THE TRAINing INSTITUTE FOR Arts-In-Healthcare and Creative Aging

THE TRAINING INSTITUTE.

 

The Creative Center’s Training Institute fro Arts-In-Healthcare and Creative Aging is a unique opportunity for practitioners working at the intersection of the arts and healthcare to learn from experts in the field while fostering lifelong connections with their peers from the United States and around the world.

Training Institute content is geared toward individuals from arts and healthcare spaces and beyond. Participants have the opportunity to learn everything needed to implement best practice arts programming in hospitals, healthcare centers, nursing homes, community-based organizations, senior centers, hospice and palliative care centers, and residential facilities serving older adults and their caregivers across the aging continuum.

The Training takes place both in-person and virtually, and consists of a series of seminars, presentations, panel discussions, art-making workshops, and museum visits. We recognize that arts and healthcare spaces are rife with racial and economic inequity. We support making our training more accessible, broadening our range of participation, and deepening our connections through developing a sense of belonging and community for all.

Topics covered in Past training sessions include:

  • Cultural Diversity in a Healthcare Setting

  • Body Systems for Artists

  • 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

  • Looking at and Talking About Art

Participants in our 2024 Training Institute worked together to finger-knit a group art piece while learning multiple approaches to delivering art instruction for a variety of 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