Unleashing the power of art therapy with Roberta Mazur

Roberta Mazur is an Arts Manager for the charity Arts 4 Dementia. She designs and organises arts and creative workshops for people living with early stage dementia, as well as curating and holding exhibitions of their work in public places. 

In this episode, Roberta shares what it's like working at the intersection of arts and charity, what she's learnt from her time running her own gallery, and the impact her current work has on her and the people involved. 

Website: arts4dementia.org.uk 

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Transcript

Matt: Hello, and welcome to the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Moseley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Each episode, I speak to artists and creative industry leaders about three main themes; teaching, inspiring, and creating. We talk about their experiences of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them and we explore how they foster creativity in their work with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts. Today my guest is Roberta Mazur. Roberta is an Arts Manager for the charity Arts 4 Dementia. She designs and organises arts and creative workshops for people living with early stage dementia, as well as curating and holding exhibitions of their work in public places. In this episode, I'm interested to hear from Roberta about what it's like working at the intersection of arts and charity, what she's learnt from her time running her own gallery, and the impact her current work has on her and the people involved. There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.

Matt: Hi Roberta! Thank you ever so much for joining us today. We like to start things at the beginning and ask our guests to wind back to some of their early influences about where creativity first came into your life. 

Roberta: We were always exposed to going to exhibitions or being able to go to theatre or a lot of free shows that my mum and dad would try and find. My art teacher at my school was, yeah, a really interesting character and just quite an engaging spirit and I think it's during kind of my earlier art classes that I realised that art is quite limitless in terms of what you can do and what you can feel and what you can experience, so I felt you were able to be very individual and I found that really inspiring from a young age.

Matt: Has that then carried through to inform you with your kind of professional career and the things that you do now?

Roberta: Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoy learning about other people's way of doing things as well in their own creativity. If I segment my career into two very distinct parts, being the gallerist and now being the arts manager with the charity, I was able to see that in both ways. So with the gallery, I worked with Indigenous Australian painters and it was very much a case with some of the older generation of painters where they wouldn't have been exposed necessarily to an academic arts education or any knowledge of that, but it was very pure from their own experience and from their own teachings that they were able to have a go and create with, maybe, materials that weren't something we would be used to, in terms of paints, etc. It was something that was quite pure and expressive. And then now with the charity, giving it a go is what it's all about. We get people coming to our workshops who've never picked up a paintbrush in their lives or have maybe not painted since school or not sung since school or danced since school. So, for people to have a go and do something that completely surprises them is something that we see in all of our workshop programs and is really exciting.

Matt: People listening to this will be intrigued about either a career in the gallery, but also about galleries themselves and about the roles that they play. Can we start talking a little bit about how you came to work there and what your role within the gallery was. 

Roberta: Yeah, sure. So I went to Australia when I was 19 on a holiday that lasted 11 years, didn't come back. And I had been studying my Foundation at the Wimbledon Art School, and so I was always interested in art, but I actually never myself had any experience with galleries apart from having been in them. I'd never seen, like, the workings of it from behind the scenes. So, I went to Australia and landed there and wanted to start working in the arts in some capacity, just because of my interest there. And I went and worked for a local gallery that worked with indigenous painters and just completely fell in love with it. I'd never really seen too much about Aboriginal art growing up in South London. I hadn't really been exposed to it and I think I just fell in love with the mix of the visual art form and simply what it looked like and the stories and the history and the culture, which is what it's all about.

Roberta: So I started working for that gallery and learnt a lot, met a lot of people, worked with the artists and, then as a happy coincidence and things would happen in life, there was just an opportunity with my colleague to rent a large gallery space that was in our town. It became available and yeah, we just sort of looked at each other and thought, “are you thinking what I'm thinking?” And at a young age, very, very reckless and ballsy, I decided to leap in.

Matt: So I wanted to ask you a little bit about the role, maybe, that art plays within the indigenous community in Australia.

Roberta: Absolutely. Well, it's an ancient art form. If you think, if you look at rock art or even mark makings that you would see in indigenous culture, it's not, it's only now that it's on a canvas or something that you can see on a wall, but historically it was all about storytelling and teaching younger members of the tribal groups how to navigate the landscape and histories about the dreamtime and the creation of all the rocks, the rivers, the mountains. They've all got a creation story, which is the dreamtime. So, to understand the land and to understand the history of the culture, that would be taught to younger members of the community through kind of visual means. They would do marks in the sand, in ceremony, they would do marks on the body with ochre paint, they would do marks on the walls with ochre paint, with rock art. So, that way of teaching was very visual and then it was only in the 70s that there was a school teacher, called Geoffrey Bardon, who saw the communities he was working with in the Central Desert, how they were using visual means to explain history and also survival in the landscape, how to find that water hole, how to find that food source, etc., he saw how they were doing that and he encouraged the elders of the community to paint a mural on a wall. Yeah, it was from there that the kind of contemporary indigenous art movement was born because it was then seeing historical visual form painted with acrylic paint and then things started to be painted on canvas etc., so it's a very new art movement but with ancient stories behind them. 

