1st Edition
Art Education and Creative Aging Older Adults as Learners, Makers, and Teachers of Art
This text explores how art education can meaningfully address the needs of older adults as learners, makers, and teachers of art in formal and informal settings. It combines perspectives of museum educators, teacher preparation professors, art therapists, teaching artists, and older artists on what is meant by Creative Aging and the ways art education can support the health and well-being of this population. Most importantly, the book discusses what the field of art education can gain from older adult learners and creators.
Chapters are organized into five sections: Creatively Aging, Meeting Older Adults’ Unique Needs, Intergenerational Art Education, Engaging Older Adults With Artworks and Objects, and In Our Own Voices: Older Adults as Learners, Makers, and Teachers. Within each section, contributors investigate themes critical to art education within aging populations such as memory loss, disability, coping with life transitions, lifelong learning, intergenerational relationships, and personal narrative. The final section focuses on accounts from older adult artists/educators, offering insights and proposing new directions for growing older creatively.
Though ideal for art education faculty and students in graduate and undergraduate settings, as well as art education scholars and those teaching in multigenerational programs within community settings, this book is an expansive resource for any artist, student, or scholar interested in the links among health, well-being, and arts participation for older adults.
Section 1. Creatively Aging 1. Aging as Improvised Performance 2. John (Jack) Leo Roggenbeck’s Life Through Art 3. Flowing Downhill, We Never Stop Creating Section 2. Meeting Older Adults’ Unique Needs 4. Bridging Art, Aging, and Alzheimer’s 5. The Color of Memory: A Case Study 6. A Critical View of Art Education’s Responsibility to Disability and Aging Section 3. Intergenerational Art Education 7. Intergenerational Artmaking: Creating Connected Cultures 8. ART CART, a Transformative Journey: Assisting Aging Artists in Documenting Their Artistic Legacy 9. Digital Interactions and Intergenerational Connections Section 4: Engaging Older Adults With Artworks and Objects 10. Meaningful Objects: Memory Stories for Older Adults 11. Lifelong Learning and Museums: An Exploration of Arts- and Object-Based Experiences for Older Adults 12. Art Museums and Creative Aging Section 5. In Our Own Voices: Older Adults as Learners, Makers, and Teachers 13. Curating a Life: Seeing Much More 14. Grandma, Let’s Draw! Children’s Art and Intergenerational Connections 15. The Long Hill: One Lifelong Learner’s Meandering Path to the Doctorate in Art Education 16. Art + Culture + Elders 17. A Personal Narrative About Retirement: Continuing to Pursue an Active Professional and Creative Life
Biography
Melanie Davenport is Associate Professor of Art Education in the Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University, USA.
Linda Hoeptner Poling is Associate Professor of Art Education at Kent State University, USA.
Rébecca Bourgault is Assistant Professor and Chair of Art Education at the Boston University College of Fine Arts, USA.
Marjorie Cohee Manifold is Professor of Arts Education at Indiana University, USA.
Research and practice in the field of art education has evolved well beyond the K–12 art classroom and students, but addressing specific needs and potential of our nation’s aging population has been largely overlooked.
This collection of essays and research clearly attests to the life-affirming value of the arts and is a significant contribution to literature in the field. Multiple realities of aging are deftly woven alongside hopeful strategies for creative engagement and intergenerational connection. All of us who have elders in our professional and/or personal lives, or anyone wishing to creatively enhance the aging process will embrace this volume.
- Melody Milbrandt, Professor Emerita of Art Education, Georgia State University, and author of Art for Life (with Tom Anderson)
