Magic Me

'We need heroes. We need people whom we revere, whose values we internalise and whose actions we emulate,' says Bill Berkowitz, author of 'Local Heroes - the Rebirth of Heroism in America'. He has interviewed 22 'ordinary' Americans who lacked any extraordinary resources or expertise at the outset, and yet whose heroic actions have helped to transform their communities. One of his hero's local initiatives has since been copied internationally:

Kathy Levin founded her 'Magic Me' organisation in Baltimore in 1982. 'Magic Me' trains children aged 10 to 13 to make contact with residents in homes for elderly people.

Levin had been distressed to find that many people in their fifties were no longer visiting their relatives in homes, and 'it occurred to me,' she says, 'wouldn't it be fun to teach a little group of kids who could grow up to be fifty year olds who could see through the wrinkles and tears from an early age and really see nursing homes differently?' She wanted to reassure children that 'it's really valid to stay in touch with the part of you that's scared about being mortal. The old and the isolated keep us vulnerable and raw and feeling and unpredictable and alive. To me that's the essence of our humanness, scary and delightful.'

From a background in advertising, Levin knew that she needed to give her project just the right image to attract the kids. She lured them with a trendy Magic Me T-shirt of a purple child juggling a rainbow; and she wrote and staged a Magic Me musical for the kids (the latest version of which has songs by twenty top Broadway composers). 1,500 kids watched her first performance - 'many of them were crying and happy and really excited by it.'

The next stage was to hold training seminars in the classroom, where she answered some of their worst fears about the project, such as 'what happens if somebody dies when we're with them'; and she got them to experience some of the limitations of age, by putting them in wheelchairs and having them bind their hands, and walk around with weights on their legs, blindfolded, and with cotton wool in their ears.

'Four or five of the residents get up out of their wheelchairs and move and dance with the children to the Michael Jackson music'

At last they were ready for their first visit to a home. Music was playing. 10 year old Mac looks his elderly partner in the eye and says, 'Oh well, if you can't move your left side, it doesn't matter, you got a whole right side. Come on, I bet you can, I know you can.' Four or five of the residents get up out of their wheelchairs and move and dance with the children to the Michael Jackson music. It was for Levin a very moving moment: 'I think that human beings have an urge to transcend the bodily. The creative arts seem a quick way of doing this. Magic Me inspires children too to discover magic within themselves and thereby to transcend. When you see yourself in a wrinkled face you are expanded. When you have found your magic powers, you can release those of others.' For such children, says Levin, 'the mere thought of abandoning their aged relatives would be as repulsive as cutting off one's own arm.'

'When you see yourself in a wrinkled face you are expanded. When you have found your magic powers, you can release those of others'

Magic Me in the UK

In the UK, Magic Me works with children in Islington, Tower Hamlets and Westminster, using many art forms. Magic Me is now a registered UK charity and is active in homes and long-stay hospitals across Tower Hamlets. It seems to be succeeding on a long-term basis without depending entirely on Levin's own charisma and energy.

- Susan Langford, Magic Me UK, Mile End Hospital, Bancroft Road, London E1 4DG (tel 071 377 7878).
- Magic Me USA, 808 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA (tel 301 837 0900).
- 'Local Heroes - The Rebirth of Heroism in America' by Bill Berkowitz, containing a long interview with Kathy Levin, is published by Lexington Books, D.C. Heath and Company, 125 Spring Street, Lexington, Massachusetts 02173, USA.

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