THE TRAINing INSTITUTE FOR

Arts In Health and Creative Aging

THE TRAINING INSTITUTE

The Creative Center’s Training Institute for Arts in Health and Creative Aging is a multi-day immersive program designed for artists, healthcare professionals, educators, and administrators who seek to integrate creative practice into health and older adult settings.

The program offers participants opportunities for experiential skill development, embodied learning, and critical dialogue, led by an interdisciplinary team of accomplished professionals and thought leaders in the field.

Through a dynamic mix of lectures, panel discussions, and hands-on art workshops, attendees will gain contemporary knowledge into best practices for the development and implementation of high-quality arts programming that enhances health, wellbeing, and quality of life across the aging continuum.

Sign up to receive information about the 2026 Training Institute!

Topics covered in Past training sessions include:

  • aging explored in its physiological, personal, and societal context

  • the roles of the Artist-In-Residence and the Licensed Creative Arts Therapist in the Medical Setting

  • Art Making and Dementia: In Theory and Practice

  • Medical and Professional Protocols for Artists

  • The Portable Studio: Process, Projects and Materials Management

  • Understanding Social Prescribing with The National Academy for Social Prescribing 

  • Hospital AIR Panel: What does it take to craft this work?

  • The Unique Culture of Hospitals

  • Caring for the Caregiver: Art for Families and Healthcare Staff

  • Best Practices in Artmaking

  • At The Museum: Understanding Engagement and Access for Older Adult Populations and People Living with Illness

  • Intergenerational Art Programming

Participants in our 2024 Training Institute worked together to finger-knit a group art piece while learning multiple approaches to delivering art instruction for populations with different abilities.

 

“Every session showed or presented information that I craved but did not know it! It has allowed me to focus on how to fit my creativity into the needed world, even learning the vernacular And I love the statement "Collaboration not Competition," as this has been something I believe I have been seeking for a while to evolve my art practice.”

- Trainee, 2018 cohort

“It is inspiring and encouraging to see many artists involved in creative art programs for the aging community. I see possibilities and creative ideas for developing projects to care for the community with art making.”

- Trainee, 2013 cohort

 

Training Institute attendees, 2019, at a hands-on workshop with Opening Minds Through Art, an intergenerational art program that pairs people with dementia and volunteer college students.

2019 Trainee expresses the answer to a presenter prompt through movement. This training invites practitioners and artists from different disciplines to share what they know about the field in any way that feels organic to them.

 

“The virtual format has demonstrated how the Institute's mission is to provide optimum training using a plethora of training methods and tools. With presenters who demonstrated with clarity and exuberance their craft and the opportunity to use it in the service of others.”

- Trainee, 2021 cohort