Resources
Art as Therapy: How to Age Creatively
via Smithsonian Magazine | Articles and Blog Posts
A new exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., showcases the work of elderly artists with memory loss and other chronic conditions.
Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?
via The New Yorker | Articles and Blog Posts
From the article: You missed your chance to be a prodigy, but there’s still growth left for grownups. The joys—and occasional embarrassments—of being a novice could be an antidote to the strain of being a …
What Happens to Creativity as We Age?
via The New York Times | Articles and Blog Posts
From the article: How does the ability to come up with unusual ideas change as we grow older? Does it begin to flag in adolescence? Before then? To investigate these questions, we and our colleagues …
Does Creativity Decline with Age?
via Scientific American | Articles and Blog Posts
From the article: This question has attracted scientific research for more than a century. In fact, the first empirical study of this issue was published in 1835. Thus, I can offer a confident answer: not …
Alzheimer’s Poetry Project
Websites
From the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP) site: The mission of the APP is to improve the quality of life of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia by facilitating creative expression through poetry. We …
Memory Loss Initiative
Programs and Initiatives
From the StoryCorps site: StoryCorps launched the Memory Loss Initiative to support and encourage people with various forms of memory loss to share their stories with loved ones and future generations.
Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition
Reports
From the Introduction: In 2004, the Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium brought together cognitive neuroscientists from seven universities across the United States to grapple with the question of why arts training has been associated with …
Take-Aways from the World’s First International Teaching Artists Conference
Articles and Blog Posts
From the article: In late August 2012, 130 eager individuals gathered for three days in Oslo, Norway, for the World’s First International Teaching Artist Conference. Representatives came from 23 countries, some with a clear sense …
Booming Blog (The New York Times)
via The New York Times | Articles and Blog Posts
The New York Times “Booming” blog retired in February 2014, but its articles can be accessed on the newspaper’s site.
The Stages of Age : Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture
Books and Chapters
Although the mention of aging and old age all too often conjures notions of rigidity, decline, and invisibility, the very act of acting, of taking on a new role, can challenge and expand popular conceptions …