Matt: Having the opportunity to be a curator and to have control over what's represented within the gallery space, was it really important to you to represent this aspect of Australian life within your gallery space? 

Roberta: Yeah, absolutely. It was certainly working with the artists and hearing their stories that propelled the whole thing. So, working in a gallery environment, or certainly being the director of a gallery, it's all encompassing. So you're working with the artists, you're hearing the stories of their work. You're understanding then how to present that to other people, you're curating and displaying something that will be respectful of their stories and to be able to pass that on to the viewer and then you've got people coming in who are interested to learn about what they're seeing on the walls and you're imparting that information to them. So I found the whole journey of artist to viewer… I found it really fantastic. 

Matt: Yes because I was going to ask you about how collaborative that process of curation is. How would that process work? 

Roberta: It was definitely separate from us, and us as the curators and us as the gallerists, to the artists, so that we could work with them to kind of understand how they might want to present their work. But we had to take the kind of final call of what would visually be appropriate, how to tie everything together, working with many different painters. 

Matt: So you have like a sort of house style with the gallery as well, a certain way of approaching things. So it's trying to find a harmonious sort of middle ground, I mean, them in their work and you as an organisation, as a business. 

Roberta: Yeah, absolutely. I think what was helpful was not having had myself an experience or a bias of what it would be like working in a gallery, because, as I mentioned, it wasn't something that I was exposed to very much before. So I think my business partner and I, we were inspired by their stories and we were then able to kind of, well, use our skills as curators and being able to present that visually to people. But it was an interesting one in terms of socially engaged curation, where you're working with people to be really respectful of their stories and how that might present. So, it was very collaborative and we worked with people one on one. It was never people sending us a painting and we'd never met them, or people sending us a painting and we'd only read about their stories or something. It was... we worked very closely with our artists and tried to understand really what they were trying to get across in what they were creating.

Matt: [00:10:20] Within that experience and all the exhibitions that you will have curated and displayed within the space, is there one that stands out to you as a particularly memorable one?

Roberta: Our model was really, really different there to how it is in London and how it would be probably even in Sydney or Melbourne. We were in a coastal far-north Queensland town where the reef meets the rainforest. It's a really magical place and quite a quiet place if it wasn't for tourism, so everyone coming to the reef and the rainforest. We had a couple of exhibitions over the 10 years that I was involved in the gallery, but we actually designed a model that was more just a sort of continuous rotation of things happening. We had an influx of tourism from all around the world, a constant flow of people, so we instead created a collection that was quite continuous. We had a wide variety of artworks on display all the time. We had quite a big space to allow us to do that.

Roberta: There's a couple that really stand out. One is an artist, she's a young indigenous painter, along with her sister, they're called the King Sisters, Sarrita and Tarisse King, and they are the daughters of a famous indigenous painter called William King. They're young indigenous artists, they're in their thirties and they have a really different style of art to a lot of very traditional indigenous art, just purely because of their upbringing and the more modern Australia, if you will, that they were born and raised in. So for them, I found it quite interesting because they were exploring sort of their traditional heritage, but this style of work was quite contemporary.

Roberta: They would do a collaborative piece where the older sister, Tarisse, would paint a more organic image of the landscape with sort of more traditional indigenous, sort of pointillism, traditional dot style of work. And Sarrita would paint more of an, essentially, an urban, abstract image of the landscape with more sort of grid like patterns. And connecting that would be a red line, which would be the bloodline of their ancestors, and so I found that as a concept and as a story and of an exploration of more modern indigenous Australia really interesting as a piece of art that they did. 

Matt: So we might have some listeners who are at the start of hopefully what will be a really exciting creative career. They might be thinking about how to exhibit work in a gallery for the first time. Do you have any advice or tips for anyone listening about how they might approach a gallery, about expectations, about how work needs to be displayed?

