Through skilled and evidence-informed facilitation, the department of Culture & Arts therapeutic recreationists provide personalized interventions to holistically support clients’ interests, needs and abilities. Our goal is to provide clients with a supportive environment to grow, learn, and explore the arts in order to enhance overall physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The programs we currently offer serve both Baycrest Hospital and Apotex through virtual, in-person, and hybrid programs to allow all clients to participate freely and to their full potential.

Current Programs:

·     Concerts
·     Cultural Celebrations
·     Sharing Dance Older Adults
·   Shalom/Oneg Shabbat
·     Art Cart
·     Art Appreciation
·     Expressive Movement
·     Sensory Stimulation
·     Story-telling
·     Travelogue
·     Gardening
·     Lifelong Learning
·     Digital Art
·     Intergenerational Programming

Concerts

For our concerts, entertainers come onsite to perform live 1-hour musical concerts. Some of these concerts are livestreamed across the units. Performers offer a range provide of different genres of music, in multiple languages and from different eras. Special concerts also reflect the holidays at various times of the year.

Baycrest Classrooms

The Baycrest Classroom is a program offered in partnership with the Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). It offers courses with weekly sessions, aimed at providing enhanced learning opportunities for older adults on a variety of topics (e.g. gardens around the world, great cities around the world, great chefs). Courses are currently offered virtually.

Art Cart

In conjunction with our Arts Studio group programs, our Creative Arts Workers bring a variety of group and 1:1 arts programming directly to Baycrest residents, via a mobile art cart that regularly visits units across both the Apotex and hospital.

Oneg Shabbat

The program honors Shabbat, which commemorates the day of rest, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. To accommodate the dinner hour, we start the program in the early afternoon, gathering groups of 5-10 clients to the Oneg Shabbat program in the hospital. The program includes reading poetry and stories, singalong music, as well as Shabbat songs and prayers. On some Fridays we may have an entertainer. The goal of the sessions is to engage the client’s cognitive and physical domains alongside their social, emotional and spiritual sensations to improve overall wellbeing.

Gardening

This summertime program provides hands-on opportunities that encourage clients to maintain, acquire, and utilize gardening skills as part of a social and multi-sensory experience. 

There are two outdoor community gardens located around the perimeter of the Apotex building. Clients tend to the variety of plants that grow, including herbs, fruits and vegetables. 

We use accessible gardening tables to provide our residents with the opportunity to plant, water, tend, and harvest vegetables and herbs. The program is based on a combination of participatory experiences in the garden, open discussions, as well as a variety of sensory activities (taste, smell, touch). 

Additionally, clients on several floors in the Apotex and the hospital tend to their own community gardens on their balconies, planting flowers and vegetables.