Abstract
The dynamic between knowledge and wonder is a driving force behind the growing international field of creative aging. To work with older adults whose abilities are increasingly abstracted and unpredictable due to brain aging and physical and cognitive impairments, professional artists have a kinship with the use of imagination and improvisation which are essential tools in enhancing health and wellness of older adults, a population whose impact on health care and economics has global ramifications. Current news, scholarly thought, emerging bodies of research and pioneering fields of practice all are telling us that artistic expression is a cost effective and life enhancing way to cope with brain degeneration and physical ailments associated with getting older. One such practitioner, the U.S. charity Arts for the Aging, Inc. (AFTA), uses the arts to combat isolation and spread joy and better health and wellness to older adults in the metropolitan Washington D.C. region.
Keywords
Arts for the aging, creative aging, dementia, Alzheimer’s, older adults, health, wellness, teaching artists, AFTA, Lolo Sarnoff
‘What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself — life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.’
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark.
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