementia