On July 29 and 30, Aroha Philanthropies and the Minnesota State Arts Board offered the third in a series of Creative Aging trainings for teaching artists working in all arts disciplines. The event, held at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, was designed to equip teaching artists with the skills to design and teach successful, skill-based, socially-engaging arts education workshops for older adults. Aroha and Lifetime Arts recruited a diverse team of teaching artists for this, the largest teacher training that the two organizations have partnered to design and deliver. As someone who joined Lifetime Arts in early 2019, attending this training was a valuable opportunity for me to see the work we do come to life. What follows is a session-by-session account of the experience.
Day One: Ageism & Best Practices in Creative Aging
Lifetime Arts’ Director of Education, Annie Montgomery, and Lifetime Arts Trainer, Lynda Monick-Isenberg, each led cohorts of seasoned and emerging teaching artists through a discussion on ageism and how it impacts our culture and the design of creative aging workshops. It was really interesting to observe this conversation — all of the artists were aware of how ageism affects their communities. They were able to cite challenges that older adults face in our society, i.e., cultural differences, perceptions about transportation and mobility, and the overall lack of participatory arts programming for people over 55. Next, Annie provided the emerging artists with an overview of the field, and taught a lesson on S.A.F.E Planning (design principles that ensure that all participants have an equitable opportunity to learn, contribute, and collaborate). “…they were hungry for information and particularly appreciated the work that we did around ageism, entering community, and working with diverse learners,” she said.
An Interactive Learning Experience
After these discussions, trainees broke out into sub-groups to explore how these teaching methods play out across various art forms. Thern Anderson led a group focused on Movement and Writing; Dane Stauffer led Theatre; and Masanari Kawahara led Visual Arts/Mask Making. Each class demonstration featured best practices in sequential, skill building curriculum design and challenged trainees to identify how they might apply these lessons in their own practice. In one of Thern’s exercises, we were asked to study a painting of nature and think of two feelings. Without sharing our feelings, we were then asked to create two movements that reflect them. Next, we were asked to pair up with those who were given the same painting, and as a group, we combined our movements into a dance and performed for the class. It was great to be involved in such an interactive and human experience and to observe the trainees’ excitement and passion for developing their own practice going forward.
Day Two: Building Community
The beginning of the second day focused on social engagement. Annie paired up trainees and asked them to choose an object to share. Each partner was then asked to share what they learned and relate it to a community-building exercise that could be executed in a Creative Aging workshop. Next, Annie divided people into groups by arts discipline, and asked them to explore their commonalities. These exercises illustrate how social engagement work needs to be interactive and tied to art-making.
A Closer Look at the Work of the Teaching Artist
During a panel discussion facilitated by Lynda Monik-Isenberg, trainees heard from experienced teaching artists including; Thern Anderson and Mary Moore Easter (Movement at TU Dance); Dr. Louis Porter II (Memoir at Walker Methodist); Matt Abernathy (Music/Choir at Minnesota Opera); Dane Stauffer (Theatre at Park Square Theatre); and Masanari Kawahara (Mask Making at Pillsbury House and Theatre). Isenberg, posed series of questions focused on pursuing employment opportunities, the challenges teaching artists face when working in community settings, and how to overcome them.
Matt Abernathy’s work spans from children to older adults and avocational to professional. He shared his experience as a conductor for Voice of Opera: “They want so badly to learn these things,” said Matt. “They have so much life experience too. They have a lot of background knowledge that they can draw from to make quicker connections than the K-12 kids I work with. They have seen operas, they have been to an orchestra, they have listened to the radio, they have read lots of stories and they see the parallels between the scene we are doing and their lives. They draw these connections very quickly and acutely, so that we can go quite deep into the music.” “I think no matter what the medium is, you give someone an opportunity to think of themselves as an artist and to look at the world as an artist, and step outside of self concepts that have gone unquestioned,” added Dane Stauffer. “I’ve had students walk in and say, ‘You know the idea of playing? I thought I forgot how to play.’”
Invigorating, engaging, creative and fun!
“One thing I really appreciated about the workshop was how they modeled good teaching practices,” added Lauren Karle. “From things like posting the goals in the classroom, having a parking lot for questions, having a resources poster, to using microphones and having good lighting — all of the things that can easily go overlooked. I felt like they modeled very well how they want us to be teaching and what we should be learning.”
“The training was invigorating, engaging, creative and fun!” Annie concluded. “It was delightful to work with the Minnesota teaching artists and I was inspired by their curiosity, and their eagerness to learn and collaborate with one another.”
This training was a huge building block for the teaching artist trainees, but also for me. It was an eye-opening experience to see how much these seasoned and emerging artists absorbed in just two days. I now understand much more about how important these trainings are for teaching artists from all backgrounds and levels of practice. The skills that they mastered should never be underestimated. The teaching artists left this training feeling more confident, enlightened and inspired to take the next (or first) leap into creative aging programming. I was grateful to bear witness.
*Photo credit: Jacqueline DuMont, unless otherwise noted.
*See also Minnesota: Teaching Artist Training in Creative Aging by National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA).
Year
Fields
Arts Organization, Teaching Artist