Spotlight Article: Meet Ashley Gravatte
When she was a girl, Ashley Gravatte treasured the moments spent on her grandfather’s lap, playing the organ. When she was 10, he bought her a piano and a year’s worth of lessons, a gift that influenced her entire life’s trajectory. She’s since made a career braiding music, art and healing work.
Now, as the Alzheimer’s & Dementia Resource Center’s Director of Arts and Wellness, Gravatte’s passion has earned her recognition as an Orlando Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree.
“I was completely shocked,” she said. “There are so many amazing, talented people in this area…I had no idea.”
She was feted in an April 24 award ceremony that acknowledged “Central Florida’s brightest young business leaders based on demonstrated business success over the past 12 to 18 months.”
Gravatte has overseen much success on the ADRC team this past year. As the creator of the Music Box Initiative, she has created rich sensory and social experiences for adults living with some form of dementia, a program that continues to build on its popularity. Box recipients receive instruments, a customized playlist, and educational tools.
Not only have individuals received Music Boxes, but the boxes are also at memory care facilities and at the Winter Park Library, where they can be rented. More recently, Gravatte and the Orange County Public Library System collaborated to offer the resource via the library’s new Community Engagement Department (more on that, here).
“I’ve given over 80 at this point between individual boxes and group boxes, and if you factor in every time it’s been rented from the Winter Park Library… Probably close to 100 people have been touched by this project.”
Up next for Gravatte is another project that aims to recognize the rich histories of people navigating dementia-related brain changes.
“I really thrive on being creative and coming up with creative solutions to care,” Gravatte said, adding that the social prescribing model – where patients are literally given a prescription for an arts-related activity – has piqued her interest lately.
“The arts are so healing,” she said.
Her statement is one steeped in her own experience.
Although her piano lessons didn’t stick — Gravatte recalls how the teacher had said she was “not a fit for the piano, but she does sing” — her devotion to music did.
Gravatte took voice lessons, attended a performing arts school and then the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. After her grandmother, who’d been in Hospice Care, had been visited by music therapists, Gravatte became inspired to explore the subject herself, ultimately earning a graduate certificate from Montclair State University.
She learned the guitar, and, during her practicum, Gravatte volunteered in a Manhattan skilled- nursing facility. She also practiced in an adult psychiatric setting and saw children who have autism.
The nursing facility ultimately hired her, and Gravatte became a recreation therapist. She then worked for the Institute on Aging in San Francisco, ultimately becoming a lifestyles director in her new city. When she returned to Orlando she helped open Allegro Senior Living in Winter Park.
After having her son, Leo, and developing cancer, Gravatte spent time healing and being with family and then, approximately three years ago, she discovered ADRC.
Music is such an intrinsic part of Ashley’s story that, even when she’s not working, it’s part of her routine — Gravatte is a First United Methodist of Winter Park worship leader, singing for her congregation weekly.
She is also her church’s Passionate Seekers Pillar Leader, a volunteer, and a caretaker for four dogs and a cat.
“I am a quality-time person,” she said. “(This is my) love language. I can pretty much always want to be with people…I’m probably being social and wanting to connect people and hang out with people.”