Murals help residents feel at home
Walk down most long-term care hallways and they all start to look the same. Same walls. Same doors. Same colours. For the average visitor, it's easy enough to navigate. For someone living with Alzheimer's or dementia, it can be genuinely overwhelming.
That's the problem the Memory Care Wing in Kelvington set out to solve.
The idea started with Susan Gellert and was overseen by Morgan Ermel. From there, it took on a life of its own. A local volunteer took donation request letters door to door to businesses across town. The community responded. By the end, $30,038.65 had been raised, entirely from local support.
Murals were ordered from Creative Art Co. in Ontario. Local artist Iana Thomas took it from there, hanging every panel and completing all the painting and drywall work herself.
Leaning on environmental cues, warm colours, and familiar visuals, the design of the murals was chosen to help residents feel orientated and at ease. The thinking is straightforward: some residents may still be living, mentally, in an earlier time. The environment should meet them there with distinct doorways and carefully chosen details to give residents something real to anchor to.
The difference has been hard to miss.
One resident put it simply, “it went from a place to go to die to a place where I want to live."
Six months of work. A community that showed up. And a hallway that finally feels like home. This is what our CARES values look like in practice — where compassion, accountability, respect, equity and safety are not just words but are built into the walls of our facilities too.
