Music helped this artist find her voice

By Louise Kinross

Lynn Simmons (photo centre above) has been an artist at Holland Bloorview for 30 years. She worked with the founders of Spiral Garden, an artist-run camp in the hospital ravine that brings together children with and without disabilities to tend an accessible garden, sculpt clay, work wood, and make music. "They were my mentors and I am moving it forward holding the spirit of Spiral Garden and honouring those who came before," Simmons says. She also works with kids and young adults in our art studio and at the bedside. We spoke about her career.

BLOOM: How did you get into this field?

Lynn Simmons: My mom had seven kids. I'm the middle child, and while we were young she went to art school. Much later she was hired here as a clay artist. I always sang and came from a household of singers. For me, singing was about a healing connection. I went to York University and studied singing. At one point my mother told me Bloorview was looking for a musician.

BLOOM: What kind of music do you like to sing most?

Lynn Simmons: If I was to talk about classical, it would be early music, because they had an idea of what a piece would sound like, but they didn't have recording. So there was a lot of room to figure out the meaning of a piece through language, word and translation.

I sang everything. I'm a big fan of Joni Mitchell. I've sung with a Cajun Country band. I've done harmony singing. I sung with Gregory Hoskins and the Stickpeople. We put out albums and toured, mostly in Canada. I called myself a support vocalist because I was harmonizing with horns and people, and sometimes I was doing a bit of front singing. 

BLOOM: I heard you opened for Sarah McLachlan. How did you end up doing art with children?

Lynn Simmons: Because of my beginnings, I wasn't a very verbal person. I was quite quiet as a child, and music helped me open my voice, which is why I'm in the area I'm in. It's expression and community and giving people the opening to have their own mastery within what they want through the arts, whether it's visual or singing or playing. 

Prior to coming here, I was running programs for kids with an organization that Judith Snow and Marsha Forest began. They built programs for inclusion and we got trained in running the programs. It was an integrated model for children with and without disabilities. 

I remember our band did some advocacy with Judith and Marsha for a child with cerebral palsy in Richmond Hill, who wasn't able to go to her neighbourhood school. A huge number of people showed up at the school and stood on the property line to fight for her to be included. Our band played.

BLOOM: Did you have any personal experience with disability?

Lynn Simmons: I didn't. But I understood through my not having a voice, and knowing I wanted that, I understood the dynamic. We had a difficult upbringing, so I understood difficulty in life.

I connected to the beauty of singing in a band that supported an ideal, which was inclusion. 'Neighbourhood' was our first album and it was about bringing people's voices forward, people who were struggling, immigrants.

I remember Gregory wrote songs with someone with cerebral palsy from the states. He'd been given a choice as a child to have therapy to walk or talk—but they wouldn't give him both therapies. He chose to walk. He used to go to the mental health wards of hospitals, because the majority of people there were people with disabilities. He would try to help get these people out, but he was always under the fear of being put in, because he was non-verbal.

BLOOM: How do you make art accessible to a child?

Lynn Simmons: I want to follow them. I'm watching them. I might have an art process, but the process is just tools and materials, which could be paint or drums or a guitar. I'm watching how the child moves towards it and trying to bring them the means to access it even further. I don't get hooked into what I've set out. It's about the process rather than the outcome.

I ask what they're interested in, and I listen with my ears, if they can verbalize. I hear what they're saying through story sometimes, or through my eyes. I'm always trying to see past verbal communication. What is it that they want? What are they looking at in the room? I don't assume I have the answers. I may say 'You moved your eyes a certain way, is that a yes?'

There's a lot of observation and just being in the moment. I may doubt myself: Maybe they don't want that? But I don't worry so much about the doubt, and get past that perfectionism within myself, and back to being present in the moment.

BLOOM: Can you describe a program you might run here?

Lynn Simmons: We try to do a beginning, a middle and an end. So if I develop a program with my co-artists, or alone, and it's an eight-week program, I'll look to the natural environment. Is it the fall? Are there leaves? 

What tools and materials do we need for that idea? If it's the fall and leaves, maybe we'll do printing and we may need rollers and paint. So a kid can roll paint on to a leaf, and then print with it.

I remember once we were doing paper making and one child was so tight he couldn't tear the paper with his hands. But I noticed he kicked a lot. So I took the newspaper and let him break it by kicking it. You're always watching for what their access is, and never doubting that they have access.

We try to stick with the nature theme and bring it inside to play with. 

BLOOM: Why is nature so important?

Lynn Simmons: We don't always know how to interact in our environment. We may walk out along cement walkways and see colours, but we don't know how to be present within it. 

