Building Community: UNLEASH
Posted by MeganL,
A new series here at Brickset is Building Community, where we highlight members of the LEGO community taking time to share their love of LEGO with others. Today we're chatting with Loretta Sanford, the founder of UNLEASH - United Network of LEGO Enthusiasts At Senior Housing.
How would you describe UNLEASH?
UNLEASH is a group dedicated to providing senior citizens with an opportunity to create, build, meet, share ideas, and display their creativity. The members are older adults living in senior housing and are guided by volunteers at each facility. I work with residential service coordinators in senior living facilities across New England.
The members are predominantly women between the ages anywhere from 60 to over 90. It's not unusual to have the majority of some groups be women of color. Women who are in their 90s are doing these Lego builds and having a ball. It's a natural fit. These people have more time to spend on a build than you or me.
You have to know how to start. I was talking to a master builder at a store opening and I had told him about doing this work with seniors, and he said, "Yeah, I tried to get my brother to start building, and I got him this architecture set." I told him that he needed to start smaller. When somebody is starting to build at 80, looking at an architecture set looks beautiful, no doubt. It looks more mature, but it's very intimidating. They say seniors can't do this (build LEGO) because of arthritis. Well, they can, just differently - such as using an eraser to press down on a one dot (1x1 plate).
My ultimate goal is that I want people to think differently about LEGO building - age, gender, and diversity related to LEGO programs.
Loretta (4th from the right, in black) with one of her program groups
How did you get started working in senior housing?
I started because I had worked with my own family; I've always had a lot of elderly relations around. When I started reaching out to do volunteer projects in low income communities, some of them were senior communities. I introduced it as one segment of Creative Arts programs and it was a big hit. I believe that Maslow (and his hierarchy of needs) was a genius, with the aspects of self-esteem, a sense of belonging and self actualization and security. LEGO touches on all those things. I think when you're building together it brings that sense of community, whether it's in a AFOL group or anything else. There's this old American tradition of quilt making or barn building where people get together. This is not that different.
I thought that this kind of activity would be better in senior homes compared to activities they were currently doing, like Bingo. Bingo tends to be competitive, or other things that I saw as almost patronizing to the senior community. I think people underestimate seniors in general, and programs get very steady state and don't challenge that status quo. So I got involved in it with starting to work with low income communities, and bringing alternatives to the norm. Partly because facilities weren't getting participation on some of the existing activities that were being offered, because seniors weren't interested in it.
One of the things that I found when I worked in low income housing with kids is that I could bring a whole bunch of LEGO pieces and just dump them on the center of the table. I'd say "Have at it, just do freestyle builds, and whatever you build that you can fit into this bag, you take home with you." With seniors, they were much more comfortable with having a base piece or theme to start, then they added random pieces to create amazing individualized gardens and Christmas scenes.
Everyone - women, people of color, people who didn't speak English, people with disabilities, all the people were told that this isn't for you - were just enthralled by it. And because it was small, they could take it home to their room or their apartment and take it apart and build again. Years later, seniors will tell me that "I still have what I made on my window sill."
How did this get developed into UNLEASH?
I do a lot of training related to safety. And one of the things that I've done is de escalation training to try to deter bullying. When you bring LEGO in - I've seen six foot tall 16-year old teenagers working with 6 year old kids. LEGO literally takes whatever the social pressures are to be this big tough guy away. I thought, "If this works at this level, this could work for seniors.". You actually see the same type of thing in assisted living, where people who try to create these social cliques.
Senior bullying or bullying in senior centers is huge. So I started talking about it and lecturing about de escalation and understanding what it takes to change senior bullying. It's not one of those things that's talked about; it's almost like a taboo subject. So as I told the social coordinators, you need to have something different. You need to have something that they (the bullies) can't predict. And so I went in with LEGO, and so nobody who can predict how that would go. So the bullies who were madly trying to manage all the activities had nothing to start with. If you come in and you understand how things work in these facilities, you can set up an activity that the bullies haven't taken over and can't take over. Because you set it up with the intent to not allow that to happen, and that way everyone can participate.
