I often hear the famous saying, “Age is just a number.” Most of the time, it associates with how the youth can achieve their goals earlier than most. Yet there are as many equal circumstances where aged individuals defy the odds of accomplishing new feats later in their lives, disproving another famous saying, “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks.”
Along Jupiter, Makati, lies Sunshine Place: Senior Recreation Center that allows people to indulge in activities that cater to their fancy and provide a renowned sense of purpose.
Some classes it offers include painting, dancing, fitness, and crafts, among many others.
Honing a passion for the arts and crafts
Many people solace and joy in the activities in Sunshine Place. Some guests who didn’t experience the activities in the center during their early lives now learn from renowned experts. Teaching the painting classes is Fidel Sarmiento, a modern and contemporary artist and president of the Art Association of the Philippines.
Sarmiento has been painting for decades and has established himself in the industry. He also has experience teaching younger aspiring artists from local educational institutions. Still, there’s something different about Sunshine Place that makes it a unique recreational center.
According to Sarmiento, his teaching methods in Sunshine Place is more therapeutic than technical because of the students who come to the center. As an instructor, Sarmiento fosters a safe environment for the participants so they can leave behind the troubles of the outside world.
Painting has been an effective medium for people to pass the time, express their creativity, and soothe their minds.
Take, for instance, Meliza Gonzales, a retiree who has launched multiple successful solo exhibits after a few years of honing her interest in painting. Her husband encouraged her to pursue painting because he saw his former officemates in SM dabble in the craft. Without any resistance and an open mind, Gonzales entered the world of painting under Sarmiento’s supervision.
Like any good teacher, Sarmiento was patient with Gonzales and catered to her preferences. At first, the retiree made masterpieces that featured flowers and vases.
Another good thing to remember about Sunshine Place is that they always make everybody feel included. Gonzales enjoys the tutoring and company of Robert Fernandez, Sarmiento’s student, who now shares his knowledge about arts with other aspiring artists.
Fernandez saw Gonzales’s growth as an artist–from going without using the proper brushstrokes to understanding color theory and more.
Sharing Gonzales’s passion for the arts is Malaysian Mae Lee Casey, who teaches porcelain painting in the Philippines after her Irish husband began working for SM in 2007. After porcelain painting sessions, Casey started working her creativity on the canvas to do something other than teaching and enjoy it.
Unlike working on porcelains, painting on a canvas uses a different process. Sunshine Place provided Casey with a place to learn new experiences and knowledge to further her craft.
Len Fernandez, a retiree who moved to the Philippines from the United States, also found new horizons in her creativity with Sunshine Place’s painting classes. As an avid painter, Fernandez tried different mediums to express herself. She began with oil-based paints before discovering she was allergic to them and eventually moved to use watercolor, which she stuck with longer.
In Sunshine Place, Fernandez learned to work with acrylic paint. However, she didn’t limit herself to one class and decided to broaden her horizons by exploring the other opportunities the center offers, like memoir writing. Fernandez, with new writers from Sunshine Place, published a memoir titled “Reflections in Light and Shadow.”
Despite Sunshine Place’s dedication to being a premiere recreation center for seniors, it doesn’t close its doors to younger students. Among them is Vicky Pollisco, a lawyer who escapes the demands of her profession through painting.
Pollisco, although not in her senior years, got into painting because her husband developed an interest in golfing. She then decided to pursue her interests in 1993, painting during the weekends or in her free time. When she came to Sunshine Place in 2015, painting became a habit.
Her subjects of interest are flowers in bloom. After all, who can resist the beauty and symbolism of floral imagery? Yet Sunshine Place offers some challenges to help its students explore their potential. Under Sarmiento’s class, Pollisco learned the basics of creating abstract pieces.
She learned the relevance of color in creating a balanced image and has opened herself more to new opportunities that come from painting.
Coinciding with modern trends, Sunshine Place’s painting classes also offer a diamond painting option for those who want to create masterpieces using delicate pieces that require a steady hand and patience.
Working with natural elements
Besides painting, Sunshine Place has another class that teaches its students to look for inspiration from their surroundings and use them to create naturally captivating pieces, also known as Ikebana.
Ikebana is the centuries-old Japanese art of arranging flowers. It uses carefully selected blossoms, greenery, and other flora to convey a specific feeling or emotion to audiences–as a painting or sculpture might.