My mother was an artist who always pulled in the visual. When she was dying and we were driving to her appointment, it was the middle of fall. She looked across the field and she described the deep, dark purples, the hues of fall. She described it, and that's the memory I have of her. We are always in interaction with nature. We need nature to give back to us, through food, colours, or grounding us on the earth, so we can move forward.

We need the trees. They are our ancestors, and a part of our wellbeing. Trees are beings, in my opinion.

Children with disabilities, or who are hospitalized, don't have the same access to nature. Art is a way back in to being a human being in the world, and it feeds whatever they have going on in their lives. 

BLOOM: What are the greatest challenges of your work?

Lynn Simmons: I'm wearing a lot of hats. I'm the one who sets up the Spiral Garden site with my colleague Michelle. I work with corporate volunteers from our foundation who come and engage in the garden to get it cleaned up and ready for planting.

We set up the tents, we get the garden beds ready, we put the tables out, and we purchase the plants.

Some of the artists come in early because they want to access the land. They want to know what materials they're working with and the music that's coming off the land—whether it's the birds, or the wind through a tree. 

So there's leadership and bringing together people and trusting and holding space, and trying to honour the people who originally started this space. It is an intentional space. It was built intentionally, it wasn't just a park. So even the way we honour the Poet's Corner. It's an ancestral spot with ancestral plants.

There was a teepee given to us by a native elder. We didn't just put up a teepee on the land. An elder told us we needed a teepee on the land, and we wanted to honour the native voice. 

I need to take these stories and let people know the history of why these things are here.

I need to honour our shared, collective art. I may have been here a long time and I know the space, but I'm here to support what art expression each artist wants to do. Whatever they're bringing is perfect, and I can help adapt it so it's accessible for others. 

We all grow and change and shift over time, so it's important to always check in with my colleagues to ask how much support they want. I don't want to interfere with where they're taking something, so it's about checking in regularly.

I have to balance out the creative with the logistics and involve many people. It can be very tiring. It's joyous, but tiring.

BLOOM: What are the greatest joys?

Lynn Simmons: In the March Break I looked up. I had come up with an art idea, and I'm watching the group. The care teams, the kids, me, and a custodian that comes in—everyone is included in that space. I look up and the titles and roles melt away and it's just a community of people working together and doing art. When I see that, I go 'Yes!'

BLOOM: What emotions come with your job?

Lynn Simmons: Everything. Even talking with you, I can feel the tears come up. It runs through everything. 

If I'm struggling, it could be that I can't get to what I'm trying to do. I can't find what it is that I want. Do I want to use canvas or paper? Where do I want to take this? When I'm doubting something, that's when collaborative work comes in. The other person can see 'Oh, you want this, is this what you're thinking?' And you can bounce the idea and help move it toward a vision.

It's art in process, because we never know the outcome. It's about what tools do we want to give children to see where they take it?

BLOOM: Do you have strategies to support your own mental health when working with children and families who are in distress?

Lynn Simmons: Yes. I did a lot of therapy. I'd done energy psychology, where you use tapping as a way to connect with your body and emotions. You accept them, and help them move through your body, and back out. I've done psychotherapy as well. I use these therapies every day.

I also try to remember to release things when I walk out of the building. Working in a hospital, you absorb  difficult things, because we're so open to watching and seeing. So as I walk out the building I have methods to help me release that. It may be looking at nature, or using a tapping method, or putting my hands over my heart, to ground me back into me.  

We also carry things in from our own lives. So I'm intentional about how I come into this place. If I'm a bit more tired today, I'll tell my co-artists, and let them know I may be a bit quieter, so it doesn't dislodge the collaboration. I own who I am.

BLOOM: How do you manage stress?

Lynn Simmons: I do yoga. And I meditate, sometimes through yoga. Or I'll put on music with visuals to allow for that movement of sound in a meditative way. I love walking through High Park and around my neighbourhood, and I did a lot of dance, too, when I was younger. It really grounded my body in a very powerful way.

BLOOM: What qualities do you need to do your job well?

Lynn Simmons: I think an openness to the possibility of a synergy between each other. You have to be willing to free fall with ideas when you're collaborating, and not get stuck or hooked in to your outcome, but let go. That's not easy when you're coming in with your own art or your own idea.

Free falling is where you can sit with the creativity and develop it and be with it and let go of it and not have to own it.

BLOOM: What kind of changes do you see in children who make art here?

Lynn Simmons: I've seen a lot of smiles this past summer. The kids who come back year after year are the true teachers of their peers. They've experienced opening up and letting go, and they know when they come back that we're holding them in a safe space, emotionally and physically, so they can really dive in and find their own things. It's absolutely magical.

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