Arts and Aging

South Arts launched a program that seeks to provide significant support to projects that harness the power of “Arts & …”.

Supporting creative aging in rural areas is the driving force behind Iowa Arts Learning in Libraries, an effort of the State Library of Iowa and the Iowa Arts Council (IAC) to offer free arts classes for adults 55 and older in rural public libraries.

Amid conversations of gentrification and affordable housing, the presence of Westbeth Artists Housing in New York City is a key reminder of the importance of spaces like this one. Artsy provides an inside look at the first federally subsidized artists’ colony in the US.

The North Dakota Council on the Arts (NDCA), with the generous support of the Bush Foundation, has announced the release of its arts and creative aging toolkit to be sent to every elder care facility and local arts agency in North Dakota and South Dakota, 300 elder care activities coordinators in Minnesota, and every state arts agency in the country. Reaching 1,200 organizations, it is one of the largest efforts of its kind.

I pulled my car out of the driveway and parked in front of my neighbors’ house across the street. A few moments later, my friend, Marvin Morales, a thirty-one-year-old Guatemalan PhD student in biology at the University of Florida, opened the door. His right arm hung across his shirtless torso in a navy-blue sling. Across his collarbone there was a rectangular piece of gauze. I asked Marvin how he was feeling. Not good, he said. The pain in his shoulder had kept him up most of the night.

I was privileged to have facilitated GIA’s Funder Forum on Arts in Medicine this past February in Orlando, Florida. In that role, I had the opportunity to listen to and learn from the gathered practitioners and funders. Since then, I have reflected on what for me was an exceptional day of sharing and exchange that I think benefited both the participants and the growing arts-in-medicine field. Here is some of what emerged.

One of the key issues of our time is health care. We know that it is complicated because of its vast scale of services and intimate reach into every life, family, and community in this country. The search for access to high-quality health care for millions of Americans is often difficult. Medical advances of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries have extended the life span, cured pandemic diseases like polio, and have made it possible to manage chronic illnesses once debilitating.

The following is an abridged report prepared for Grantmakers in the Arts from The Summit on Creativity and Aging in America, held in collaboration with the 2015 White House Conference on Aging on May 18, 2015, at the National Endowment for the Arts. The summit was co-presented by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Center for Creative Aging.

A Personal Experience Informs Philanthropy

Old people have danced forever. We just forgot that for a time.
— Liz Lerman

In June, Ellen Michelson, president of Aroha Philanthropies, and I attended the first National Leadership Exchange of the National Center for Creative Aging in Washington, D.C. It was an extraordinary conference, filled with inspiration and information on this emerging field.