Arts and Aging

From Lifetime Arts:

"The Vermont Arts Council is offering a new grant program to provide meaningful arts learning experiences for older Vermonters, hoping to ease the social isolation that sometimes arrives as people age."

From Culture Track: "Untapped Opportunity: Older Americans & the Arts aims to shed light on older generations’ distinct preferences and behaviors to provide relevant insights for cultural engagement. Our findings are focused on the U.S. population aged 55 and over, who were surveyed as part of our Culture + Community in a Time of Transformation national survey, fielded from April 5 to April 30, 2021."

From NDN Collective, by Gaby Strong and Sarah Manning

Reflecting on: What advocacy is being done to address the needs of African, Latine, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA) arts communities in need of greater support?

The last four weeks at NDN Collective have been a poignant demonstration of Indigenous mobilization. We’ve seen this before. Our people have been here before. We are the survivors of disease and pandemics, of biological warfare, now called to respond and mobilize once again for the health and wellness of our people and the planet. We are up for it.

The Mosaic Network and Fund in The New York Community Trust, a collaboration between 19 foundations, recently committed $4.5 million to fund 27 arts groups that are led by, created for, and accountable to African, Latine, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA) people.

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.