So that was my initial push. I have done a lot of different activities with seniors to try something different but nothing has touched people more or connected more than LEGO. I introduced this around 2012, and the sense of accomplishment and pride in seniors was overwhelming. We all wanted to see more of this. We started at one facility, and they started meeting every Wednesday at four o'clock. You get them started and do a couple of things and soon they're like "Okay, what else can you get me?". It got to the point where I literally gave them the Ewok village, and they finished it. Then, we used the trees from that build in creating an amazing MOC of the Boston Common Swan Boats.
UNLEASH became a recognized LUG in 2015, and we're very proud of that. When Plants from Plants was introduced, LEGO asked people to send in their builds. One of our builds was one of 15 that was selected for LEGO's advertising.
How long have you (personally) been involved in LEGO?
When LEGO got popular, it was early 70s, so I had a set, or my family had a set, in the 70s. But I got more involved in it when I had my kids. LEGO is one of the rare things that has a universal appeal. I think it's because the instructions are in pictures. That really helps for people who don't have to know a specific language. It appeals to both introverts who can sit there and build by themselves and extroverts when they can build with everyone. I think it gets both the creative side of a person, and the really focused on details side of a person. LEGO has this amazing aspect to connect with an individual on a way I've seen no other form of media do.
How many members do you have in the program?
We have probably 30 or so volunteers. Each volunteer can have anywhere between 1-4 facilities where they run programs. I've found the volunteers through my own connections with working with seniors, people who wanted to volunteer, and coworkers. It's been word of mouth, both in the resident service communities, and my own network. Everyone who hears about it usually wants to help. That's been great, especially in this day and age where you're really looking for hope, that people want to help.
UNLEASH Swan Boat MOC
How has UNLEASH affected by the pandemic?
We can't have meetings because there's no way to get into senior housing. But something like this is needed more than ever, because their communities have been dramatically impacted. So we try to talk online and look for ways to facilitate activities. Before the pandemic we left crates of materials to be used and built. It's a matter of getting the materials to each facility and still being able to do something virtually. There's a program I'm setting up now that uses a little Friends polybag - the flower. That tends to go over really well and it's not an easy build at all. As long as you're working with an activities director, then you can do it. Every place I've gone to, the activities director is thrilled, they just love it. Most of the seniors say, "I didn't think I would like this as much as do, when can we do it again?".
So we can get groups together in senior housing - they can still get together because they're living together already - they can't have somebody come in from the outside but they still have activities. Our next step is to try to create really short segment pieces, getting materials to each facility, and doing everything virtually through Zoom.
Loretta (center) conducting one of her sessions
What's the next step for UNLEASH?
I have this whole plan of designing two computer based trainings: the first is for anybody that's a LEGO fan to learn how to work with seniors, and the second for those who know how to work with seniors to incorporate LEGO. I started a program specifically to collect more data, so I did a pilot program.
The pilot program was in nine different locations in three different states. One location had a LEGO program before and the others didn't. I asked for volunteers for these locations - many of them were people I had already worked with. I approached them, and told them about this pilot program, no cost to them, I'll provide the LEGO. We get support from LEGO as well as donations to start this. We collected the data on ages of the participants, how it worked, what went well and what didn't, what were the benefits and the reactions. I did that earlier this year and was pulling together the data in January and then COVID hit.
So, that's my next push - I want to go forward and get the word out, so we can do more programs in more facilities, even outside New England. We can provide all the data from the last 5 years and the pilot program to show the benefits and best practices.
I literally want to have these posters made that say: "Remember when your grandmother bought you LEGO for Christmas? It's time to return the favour."
Want to learn more about UNLEASH, or help with the program? You can learn more about UNLEASH at their website.
Do you know of an individual or an organization who should be featured in Building Community? Let us know.
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33 comments on this article
What an absolutely fantastic programme this sounds! I look forward to reading more in this series.
Sounds awesome, love the potential poster tagline about returning the favor to grandma!
One of the best aspects of LEGO - anyone can build.
