Embedding creative aging into the cultural and community infrastructure of New York City.
New York City is aging—and growing more culturally vibrant every day.
Culture + Care is a yearlong initiative that activates neighborhood-based partnerships in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx to build sustainable, professionally led arts education programs for older adults.
Led by Lifetime Arts, this initiative pairs community arts organizations with local senior-serving partners to co-create programs shaped by older adults’ identities, histories, and creative goals. Because healthy aging is cultural. And community care includes creative expression.
Are you a NYC arts organization, senior-serving provider, funder, or policymaker interested in embedding creative aging into your work?
A Citywide Vision Rooted in Neighborhoods
Culture + Care advances a bold but practical goal:
Make creative aging part of NYC’s lasting infrastructure—reliable, sustained, and rooted in community.
Rather than funding isolated workshops, this initiative strengthens cross-sector teams, aligns leadership, builds teaching artist capacity, and seeds long-term sustainability. Each neighborhood partnership becomes part of a broader ecosystem committed to age-inclusive cultural access.
This work builds on Lifetime Arts’ deep New York roots and national leadership in creative aging, while expanding access in neighborhoods where sustained arts programming has historically been limited.
There is a real and growing need for programs like this—
ones that invest in older adults’ well-being through sustained,
culturally grounded creative engagement.
Jimena Martinez
Executive Director, Cumbe: Center for African and Diaspora Dance
Why Culture + Care?
Older adults in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx bring deep cultural knowledge, lived experience, and creative potential to their communities. Yet too often, sustained arts learning opportunities are limited—especially in neighborhoods facing persistent inequities.
Creative aging is a proven, evidence-based approach that:
Strengthens cognitive and physical health
Reduces social isolation
Builds confidence and purpose
Fosters meaningful social connection
Research shows that sustained participation in arts learning improves well-being and community engagement.
Culture + Care responds to this moment by investing not only in programs—but in the partnerships and infrastructure needed to sustain them.
The Model: Cross-Sector Neighborhood Teams
At the heart of Culture + Care are three neighborhood-based teams:
Harlem
Harlem School of the Arts in partnership with West Harlem Older Adult Alliance
Program site: Jackie Robinson Older Adult Center
Additional partners include community networks connected through Harlem Advocates for Seniors and West Harlem Development Corporation.
Each team brings cultural fluency, neighborhood trust, and deep relationships with older adults. Together, they co-design and implement two creative aging programs per neighborhood—six programs total—serving up to 100 older adults directly, with hundreds more engaged through public culminating events .
Programs run 6–8 weeks and culminate in public sharings—performances, readings, exhibitions—that center older adults as artists and cultural contributors.
What Makes This Project Different?
New York City’s SU-CASA initiative has increased visibility for creative aging. But short-term residencies can make it difficult to sustain partnerships, maintain teaching artist continuity, and embed programs long term.
Culture + Care seeks to support that gap. Over 12 months, Lifetime Arts provides:
- Creative Aging Foundations training for staff
- In-person training for teaching artists
- Curriculum coaching and teaching artist mentorship
- Five team consulting sessions per neighborhood
- Five cohort co-learning sessions across teams
- On-site visits and program technical assistance
- $15,000 seed grants per team to implement two programs
- Evaluation tools to measure impact and guide sustainability
This is not a one-time intervention. It’s a structured pathway to integration—embedding creative aging into outreach strategies, program design, fundraising, and long-term planning.
Centering Culture, Equity, and Leadership
This initiative directly serves older adults in communities disproportionately impacted by economic inequity, migration, social isolation, and health disparities—expanding access to meaningful, culturally responsive creative aging opportunities.
Programs are:
- Free or low-cost
- Sequential and skill-building
- Led by professional teaching artists
- Culturally relevant and community-rooted
- Designed in partnership with older adults themselves
Older adults are not passive recipients of services. They are active creators, leaders, and storytellers shaping neighborhood vitality.
Funders
Culture + Care is generously supported by:
The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation
Their support makes it possible to invest in sustainable creative aging infrastructure across NYC neighborhoods.
Get Involved
