As chief executive officer at A.G. Rhodes Health & Rehab in Atlanta, Deke Cateau is familiar with the inner workings of long-term care. Unfortunately, he says, that is not the case with the general population.
Tina Sandri, chief executive at Forest Hills of DC in the nation’s capital, came to the same conclusion, particularly about those in her adjacent neighborhood. Local volunteers and interaction have fallen off considerably since the pandemic.
Searching for a public-facing way to improve familiarity within their communities, Cateau and Sandri each became intrigued with Art Against Ageism, an organization that battles ageist stereotyping.
Their interest led each to separate, yet similar, campaigns that include massive photo images of individual residents and workers pasted to the exteriors of their buildings. By all accounts, the effort to make the people inside the buildings seem more relatable have been wildly successful.
Cateau began on the path after a proposal suggested by Art Against Ageism’s co-founder Jordan Evans at a LeadingAge conference.
“He told me about this awesome concept where they paste pictures on the walls of these communities,” recalled Cateau. “They, in partnership with another group called Inside Out, [are] trying to take the images of inside a nursing home outside the walls. This one was magnificent, the location on the boulevard in the heart of downtown Atlanta.”
Today, the entrance of A.G. Rhodes’ Grant Park facility is adorned with the faces of hundreds of residents and staff members with the organization. They were pasted on the walls by volunteers from Georgia State University’s gerontology program.
See them, hear them
Meanwhile, Forest Hills’ “See Me, Hear Me: The Art of Living” campaign has taken on added dimensions. Funded with a $14,000 grant from AARP, a well-known local photographer created custom color portraits of residents and staff. A dedicated web page explains the project in great detail.
Tenleytown Main Street, a community-based nonprofit organization, partnered with Forest Hills so the building-wide mural could be officially featured in the DC Art All Night Festival.
“We are super-pleased with the awareness created by this AARP Community Challenge grant opportunity,” Sandri told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News earlier this week. “About 200,000 people participated in the DC Art All Night festival. While not all stopped by our exhibit, we were highlighted on the event map and in digital programming.”
The improved relations with the surrounding area have been significant since the 75 4-foot-by-4-foot color portraits were pasted to the walls, Sandri said. The powerful main image is a male resident from the chest up, which towers 10 feet tall by 8 feet wide.
“We have had people who want to volunteer to sing, bring their dog to visit residents, volunteer in general, and ‘adopt’ residents without families or other loved ones,” Sandri explained. “We also have the diplomatic community interested in scheduling a day of service at Forest Hills.”
She said one of the morale-boosting project’s main goals was creating greater visibility of the building’s hard-working skilled care and assisted living staff, particularly the many-layered African-American, Black and African components.
“Our temporary public art initiative put a much-needed spotlight on their contributions to supporting older adults over the age of 50, as well as their own unique passions as adults over the age of 50,” Sandri said. “This project helped to dismantle harmful age stereotypes by advancing positive age beliefs.”
The project brought together multiple generations in the District of Columbia. American University and Sidwell Friends School students helped affix the posters in mid-September, and important visitors included the mayor, a local councilman, the director of the DC Department of Aging and Community Living, Ms. Senior DC and various other local business people and community leaders.
Putting care on the map
Art Against Ageism cofounder Meg LaPorte says that it is important to prominently display the humanity of nursing homes because they are out of sight, out of mind for most Americans.
“I think that the people who live and work in nursing homes are largely invisible in this country,” said LaPorte. “If you think about it, there are 13,400-some McDonald’s restaurants in this country but not everybody knows where one of 15,500 nursing homes are in their community. Most people just don’t know because they’re invisible, hidden behind these four walls.”
The mission got off to a good start almost immediately in Atlanta as well. Cateau noted that he quickly got to educate a few locals about the services A.G. Rhodes provides thanks to the display.
It turns out, the murals are not just good for business. They’re good for fighting ageist stigmas.
“We’ve had several people in the Grant Park area come up to the community,” said Cateau. “Several people didn’t even know that it was a nursing home. So a lot of people now have been asking about it. I think that’s great not just for business, but a great [way] to get rid of some of those [misconceptions].”
While the artwork will eventually fade or peel away, the burgeoning aging population of the United States will not. Cateau says there needs to be a cultural shift in our treatment of elders because, like it or not, everyone gets old. But there is no need to be scared of it.
“We have to build these walls for protection and for safety but at the same time, we have to educate and edify the public about what happens beyond these walls,” said Cateau. “There are many communities and societies that are more sophisticated in their reverence, understanding and treatment of aging populations. I think in the United States, we have been enamored by youth and so much goes into caring for youth that we have neglected the elderly side of our population. The demographics are forcing us now to look at that differently and spread the love, so to speak, across all ages.”