Roberta: Sure. Having worked as a gallerist for those 10 years, I think the people who we worked with had a consistency in their style and they were able to present to us that I feel they'd reached a place of already exploring different styles of their work but reaching a kind of point where they were able to demonstrate a body of work, a cohesive style. It's comfortable for a gallerist to see that someone knows who they are as an artist, because if someone comes to you and the work is still in a more exploratory phase, although that can be quite interesting to see, you are aware that that may change. And if, as a gallerist, you're working on marketing for an artist or being able to, kind of, present to clients a particular style of work or a particular theme, it can be quite difficult if the style of art is still being explored and still changing quite a lot. So, I think my advice for anyone would be, there's no rush… to wait, and there's always this eagerness to want to get your work out there and, but I feel if you can feel really confident and comfortable with your style of work and who you are as an artist before you then approach a gallery, I think that will stand you in better stead for your career as an artist, in terms of both the the gallery recognising who you are and what your identity as an artist is. Of course, things can change and nothing is fixed and nothing is rigid. 

Matt: Like you said, there often is this rush to, kind of, put yourself into those environments and I think it's reassuring for people to hear that there's a real value in developing your work to a point where you've got a comfortable, authentic identity which is recognisable in your practice. In terms of the pricing of people's work, what are the factors that they have to think about? Because obviously sometimes it's difficult for you to be able to put a value on things.

Roberta: It’s helpful, I think, for a gallery to see both like a strong identity, but also something that's been considered and researched and isn't just plucking sort of numbers out of thin air. It's always better if you've done your research beforehand, you're able to kind of compare yourself and your work with other people in the market. It's less to do with the time it takes you to produce a piece of work. There could be an artist who does a dot on a page, and because of who they are, it will be worth more than...

Matt: Yes, we know a few of those.

Roberta: So, if you're a new artist who's trying to establish yourself, it does have to be priced in a way that's realistic. You have to see maybe what other people who are doing their first solo shows, what are they pricing their work at? Exploring and researching heavily and comparing what other people are doing who are in a similar point in their career. And then, as time moves on, as you do more events, you might do more group shows, you've maybe done a solo show, that will all impact your price point. We tended, as a gallery, to work with artists and maybe review their work every year.

Matt: It’s incredibly helpful because I think it’s sometimes difficult for young people to ask these questions. Galleries can be quite scary.

Roberta: Yeah, I think it's about being brave and if you are approaching people and you've done the work to understand what your price point should be, going in with that confidence and being able to, kind of, establish yourself as an artist and show people what you can do.

Matt: So, I'd like to learn a little bit about your journey back to the UK and then kind of into what you’re… the area you're currently working in at the moment. 

Roberta: Yeah, sure. So I moved back from Australia, more or less, the beginning of 2020. Perfect timing. And I had moved back for a number of personal reasons, but the gallery is still going in Australia, Ngarru Gallery. My ex-business partner is still running it over there, so I'm really proud to see it running from afar, and she's doing a great job. I was on the Arts Jobs listing, and I spotted a job going with Arts 4 Dementia, and, just to rewind a little bit, when I was still working in Australia, still had the gallery, I came over quite frequently to visit my family. Sadly, my dad wasn't very well, and he and I went to a ceramics group at Lambeth Palace, and that was actually run by Arts 4 Dementia. It's a programme that's still running, called Clay for Dementia, and we went together at the end of 2017, so a few months before my dad passed away. And, we'd never really done anything like that together before, and we went together to this workshop programme and just had a really, really nice time together, despite everything else being a bit rubbish at the time. But going there… I came over for a couple of months and we went there every week and it was just a really joyous part of the week where we could kind of go and forget all of the crap that was going on and just create something together. And I had no idea then that, fast forward a few years, that I would be working for the charity.

Matt: It sounds like your dad had this wonderful experience. And then, fast forward, you now work for the organisation as an arts manager. Can you tell us a little bit about what the role is and about what the organisation does?

Roberta: [00:20:00] Yeah, sure. Arts 4 Dementia, we deliver and champion arts activities for people with early stage dementia and their companions, and we work with arts organisations and community organisations to deliver a series of workshops that are facilitated by artists, and to engage people in a variety of different creative practices across different art forms. That can be from painting, to music, to dance, to drama - it covers a lot of things. We also offer training, which is in early stage dementia awareness and the arts. It's specifically for arts organisations and artists to understand how they might be able to deliver their creative practice for people with dementia.

Roberta: We also signpost the opportunities that other people deliver across the UK. So, if there's other organisations who are doing things for people with dementia to do with the creative arts, we will also promote that and encourage people to attend things in their local community. As the Arts Manager, my job is designed to raise awareness for the benefits of the creative arts for people with dementia, and that can be from developing projects that will engage people with dementia in the community with different arts organisations or community organisations. Or that could be working with organisations to display some artwork in their spaces that may raise awareness and also demonstrate what people can achieve and display their artwork for them in different venues. Or it can be working with our workshop programs, seeing what artworks are being created, and then creating a bit of a collection from that which can then be presented and part of perhaps a public exhibition or public display, again to both raise awareness for the benefits of the arts for people with dementia, but also really showcase what they can achieve and what they can still do. Because I think a lot of people feel that life may be a bit lost after a diagnosis and the charity, really what we try and do is to empower people for what still can be achieved despite the perceived limitations of the illness.