This article lifted my spirits and gave me faith in humanity. What a terrific program. I'd love to see what I can do locally in my own community (post-pandemic).
"But on the box it says 'ages 9-14!'"
"That's just a suggestion."
He couldn't be more right.
Love the article! I look forward to seeing what this series has moving forward. Thanks Loretta!
This is a worthy initiative. So often we assume that LEGO is for kids and (dare I say it) AFOLs. But if we take the 0-99 age range seriously, then there's no reason why these sorts of groups can't have a positive effect. And people who are in, say, their seventies or eighties now may well have bought their kids Classic LEGO sets back in the 1970s and 80s. Couldn't this help stimulate people with dementia?
This is great!
What a great program, LEGO truly is for all ages. Creativity isn't just for the young. Interesting about the bullying, never really thought about it affecting seniors, being bullied by fellow senior residents. Wonderful article, Megan.
This is really great! Wonderful to see this kind of group featured!
What a wonderful start to this series! I'm so happy to learn that a community like this exists, and is able to do so much good for its participants. It really has me excited for more installments in this "Building Community" series!
I remember when Brickset's articles on the GayFOLs group ( https://brickset.com/article/44991/ ) and Women's Brick Initiative ( https://brickset.com/article/49049/ ) were met with lots of objections that all LEGO fan groups ought to be geared towards all LEGO fans, and that groups tailored to more particular segments of the community were therefore divisive and harmful.
But this series is already showing how valuable it can be to have groups tailored to both the particular ways their members stand to benefit from LEGO building, and the particular ways they might feel intimidated or alienated in groups where they feel like outliers.
What's most incredible is that all the stuff described in this article seems so simple and makes so much sense, and yet a lot of it had never occurred to me before reading this. The passage about how intimidating the tiny pieces can be to senior citizens struck particularly close to my heart. I remember various instances of spending the holidays with with older relatives who would marvel at how hard it must be to "put together all those little pieces".
I regret to say, those comments seemed kind of naive to me at the time — after all, they're snap-together pieces that even children who struggle with tying knots can fasten together with ease, and they even come with detailed step-by-step instructions! For that matter, plenty of senior citizens enjoy hobbies like jigsaw puzzles and cross-stitch that (at face value) seem to require much higher visual-spatial reasoning and fine motor skills than LEGO building.
Sadly, some of those relatives are no longer alive today. I wish that at the time I'd considered trying to share this hobby with them using some of the tips suggested in this article — like using an eraser to press smaller pieces into place, or following generalized prompts that are less intimidating than either total freeform building or painstakingly specific instructions.
I realize that you can't MAKE somebody enjoy LEGO if they try it and decide it simply isn't for them. And it would be rude to judge them or put pressure on them for that sort of decision. But it's still clearly worth thinking about WHY that experience it might be frustrating or uninspiring to certain people, and whether that might have more to do with how we're presenting it to them than with any innate aspect of the experience.
Maybe it's idealistic, but I feel like LEGO building should be something that anybody CAN enjoy on some level, whether or not they end up deciding to pursue it as a hobby. And it's always beautiful to see how people with different backgrounds, interests, or ways of thinking can open our eyes to very different ways of using those same building blocks (both literally and figuratively). As such, I'm tremendously grateful to any group like this that strives to LEGO building feel more welcoming to a group that often struggles with feeling marginalized or out-of-place.
Thank you again for shining a spotlight on these sorts of efforts! And thanks as well to Loretta and other thoughtful, kind-hearted individuals like her, who both dream up these initiatives and take on the challenges and responsibilities of bringing them to fruition!
@TerryWright said:
"
This is a worthy initiative. So often we assume that LEGO is for kids and (dare I say it) AFOLs. But if we take the 0-99 age range seriously, then there's no reason why these sorts of groups can't have a positive effect. And people who are in, say, their seventies or eighties now may well have bought their kids Classic LEGO sets back in the 1970s and 80s. Couldn't this help stimulate people with dementia?"
We'll be featuring a group that works exclusively with Alzheimer's and dementia patients. Watch this space in a few weeks for that.
