Lifetime Arts

Lifetime Arts connects the people, funding, ideas and strategies necessary to increase the number and quality of arts education programs for older adults. Through a variety of services and initiatives, we provide practical support and resources to individuals and organizations that serve older adults or should serve them.  Lifetime Arts provides technical assistance, professional development, training and information services to support the design, funding and implementation of creative aging programs nationwide.

What is your organization’s mission?

Lifetime Arts’ mission is to encourage creative aging by promoting the inclusion of professionally conducted arts education programs in organizations that serve older adults; to prepare teaching artists to develop the creative capacity of older adult learners; and to foster lifelong learning in and through the arts by increasing opportunities for participation in community-based programming.

Lifetime Arts is nationally acknowledged as the leader in the development of creative aging policies, best practices, professional development training, program coaching, technical assistance, and advocacy. As thought leaders in the ongoing dialogue around aging in America and the role of arts education, cultural programming, and social engagement, we’ve built our services on the successful implementation of creative aging programs across 40 states with a vast range of public and private partners and stakeholders.

What are you most excited about regarding your organization’s programing this year?  How will it shape your community or organization or both?
We are especially excited about the 2022 launch of our free, self-paced online course, “Creative Aging Foundations,” which is based on the training curricula that we have successfully delivered since 2008 to thousands of teaching artists and community programmers across the U.S. Along with, “The Creative Aging Resource,” our renowned, digital collection of nearly 600 creative aging resources and experts, the Creative Aging Foundations course will provide a practical pathway to program success for creative aging stakeholders across levels and sectors.
What is one special aspect, element, or hidden ‘talent’ that you want our members to know about your organization?

Lifetime Arts’ cultural vision is one that fully embraces positive aging—with the arts at the core. Rather than perceiving aging as a period of inevitable decline and loss, we celebrate growing older as a time of life ripe with the potential for personal growth, enhanced well-being, and civic engagement.

Through the implementation and dissemination of model creative aging programs that are student-centered, sequential, participatory, and supported by Lifetime Arts’ capacity building and resource initiatives, we are aiming for a shift from the routine, passive entertainment offerings of community organizations to the implementation of programs that actively engage older adults in in-depth learning.

As a service organization in an emerging field of endeavor that is cross-sector by nature, we work with partners at the institutional/system level to identify common goals, align resources, and avoid duplication by employing existing systems. Our approach is one that emphasizes social capital, resource development, inclusivity and an on-going assessment of the work. This approach builds programming from the top down and the bottom up at a local level, and it engages institutional leadership, mid-level and local managers, and new community partners in capacity-building opportunities.

Visit Lifetime Art’s website to learn more about the organization.