From the toolkit:
Art can be a powerful activity for older adults. For many seniors art is a lifelong passion, for others, art is a hobby that they never had the time to pursue. No matter the situation, having an art program in your community can contribute substantially to the overall quality of life of your residents.
A new exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., showcases the work of elderly artists with memory loss and other chronic conditions.
From the YouTube Video Description:
In this lively talk, Tim discusses the cutting edge developments in programming toward senior health, creativity and civic engagement. He presents case studies of seniors who have engaged in new lifestyles in later life and experienced profound advances in health, longevity and life satisfaction. Anecdotal stories are tied to research that shows that aging can be a window to opportunity, a second act, a natural progression through the phases in adult development – and a key to a happier, fuller later life.
From the National Guild for Community Arts Education site:
The latest edition of the National Guild’s Benchmarking Data Report is now available! This report contains a wealth of data—on staff and faculty compensation, instructional fees, income and expense ratios, and more—that can inform your planning and budgeting and help funders and policy makers better understand the needs and impact of our field. The data, gathered from 179 Guild member organizations, is presented in easy to read charts and tables.
For the first time, the report also includes sections on racial equity, creative aging, and analysis of salary information by organization type, type of community served, and organizational budget size.
Data was collected in 2019 before the pandemic and this summer’s uprising and call to reckoning about structural racism and anti-Black violence. This means that the data provides a valuable snapshot of where the community arts education field was just before these transformational events.
Accessing the Report
The 2019 Benchmarking Data Report is available to all Guild members that participated in the survey, free of charge. For access, contact programs@nationalguild.org.
The report is also available for purchase. Guild members receive a discounted rate (Guild membership is currently “pay what you can”).
Lifetime Arts Director of Education, Annie Montgomery, explains the creative aging model in detail. She covers the difference behind therapeutic, one-off, and sequential programming, and discusses the evidence supporting the impact of sequential programs.
In this video, Lifetime Arts trainer, Abigail Jefferson, introduces applicable to teaching older adults that inform best practices in creative aging program design. Additionally, she presents considerations and adaptations that may need to be implemented to accommodate the learning needs of older adults.
In this video, Lifetime Arts trainer, Abigail Jefferson, introduces the research that informs the Creative Aging Lifelong Learning Model. Abigail also discusses the two key andragogical elements that ensure effective program design.
Lifetime Arts trainer, Vinny Mraz, discusses the rapidly shifting demographics of the older adult population and the related implications; the three areas of practice in the field; and the cross-sector collaboration required to support wellness and combat social isolation through arts education.
After conducting community assessments and connecting with local artists, The Louisiana State Museum (LSM) team designed a creative aging workshop series representative of the interests and cultures of the people they sought to serve.
The Museum re-considered offering a conventional visual arts program, and instead developed a skill-building beadwork program which resonated deeply with existing and prospective patrons. Their workshop also highlighted selected objects from the Museum’s Cabildo collection and showcased relevant exhibits.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has a long history of offering art-making classes for all ages, and the museum staff has witnessed the transformative power of the creative process.
LACMA used an intentional process to actively integrate their creative aging programming into the overall mission of the museum. By designing a studio class with goals specific to an older audience, LACMA recognized an opportunity to increase its value as a resource for adults to build confidence, self-worth, and community.
The Museum developed evaluation tools across the course of the program to measure artistic, social, and emotional outcomes. The whole staff worked together to develop language about why this program was important and why it would serve older adults, in order to successfully incorporate it into their list of services, and ensure its sustainability. The organization integrated the assessments and program evaluation into the everyday practice of the program on an ongoing basis. The resulting collection of quantitative and qualitative data adds scope and breadth to their evaluation over time and allows comparison from year to year for annual progress to sustain the program model.
Create+Collaborate was supported by Aroha Philanthropies.