I absolutely love this.
Fantastic kick-off to what seems to be a very interesting new series!
That is just amazing and so inspiring. I was just wondering, where do they get the bricks and sets? Is it entirely donations, do they have funding, does LEGO send them sets?
Excellent. I wish many of those who need it could benefit from that kind of activity, help, service, support, and fun out of it.
This was a super interesting article! I live in New England, so I will have to see if there is anything nearby that I could potentially volunteer with. I never knew this was going on around me!
And I also think that this really speaks to the power of LEGO. I never thought about any of the bullying stuff, but that is really cool. I volunteered full time in an elementary school for a couple years and we used FIRST Lego League curriculum there and holy crap was that the WORST time of the day, where kids fought, bullied, stole bricks from others, wouldn't listen to directions, etc. Temporarily turned me off from LEGO. Especially on the days where I had to help my 4th graders with one LEGO project and then go straight to the LEGO after school club that was handed to me! Now I'm imagining the same thing happening in a senior home and it's a good laugh. I don't think that we had the right training, honestly, after reading this. Sure, we talked about teamwork, but the focus was all on programming the robots. I would be interested in the trainings that UNLEASH is doing. And reading this article makes me more hopeful about using LEGO to bring people together. After all, the LEGO experiences I had at that school weren't all bad: building at indoor recess, building with little kindergarteners, and omg, when we took a field trip to FIRST headquarters and it turns out my students DID learn something and weren't just fighting the whole length of the project after all! Not to mention individual success stories: a child with a difficult home life and anger issues absolutely thriving in this group project, a student who was still learning English still being able to contribute to his group, etc. Sorry, I digress, but this article really reignited something in me. I am planning to continue to work in elementary education, and hope to share my passion for LEGO in my future classroom. Even though this article is about LEGO fans on the exact opposite age range, this is really great for me. I am excited to see what else this community series brings. Maybe something closer to my age range :)
As A 71 year old AFOL Great idea should be able to carry on as AFOL when the stick me in a care home.
@Aanchir said:
"What a wonderful start to this series! I'm so happy to learn that a community like this exists, and is able to do so much good for its participants. It really has me excited for more installments in this "Building Community" series!
I remember when Brickset's articles on the GayFOLs group ( https://brickset.com/article/44991/ ) and Women's Brick Initiative ( https://brickset.com/article/49049/ ) were met with lots of objections that all LEGO fan groups ought to be geared towards all LEGO fans, and that groups tailored to more particular segments of the community were therefore divisive and harmful.
But this series is already showing how valuable it can be to have groups tailored to both the particular ways their members stand to benefit from LEGO building, and the particular ways they might feel intimidated or alienated in groups where they feel like outliers. "
This is exactly what Megan and I discussed when we talked about starting this series. We wanted to bring news and information to people that would encourage everyone to think about ways they could get involved and contribute to communities they care about in a positive way, whatever they may be. Thank you so much for the feedback!
- Holly
@grandadlegoman said:
"As A 71 year old AFOL Great idea should be able to carry on as AFOL when the stick me in a care home. "
So fantastic to see that it doesn’t just go up to our 40’s-50’s lol, wonderful to see n hear and have my full support guys, happy building builders!????
What a fantastic program. I would love to setup this type of program in Australia.
Since Covid started I have got my 83 year old Mum into lego builds. She is loving it, it gives her something to do whilst in lockdown, has helped with her mental health, keeps her brain active and has also helped to reduce chill blanes in her fingers.
It’s a win for everyone.
She is getting through so many sets, I’m having a hard time disassembling enough sets quick enough for her.
Well done Loretta
Man, I guess I'm going to have to get teary eyed once a week now.......
What a wonderful organization!
This organisation and series is fantastic! There’s not much more I can add that hasn’t already been said above but I the idea of getting more mature people involved in Lego building was good enough as a start - but good to see it means so much more.
I’m looking forward to seeing what else people are doing!