Matt: And what are the benefits for someone who's received a dementia diagnosis to engage with the creative arts and arts workshops?

Roberta: What we’ve seen in terms of the impact of people engaging in the creative arts is getting out in your community, going to a group where there might be people experiencing similar challenges as yourself, or your loved ones and engaging with other people to boost morale. Creating the art itself or singing or dancing or engaging in the creative workshop is hugely empowering for people. It might be that they feel like there's lots of things that they're unable to do because of their illness, but creative skills can remain really strong years after dementia onset. So, being able to start painting and learning how to paint, or going to a group and learning something new from an artist, a lot of people might think that with dementia you're not able to learn new skills but you are. And you can still create and you can still go to these groups and learn something new and, I think, what we see from our workshops is this huge sense of achievement, where people feel that a lot of loss of confidence may be happening in their lives but being able to go there and go, “yeah, I can still do this” is is what we try and get across in all of our all of our workshops. It's also the benefit for the companions and the loved ones and carers as much as for the person with dementia. Being able to go somewhere and be yourself and create something that is uniquely you, I think, has a huge impact on the people retaining their identity and retaining who they are.

Matt: Obviously you're delivering this amazing kind of range of creative activities that people engage with. Is there one that particularly resonates with you that you love to observe more than others and what does that workshop look like for the participant?

Roberta: Yeah, one really great one that we're delivering as an organisation at the moment is a year-long programme in Elephant and Castle. It's delivered in 10-week blocks, where we've had different visual artists delivering their creative practice to our participants. And so, it's been really wonderful in terms of seeing the personal engagement in some of the participants who are coming, making friends with others in the group. Some people started off coming to the sessions not knowing anyone and are now travelling back with people on the train and being able to kind of make friends and they've shared other groups that they're going to that now they might attend together. So that's been really wonderful to see. We've delivered a print programme there for 10 weeks, which was really exciting to see people creating and learning different skills in terms of print, screen printing to gelli plate printing, all sorts of different things, which created some really exciting results.

Roberta: And then art journalling, which has been something we hadn't delivered at Arts 4 Dementia before, but has been a really introspective practice where people are working in an art journal each week. This is very much getting people to think about, not reminiscence, it's not about thinking back, it's still being in the moment, but it's working with “how do I feel about that still life that I'm painting, and what is it that interests me about that, how does it make me feel?” and it's kind of, that's been quite an interesting process to work with. 

Matt: [00:26:00] So, you deliver training programs to creative practitioners about how they can adapt their practice to become a workshop facilitator working in this space. Are there a couple of key things that people will need to adapt within the way that they create to then be able to deliver to people with early stages dementia?

Roberta: It’s not too dissimilar in how you would deliver to anyone, in a way. The difference is to slow down the steps for people, but we really want people to deliver in exactly the way they would to anyone else. It's about keeping it respectful, it's about keeping it challenging. Our demographic is early stage dementia specifically, so it's people who've just received a diagnosis, so although certain things may become more challenging for them, essentially, they're still able to learn and create in exactly the same way as everyone else. It's just about slowing down those steps, it's just about making things very, very clear, and it's just offering that extra level of encouragement and support to people to really understand what it is that they're doing in the workshops.

Matt: Does the, sort of, that mental support kind of play quite a big role of what the workshop is doing?

Roberta: Yeah, I think in terms of just improving people's mental wellbeing, it's all about the joy of creating and, for a lot of people, our family included, going along to an art class When my father had his diagnosis would have been a really daunting prospect. We wouldn't have necessarily felt comfortable in another adult art class, for example, just being cautious of his symptoms and wanting him, as well as us, to feel really comfortable in the space. So, what we see with our workshops is providing a space where people can come where we are aware of their symptoms. We know what to expect as the organisation. Our artists know what to expect as the facilitator and our volunteers. So, it's about them feeling comfortable in the space. When you're surrounded by other people who might be experiencing the same challenges, you know you're not alone.

Roberta: It's mostly about seeing what other people can do, coming into the space and going, “okay, my loved one might have dementia, but now I'm coming to this group and look what they're doing over there. Wow, okay”.

Matt: You've been organising some exhibitions recently. Is that right? To showcase some of that work?

