Training Teaching Artists, Community Centers, Museums, and Arts Orgs

This fall Lifetime Arts has delivered of live Creative Aging training sessions in New York City, around the state, and across the country.

Community Centers

In October, Lifetime Arts made two separate trips to the YMCA of Greater Syracuse. On the first trip, the team oriented the executive director and key program leaders to the field of Creative Aging, and trained them in program implementation, marketing, community engagement, and vision planning. During the second visit, we trained the their roster of teaching artists in anti-ageism, best practices in program and curriculum design, social engagement, and working in community settings. Both workshops were wonderfully successful and the participants were engaged and inspired

Museums

In November, we led a three-day training in Minneapolis for Aroha Philanthropies’ Seeding Vitality Arts in Museums grantee recipients. These sessions, offered in partnership with the American Alliance of Museums, were a deep-dive for executive directors, education directors and program staff from 20 museums from across the United States.

The goal of the training was to prepare the museums to align their Seeding Vitality Arts Vision to their own museum’s missions, to build a national cohort of museums that will be the gold standard models for best practices in Creative Aging that other museums can be replicate. Furthermore, the museums were trained on program implementation best practices in preparation for their Seeding Vitality Arts programs that will run through 2019.

Seeding Vitality Arts in Museums Training, Minneapolis

What SVA Museums Trainees Had to Say:

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Arts Organizations and Teaching Artists

The following week, Lifetime Arts traveled to Baltimore to lead the Catalyzing Creativity Creative Aging Pre Conference Institute at the National Guild for Community Arts Education annual conference. This workshop introduced participants to the field of Creative Aging; discussed the ways in which ageism impacts programming for older adults; reviewed the importance of social engagement as part of any successful curriculum; and reviewed the steps to planning, funding, recruiting, delivering and evaluating arts workshops for older adults.

Additionally, the Catalyzing Creative Aging cohort of 20 organizations received further training in social engagement and were prepared for the technical assistance and support they will receive from Lifetime Arts as they prepare to apply for program funding from the National Guild.

Lifetime Arts also partnered with Dance Exchange to present an 3.5 hour workshop called Intergenerational Arts Programs and the Older Adult Learner during the conference.

The multi-day events in Minneapolis and Baltimore were packed with information, best practices, and strategies to approach this work with care and intention. Although rigorous, participants were left feeling empowered and ready to take action.

Catalyzing Creativity Pre-Conference Institute, Baltimore

Group Presentations: Connecting Social Engagement with Art Making

Throughout the month of October we also continued training several teaching artists and arts organization staff members throughout New York City as part of our work with the New York Community Trust, LiveOn NY, and Dr. Ruth Finkelstein of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College:

Teaching Artist Training Events 

  • Kew Gardens Library, Queens, NY
  • Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY, NY
  • Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn, NY
  • Bronx Council on the Arts, Bronx, NY

Arts Organization Staff Training Events

  • Department of Cultural Affairs, NY, NY (2)