By Liza Cucco This month, I spoke to Emily Christensen, a musician, gerontologist, and creative aging advocate, on her journey and insights into working with older adults through music therapy and creative aging. Q: How has your journey through music, therapy, and gerontology shaped your work with older adults? EC: I started out with a …
This year’s theme for Older Americans Month is “Powered by Connection,” which recognizes the impact that meaningful relationships and social connections have on our health and wellbeing. Connectedness is what fuels the power of creative aging programs for older adults, and it begins with us and those we partner with. Fostering communities where everyone is seen as valued, creative, and contributing members to society is only possible when there’s a strong pillar of creative aging leaders, practitioners, and advocates supporting each other. Let’s explore how our work in creative aging is powered by connection, collaboration, and celebration!
We are deeply saddened by the recent passing of Ann deVere, a veteran teaching artist, architect, and Lifetime Arts Trainer. As a native New Yorker with a visual arts concentration in printmaking, Ann taught classes and workshops in public schools, cultural centers, and arts organizations throughout NYC, in addition to implementing arts programming for all ages. Throughout her teaching artist career, she engaged her students in critical discourse, concept development, and creative problem solving — all the while drawing upon their imaginations. Her students developed a sense of their own capabilities, discovered their ideas have value, and learned how they can enrich the environments around them.
If there's one thing that we can take away from our collaborative work in 2022, it's that responsive, purposeful, and accessible arts education programming is a foundational pillar for lifelong learning. This work can only be achieved when every older adult is seen, valued, creative, proud, and part of a community. We couldn’t have accomplished this work without the abundant support of our staff, trainers, partners, and funders.
"What has been fascinating to me ... is that each arts agency — whether with a staff of 10 or 100 — has embraced this opportunity with serious, strategic and passionate effort," said Maura O'Malley.
“I think Zoom is a good platform because our members have the option to call in [by phone] — even from a landline,” said Laura Marceca, Director of Greenwich House Senior Center on the Square. Laura has been thrilled to see that classes are very well attended and are attracting new students.
MAKING A POP-UP MEMORY PAGE with Spica Wobbe & Karen Oughtred | PART 1: Materials and Tools | Making the Base Page Queens, NY is one of the most international places in the world. The Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts have set up a program called FTH at Home: Global Arts for Global …
“We're all doing this really new and hard thing by trying to translate in person experiences to the virtual platform,” he says, “Don't stress yourself out trying to make it perfect. Be upfront with folks about the experiment of it and leave space for them to give feedback.”
From my own work creating original theater with, and about, the real lives of older adults, I know firsthand that the research is correct. It is the social interaction part of arts education that is of the greatest physical and mental benefit to older adults.
Lifetime Arts’ Roster Teaching Artist and award winning storyteller, Robin Bady, has been teaching theatre, writing and storytelling for as long as she can remember. Her career began with teaching children in schools and later branched out to teaching in libraries, theaters, parks and senior centers. In 2012, Robin was awarded the National Storytelling Network’s J.J. …
In an effort to meet the growing, nationwide demand for our professional development services, we held a train-the-trainer event at our headquarters in New Rochelle, NY on March 25, 26 and 28. For this series, we invited our already established master teaching artists on our roster of trainers, Antonia Perez and Julie Kline, and identified …
Born in Minneapolis, MN, Peyton’s earliest memories as a child were making art and being creative. This continued into high school where he discovered graffiti art from the film Style Wars in 1984. This consumed his art interest. A portfolio of traditional art and graffiti influenced works helped earn acceptance into the School of the …
As mentioned earlier this fall, Lifetime Arts, Inc. is proudly teaming up with the Teaching Artist Project (TAP) Cohort, a division of Community-Word Project (CWP). TAP is a comprehensive training and internship hosted by CWP and designed to prepare artists to bring their craft into K-12 classrooms. The TAP Cohort is a network of arts organizations …
This fall older adults at West Michigan Center for the Arts and Technology learned shibori, a traditional Japanese fiber art, through Catalyzing Creative Aging, Lifetime Arts’ partnership with the National Guild for Community Arts Education. Teaching Artist John Cox led participants through a 12-week beginner level workshop. Shibori is a resist dyeing method that creates patterns by …
Mr. DeBlieck’s teaching credits include faculty lecturer at the University of Hawaii (1995-1997), where he taught courses in modern dance technique and advanced Labanotation, Augsburg College (2005-2015) where he taught Creative Drama, Introduction to Theatre, Dance for Musical Theatre and Introduction to Dance, and at St Cloud State University (2009-2015) where he taught dance composition …
Community-Word Project, a New York City based 501(c)(3) arts-in-education organization that inspires children in under-served communities to read, interpret, and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training programs, has invited Lifetime Arts to be a member organization of the Teaching Artist Project (TAP) Cohort. As part of …
National survey results: Ageism heads the list of challenges in developing teaching artist training in Creative Aging This first report of three national surveys investigating Creative Aging and Teaching Artistry offers an interesting snapshot of the state of teaching artist training in Creative Aging. 50 arts organizations told us about their programming for older adults …
Lifetime Arts Welcomes 23 New Teaching Artists to The Creative Aging Roster Last month, Lifetime Arts convened a panel to review and vet the latest round of applicants to the Creative Aging Roster, a free service we offer which provides direct access to teaching artists who are qualified to instruct older adults in community settings. …
After people hear about our work, view our videos, and read testimonials from participants, we’re often asked, “How do you find the teaching artists?”
Are you an experienced teaching artist looking to teach older adults? Lifetime Arts, Inc. is preparing to hold its quarterly Creative Aging Roster Panel Review. We are calling on professional teaching artists to submit applications to be listed on the Creative Aging Roster, featured at www.lifetimearts.org. Applications are accepted year round and reviewed quarterly. For …
The third week in May is National Teaching Artists Appreciation Week! Established in 2012 by the Association of Teaching Artists, this is an opportunity to thank and recognize teaching artists across the United States who improve the lives of their students through professional arts instruction.