Roberta: Yeah, absolutely. We did the Affordable Art Fair in 2021, which was great to, kind of, raise awareness for the charity. But, we did our first public exhibition just with participants' work that came off the back of the Elephant and Castle workshop that we've been doing. That was the first time we had a public display of participants’ work where people could come with their loved ones, with their family members, and come and see what they had created, displayed and exhibited really respectfully. It looked like a professional art exhibition.

Matt: Yeah, they're artists.

Roberta: Absolutely. Pride, I think that people felt, coming in and seeing their work with a big text wall, like an exhibition so you could come in and read about the project and what people had done in the space. Each artwork had an artwork label, accrediting the artist and a bit of a story about the artworks that were on display. Yeah, that was a really exciting one. The other project that I've done recently that we're really excited about was with the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. They had a new clinic that they'd opened with big, empty, white walls, and it was a place where people were going for memory assessment, for dementia diagnosis and for cognitive stimulation therapies. One of the resounding comments they were getting was that the place was a little bit depressing to be in. It was very clinical, it felt like a doctor's surgery. So, when they approached us and asked our advice about what might be possible for the walls and we got chatting and, what developed from that was a service user-led project that worked with people with dementia who were using their services, and NHS staff to create a body of work that led to a permanent legacy installation that's now on the walls there. So that was… that's been really exciting to be a part of, because, the process from beginning to end was focus groups held with service users there to say, “what would you like to see on the walls here?” and what came out of that was local landmarks. People really wanted to see things from their community.

Matt: [00:31:00]That's one of the brilliant things, I think, about arts and health is about how respectful… and about the empathy and the kind of support that's created is totally about respecting the individual, isn't it? It's such an exciting outlook. Do you feel that arts and health is being kind of recognised more by those mainstream health services and sees for all of the, kind of, amazing benefits that are available.

Roberta: Yeah absolutely. I think there's definitely a push for non-pharmaceutical remedies to people's health and how, same with mental health and same with many things that can be improved by community engagement and social engagement with other people. Getting out of your house, going for walks in the park, going to a local art class, getting creative, going to a local dance class. There's so many benefits for health in just getting out there and doing things. We try and promote our programmes within the NHS in terms of social prescribing, but also in GP practices, to catch people at the earliest stage of their diagnosis. As I mentioned, Arts 4 Dementia focus on early stage dementia, that's definitely a time when people are diagnosed where there's limited resources. They're told they've got this diagnosis and then they're sent away and come back to another appointment in six months time and we'll see how you're doing. If there's an opportunity where they can immediately engage creatively with their community, we try and tap in then so that they… they're not lost, they don't retreat from society and that they are able to connect with other people who are experiencing similar challenges and experience a little bit of joy at a really difficult time.

Matt: I mean, it's incredibly important work and thank you for doing it. We always like to ask our guests to provide a, sort of, provocation for our listeners. So, that can be a call to action or it can be a thought that you'd like them to consider or introduce them to a new concept, but just wondered if you had anything that you thought might be inspiring for our listeners to have a go at.

Roberta: [00:33:00] Before I started working for the charity, although I feel like I knew this, I don't think I fully grasped how significant the impact of the creative arts can be on people's wellbeing. I certainly knew that it was, in terms of a viewer and the enjoyment of it, etc., but, I think, until then, I hadn't really fully appreciated that impact. So, I think I would suggest anyone to look at their skills or their creative practice and think about how that can be adapted to inspire and empower people who… maybe if they're experiencing illness, but also if they haven't been exposed themselves or don't have their own creative practice in their lives. Perhaps seeing, getting out into community organisations, be it volunteering or just engaging with local community organisations to see how that might be possible. 

Matt: Brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic because, I think what you've done a brilliant job of is demystifying how easy it can be to transition your creative practice to do something community-based or something kind for other people.

Matt: Thank you ever so much, Roberta. I mean, it's so brilliant to hear about how the skills that you've developed in all these different spaces have come around again in terms of the support and the help that you give people and the work that you're doing is so fundamentally important. Thank you ever so much for today. We really appreciate it.

Roberta: Thank you so much.

Matt: A massive thank you to Roberta for her time today. After this episode, I'm going to go away and have a look at how I might be able to participate in this space. I hope you do, too. If you want to know more about Roberta and Arts 4 Dementia work, you can visit arts4dementia.org.uk. You can find the link to this in our episode description, along with some really interesting information about a project currently being delivered with Central Saint Martins.

Matt: Really hope you enjoyed this episode. Please do subscribe and why not share with a friend? Please do rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts, it's so helpful for us to understand what's great about the show and what we can improve. Thanks for listening and until next time, take care.