Worth noting - no backlash to this article. People can support communities after all! I hope the same can be said for others upcoming if they’re like the ones Aanchir mentioned, and that had been publicised by Brickset before.
Thanks very much for such an inspiring article. It's wonderful to read about such kind hearted and generous people.
My faith in humanity is restored.
I look back at my four grandparents (all of whom have passed away), and I don't see that this would have done much for them. Two of them ended up too far gone to even change the channel on the TV for the last 10-20 years of their lives, and the other two were still running full steam ahead right up until the day they died. But it's been a few years since the last of them passed, and now I look at my parents, and...maybe.
@Aanchir:
I've run into tons of people at shows that comment about how much patience it must require to build the stuff our LUG displays. I'm constantly telling them that the only patience required is when you're waiting for part orders to arrive so you can get back to building. So, you may look at those parts like the paints that allow the images to leap from your mind to the canvas, and some random person off the street may see instead a 100,000pc puzzle...and they may hate puzzles.
Very rare is the person who can just dive right in and start cranking out masterpieces. I know a lot of talented builders, but the vast majority of them had LEGO collections as children. They grew familiar with the system at a young age, and have a lifetime of experience to draw on. Like many things, it can be a bit daunting to get started as an adult. But if you can start small, and ease them into it...
@MeganL:
One of our charter members has Alzheimer's.
@mic27:
If you've ever spent any significant amount of time in a nursing home, a lot of people regress to a childlike state. Tantrums can be a regular thing, logic is often meaningless, and the activities tend to be similar to kindergarten classes. That's on the extreme end. Moving into a retirement community isn't going to change who you are as a person. It's just going to give you a contained audience.
@The_Rancor:
Old age knows no boundaries except an early death. Ageism is still very much a thing, though, but everyone has ancestors, and everyone grows older. If that alone doesn't do it, remember that this isn't really age-exclusive. Younger people sit on one side of the table, and the elderly on the other.
This is so awesome and sweet!!!
What Loretta and her team are doing is just wonderful. Thank you for making a difference, the world needs more people like you!
@Apg1808 said:
"That is just amazing and so inspiring. I was just wondering, where do they get the bricks and sets? Is it entirely donations, do they have funding, does LEGO send them sets? "
It says in the article that loretta would pay for the Lego but they also got donations and LEGO did offer there support with some sets.
Wow! The swan boat MOC is quite impressive!
Such fantastic... And bittersweet feeling of something very sad but softly bright, too.
These old folks know the joy, friendship, such wonderful hobby against all odds...
I absolutely love this!!! Thank you Loretta and UNLEASH for doing this. Absolutely brilliant :)
My mother passed in March and one of the activities I did with her Shortly before her passing was to build the LEGO HUB Birds set. I bought it from a friend with the intention of giving my 69 year old mother and I a set to build together at a table. She absolutely loved birds! This set would give her, my dad and my son a chance to build a set together as there are enough birds for the each of us to build separately.
She was suffering from the ravages of a tough fought battle with cancer and Parkinson’s. When we first sat down to build a bird together she did well and persisted to finish the model. She needed some help snapping 1x1 plates, tiles and 1x2 slopes down but she was determined to complete the bird.
I’ll always keep this set together as it reminds me of spending time with my mom doing something that I loved. She was always impressed with the MOCs I’d bring over and she got to feel a sense of satisfaction after seeing the bird she built.
@bmwlego:
Several years ago I made a LEGO Store that's shaped like a giant, red, 2x4 brick that fills two baseplates. In the back, I added a Pick-A-Brick wall made up of 40 of the 2x2x2 containers filled with 5x 1x1 round plates in various colors. When I built it, I of course filled the dark-purple bin myself (I mean...), but I took the parts for the other 39 bins in to the local LEGO Store over the course of a few weeks, and tried to get as many employees as possible to fill one or two bins on the PAB wall. One of those employees was the original store manager, who passed away last year. I have no idea which bins he filled (except that they weren't dark-purple), so now I can never change any of the colors I used. Not even dark-purple, because that would just be insane. But any other bin in the group could be one that he filled.