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Therapy and the Arts The arts are for mental Vancouver illustrated education Association and health. the arts develop life-long Kerry Burke the whole person, cognitively, Lois Woolf intellectually, would are agree emotionally to with her.They health breakfast what antibiotics meeting, are for infections: a means of healing. At a tourism, community Lori Baxter, executive role in the economy, director of the Vancouver Cultural how the arts play an integral employment, health Downtown Alliance, development, and language through She argued Music images, by Gloria and physically experience. knows the that the arts foster therapist gestures, Loree learning by developing boundaries and encouraging an openness and art therapist of the arts crosses communication sound, movement and allows ideas and emotions remarkable. to be communicated and symbols. The results I$.erry Burke, o f North Vancouver, is a music therapist at Capilano College, where he currently teaches part-time. Burke started in the program 20 years ago as a student and began teaching several years later. He says music therapy can be used in a number of different areas of teaching and therapy treatment. M u s i c can stimulate the memory of someone suffering from Alzheimer's disease. "The music temporarily restores a fair amount of memory to these people. A lot of our personality is based on our memories and so it's very anxiety producing to not have memory; the music ties things together with rhythm. So while they are listening to the music, they have the feeling that things are tied together. Music therapy is also used in working with people with Down Syndrome and autism. Burke specializes in working with toddlers and young children, trying to get them to express themselves by making music. For some children, they are no words to describe what they're feeling or going through, but banging away at a drum might do the trick. Burke has used music therapy as a means of working with survivors of trauma. A survivor of childhood abuse himself. Burke says. "The goal is to bring up feelings. In abusive situations, the feelings are ghastly or socially unacceptable. So the music is like screaming and yelling and allows you to give form and control to the feelings." Burke says going back and remembering these feelings can be like Milking into blackness. " Y o u can control how deep you go into it. The music has a transformative element to it. so as well as remembering, you can touch the feelings, see them and turn them off when you stop playing." One specific case which Burke can talk about in detail is his sessions with a five-year-old whose father had died very suddenly. "The child began biting people at school and kicking his mother. A t first, the child would not play the drums, or any instrument, loudly. "One day. the skin on one of the drums started to break and he got a weird look in his eyes, ' C a n I break the drum?' he asked me. I said 'yes' and then came to understand that whacking it and breaking it was what he needed to finally have some control over his feelings." Burke's future sessions with the boy included breaking cardboard boxes, drawing, dancing and playing the guitar. " H i s behaviour changed, he stopped biting and kicking people." Burke also notes that for another child in the same kind of situation, the therapy would be different, as the $16 Adults/$14 Seniors+Students Ticketmaster 280-4444 Information 926-5230 f British Columbia Boys Choir presents Britain with special guest B r itten's Kevin McMillan Baritone Friday, June 7, 1996 Ryenon United Church, Kerrisdak 8pm Saturday, June 8, 1996 Wat Vancouver United Church 8pm