practical living
Sydney’s Twilight Aged Care home
enjoy the Moove & Groove program.
Let’s boogie
Getting residents moving and
grooving with silent discos.
By Conor Burke
E
ach week the residents at Sydney’s
Twilight Aged Care home in Glades
Bay look forward to singing and
dancing like no-one is watching when
the Moove & Groove silent disco hustles
into town.
The brainchild of founder and CEO
Alison Harrington, the company runs
group therapy sessions called ACTIVE,
where each resident has an individual
wireless set of headphones playing songs
from the curated playlist of the instructor,
who runs the group through a set of
dances and movements.
“The idea came about four years ago
when I saw a silent disco happening and I
thought, ‘I love dancing and having fun,’ so
I was immediately drawn to that. But I was
also studying social impact at university
and wanted to make a difference in the
world,” Harrington says.
Initially started as a business holding
silent discos for fundraising events,
Moove & Groove then took a left turn
into hen’s parties.
“They were ending these hen’s parties
on a delirious high and burning about
300 calories.”
22 agedcareinsite.com.au
While at uni, Harrington was given an
assignment to look into the issues facing
older Australians, which led to Moove &
Groove in its current form.
“We had to come up with a novel and
fake idea to improve mental and physical
health outcomes. I didn’t need a fake idea,
because I had a real idea – to use my silent
discos in aged care.”
One government grant and a pilot
program later, Moove & Groove now works
with 30 aged care facilities.
It runs two other programs alongside
ACTIVE. Its dementia program combines
parts of ACTIVE with parts of the new
LISTEN program, and was developed in
consultation with dementia experts.
The LISTEN program is a custom
website giving facilities access to curated
reminiscent-based listening content. This
is then used in group settings through the
wireless headphone technology provided
by Moove & Groove and facilitated by
aged care staff.
“The impact of this is to create
meaningful connections between staff
and residents, and residents and residents,
and it enables volunteers to engage
with residents easily, creating interesting
conversations after listening,” says Moove
& Groove general manager Kate Sowden.
“We find that after a listening experience,
the participants go away and talk to each
other with a common bond,” she says.
“Having many options of interests on
this platform means staff can provide
person-centred options depending on
their particular interests. Perhaps Murray
only likes to listen to science, and Yvonne
loves classical music – this can be
provided throughout the day to give each
person an activity personalised to their
specific interests.”
Sowden also believes the bond formed
between the instructors and residents
is instrumental: knowing their music
interests and more about them as people
encourages the residents to respond in
class and in turn leads to a positive impact
on their health.
In the end, it’s the difference staff and
families see in residents who take part in
the silent discos that makes the program
worthwhile.
“One day in the class, one of the ladies
had a husband who was [living with]
moderate dementia and he used to just sit
at the back of the class,” Harrington says.
“We said, ‘Hey, put the headphones on
him, he can join in.’ And I’ll never forget this
moment: he spent the whole class totally
engaged. And his wife came up to us and
said, ‘It feels like I have my husband back
for an hour’.” ■
For more, visit mooveandgroove.com.au