With its elderly and dependent residents, nothing predestined the Saint-Jean Helios nursing home in Nice to become an artistic catalyst, even less in the midst of an epidemic.
For their fourth album, a group from Nice, Les P'tites Ouvreuses, has nevertheless made it their “laboratory”.
Engaged in the creation of French songs, these two girls and three boys have been coming there since February, maintaining the link with residents according to changing health protocols.
This summer, they had resumed the duets on the floors.
Since Tuesday, they no longer go past the entrance courtyard and unpack their microphones and instruments outside, during the rare authorized visiting hours.
Read also: In nursing homes, the Paris Chamber Orchestra goes straight to the hearts of the elderly
“
When you go to the nursing home, it's not Abbey Road
(the London recording studio, note)
but the residents are like a revealer.
I test cadences, images and when I see that they get up, I tell myself that it must not be bad
”, describes the guitarist, a bearded man with glasses and hat, Cédric Gonnet.
He himself experienced the rebirth by taking up the guitar at the age of 15, then in contemporary dance, to re-mobilize a disabled left arm after a road accident.
The sixty residents of the nursing home, a pioneer in 1999 for the care of Alzheimer's patients, have lost their speech, memory or the use of conversation and some hardly move an eyebrow.
But it is an “
unfiltered
”
audience
that forces us to get to the point, explains Cédric: “
They leave if they want, clap their hands without there being a request.
Beyond sympathy and compassion, there is a sensory urge in these elderly people who are in demand.
We do not realize it but they are very locked up
”.
Shake up habits
A white blouse begins a tango with a patient.
The tempo accelerates, slows down.
"
Sometimes, even if they are absent due to their condition or medication, we can see in their eyes
" their reaction, marvels Alizé, the violinist of the group.
No text in the “Chic Guinguette” project speaks of the nursing home or of the residents' past lives.
Nor of Nice, like the previous album and its
Samba Nissa
or
Les Filles de la Prom
.
Les P'tites Ouvreuses, on the other hand, does not provide a prescription for bursts of jasmine, vanilla, clouds of confetti and all kinds of images à la Prévert.
This work is accompanied by musical research to facilitate the dance: farandole, waltz, French cancan, wank, song to answer and even, a tango.
"
We now have people in nursing homes who were fans of the Rolling Stones or Elvis Presley
", admits Cédric, but this repertoire of ball musette calls for participation, autonomy.
Read also: Two young musicians from Corrèze in Lady Gaga's “One World” concert
The idea of art in a medical environment is not new and it first made its way into hospitals.
Since 2019, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regional Health Agency has funded a growing number of smaller projects, particularly in nursing homes.
“
There are budgets and artists who are passionate about these particular audiences.
We are neither in animation nor in art therapy.
It is about introducing culture to help improve the state of health,
”defends Bernadette L'Huiller, project director at ARS.
“
Not all establishments are in favor of it because it upsets habits,
” she says.
At Maison Saint-Jean Helios, Les P'tites Ouvreuses have found the ideal interlocutor: soon to retire, the director of the nursing home, Bernard Guillemin, is the former director of MJC.
“
The nursing homes
, he regrets,
are only places of care.
I would make it a place of creation.
There is no miracle, even if we have a reproduction of the Lourdes grotto in the courtyard ... but there are people who are transformed, who feel better,
”he says, determined to continue in accordance with his coordinating doctor: "
We cannot be left with nothing, especially if the Covid-19 epidemic is to last a year and a half
".
