Gilmore Gardens Retirement Residence | April 2026
Edward Li (Co-President of Speak With Arts)
By the time we performed at Gilmore Gardens, I had become more comfortable with the idea that feedback did not need to look the same from one person to another. However, I was still trying to solve another problem: completely open-ended conversations could be difficult for volunteers to guide and could also make it harder for us to learn from the responses afterward.
For Gilmore, we tried to find a middle ground where we kept the individual conversations we had used at Courtyard, but added clearer response options and an “other” category. This gave volunteers enough structure to begin a conversation without requiring residents to choose only from answers we had already decided for them.
The balance between structure and openness had started to interest me because I was noticing the same problem in different parts of our programs. Too much structure could make an interaction feel forced, while too little could make it difficult to know where to begin. Designing the program was becoming less about choosing one approach over the other and more about deciding when each was useful.
During the performance, we also paid more attention to responses that happened before we asked any questions. Several residents moved their hands or bodies with the rhythm without being prompted, and during the research-sharing segment, I noticed frequent nodding and attentive expressions. Earlier, I might have been tempted to explain exactly what those reactions meant. By this point, however, I was more cautious. A nod could mean recognition, agreement, interest, or something else entirely, so observing a response did not necessarily mean that I completely understood it.
This also changed how I thought about the research-sharing segment. Rather than using research to explain what residents were supposed to experience while listening to music, it seemed more useful to introduce an idea and then allow their own experiences to add to or complicate it.
An unexpected staffing problem after the concert led to another change. Because the performance was close to the Easter holiday, we had fewer volunteers than usual, so some of the performers joined the post-concert conversations. Normally, volunteers handled most of these conversations while performers packed up or talked among themselves, but this time residents could speak directly with the students they had just watched perform.
What began as a practical solution made the conversations feel more personal. Residents asked about instruments, talked about pieces they recognized, and shared their own experiences with music. I had previously thought of performers and volunteers as having separate roles, but this made that division seem less necessary. If the purpose of the program included connection as well as performance, the interaction did not have to end with the last note.
Afterward, I compared some of the conversations from Gilmore with what we had heard at Courtyard. Certain themes appeared again, including relaxation, memories, attention, and enjoyment, although they did not appear in exactly the same way. Two performances were clearly not enough to make broad conclusions, but they gave us patterns worth noticing and questions worth carrying into future programs.
I left Gilmore thinking that improving a program did not always require adding another activity or designing a better form. Sometimes a smaller adjustment could matter just as much, whether that meant leaving an extra option open, asking a less leading question, or allowing the person who had just played the music to stay for the conversation afterward.