Author: Beaubien, Joan

Publication Year: 1975

Media Type: Report

Summary:

This handbook on Artists and the Aging is an attempt to serve both as a report on a specific program and a guide to those who wish to develop similar programs. The specific project reported on here was carried out in St. Paul, Minnesota, under the guidance of COMPAS (Community Programs in the Arts and Sciences) and the support of a grant from the administration on Aging (U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare) over a two year period (1974-1976). The first chapter, Background: The St. Paul Project, reports in considerable detail on this program, its development, staffing, location and activities. In addition, the whole of Part II, consisting of Excerpts from Artists' Logs and Philosophical Statements and Technical Information by the Artists, deals specifically with first hand reports from the artists who participated in this program.

Abstract:

This handbook on Artists and the Aging is an attempt to serve both as a report on a specific program and a guide to those who wish to develop similar programs.

The specific project reported on here was carried out in St. Paul, Minnesota, under the guidance of COMPAS (Community Programs in the Arts and Sciences) and the support of a grant from the administration on Aging (U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare) over a two year period (1974-1976). The first chapter, Background: The St. Paul Project, reports in considerable detail on this program, its development, staffing, location and activities. In addition, the whole of Part II, consisting of Excerpts from Artists' Logs and Philosophical Statements and Technical Information by the Artists, deals specifically with first hand reports from the artists who participated in this program.

The intervening chapters - dealing with the artists, the sites, and the elderly people who participate in these programs - attempt to summarize the experiences of the St. Paul program and to organize and discuss more general aspects of such a program in ways that will, hopefully, be of value to those planning similar programs. Basic considerations for preparing an Artists and the Aging program are discussed here under the headings of Arts and the Artists, Site Selections, and Participation and Impact. These chapters present guidelines, discuss alternatives, and detail requirements and other considerations (pertaining, for example, to the recruitment of artists and their training and placement) necessary to the implementation of a successful program.

It is hoped, however, that both parts of this handbook - the specific program and the more general guidelines that grew with and from it - will be read together. The comments of the artists themselves offer, in a way no summary can, remarkable insight into the workings of such programs as this: what the artists learned as well as what and how they taught. The more general approach of the other chapters can serve, on the other hand, as a practical checklist for the development of similar programs.

CONTENTS
Foreword.

Part 1. The program.

Chapter 1. Background: The St. Paul Program. 
Chapter 2. Arts and the artists. 
Chapter 3. Site selection. 
Chapter 4. Participation and impact.

Part 2. The artists.

Chapter 1. Excerpts from the artists' logs. 
Chapter 2. Philosophical statements and technical information by the
                artists.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Participation, Cultural Diversity, Aging