Marc Tomas, President of Ikebana International Manila Chapter 108 and member of Sogetsu Potential Manila Chapter, teaches Sunshine Place’s Ikebana lessons. He has brought forth inspiring results from his students, like Carina Galang.
Galang has been attending the classes since February 2023 because she enjoyed gardening and grew up in a family that appreciates the beauty of Ikebana. As a result, she wanted to recreate making beautiful arrangements using the planting materials from her garden. The class also served as her day of relaxation, and her frequent attendance allowed Galang to practice the methods she needed to create arrangements.
Tomas’s influence on the Ikebana class students made a lasting impression. Susie Yap saw how Tomas adequately exposed them to the rudiments of the craft, including its philosophy, basics, materials, and tools. Tomas’s hands-on method gave his students a clear view of what they must accomplish for the day. Yet what Yap loved the most was how their instructor allowed them creative freedom to explore new arrangements from their prepared materials.
Ikebana takes discipline but is also a practice that allows its students to use their imagination and turn even scrap pieces from their natural surroundings to create eye-catching flower arrangements that add vibrance to any space.
Classes that inspire masterfully-crafted words
Many students from Sunshine Place also explored the beauty of writing through the center’s creative and memoir writing classes. There, they learned the basics of crafting their words into compelling stories that express their emotions and creativity or tell equally engaging stories from their lives.
Leading the memoir writing is award-winning author and poet Oscar Peñaranda. Another teacher was Tweetums Gonzales, a noted columnist who taught Creative Writing until her temporary retirement. However, she is resuming her writing workshops soon with a workshop called Here’s to Life. Workshops on how to write Children’s Stories have also been conducted.
It is worth mentioning that two books have so far been published in the course of these Creative Writing Workshops: Finding the Sun and Reflections of Light and Shadows.
The Creative Writing Class was a perfect opportunity for Dolores Matias to realize her dream of creating a book that would continue her story on her happy-to-tell life journey to her children, grandchildren, and relatives, contribute to her hometown’s history, and pay homage to her parents. Matias began attending the class in September 2021.
Under Peñaranda, Matias learned to overcome her insecurities about her writing ability and learned new lessons to improve her passion and talent in writing. Now, Matias writes confidently, much to her surprise.
Since memoir writing has been an ideal avenue for the guests at Sunshine Place to forge a legacy that audiences can draw inspiration from within the pages of a book, many students from other classes signed up for the opportunity, also meeting new friends that add color to their stories.
Getting physical and tapping into musical therapy
Besides honing its members’ creative skills, Sunshine Place has physically-related classes to keep the seniors moving and limber. Other sessions are more therapeutic to help members take charge of their health and movements.
Whole-body exercise sessions are available at the center every day, with each day focusing on specific physical attributes like endurance, flexibility, and strength. The exercises occur at the gym, where members have access to equipment under the watchful eye of certified instructors.
Moreover, the instructors curate the exercises to help the members keep up with the regimen, and there are Tai-chi, Qigong, and Zumba sessions held weekly at the rooftop of the Center.
Sunshine Place also offers an online option for physical therapy sessions for those who have difficulty traveling to the center. Although being distant can be difficult for the instructor and the member, the former always ensures that the latter is comfortable and aptly challenged to encourage improvement.
In the meantime, there are also dancing lessons that offer tango, ballroom dancing, and more to encourage seniors to be confident, have fun, and create new memories with friends they made along the way.
Coinciding with Sunshine Place’s dedication to giving its member a voice, the center also offers music therapy, which promotes communication, relationship learning, mobilization, expression, and organization to develop potential and develop or restore functions.
There’s also an option for others to enroll in voice lessons to bring out their talent and passion for singing. It involves one-on-one sessions to help the instructor focus on students’ needs.
Piano lessons are available too.
through one-on-one sessions
Moreover, Sunshine Place doesn’t consider age, as evident in the classes they hold for the center’s senior members. Beyond that, the center also offers courses for younger audiences who aspire to hone their creative talents and other interests.
Dubbed Little Sunshine, the program has numerous workshops that cater to younger audiences. Some examples of the courses they released this year are ballet classes and the Nihongo language.
Indeed, there’s much for everyone of all ages to learn and experience at Sunshine Place.