National Guild - Creative Aging – National Guild for Community Arts Education

MetLife Foundation Creative Aging Program: Grants and Technical Assistance

MetLife Foundation and the National Guild Announce $125,000 in Grants to 11 Creative Aging Programs

Grants totaling more than $125,000 have been awarded to eleven nonprofit arts education organizations that will deepen and expand professionally-led arts education programs for older adults. Each grantee has demonstrated the capacity to develop programs that can increase older adults’ social engagement and mastery of one or more art forms. Each will provide sustained, sequential arts instruction to at least 25 older adults throughout 2013. Three grantees will receive supplemental funding of up to $2,000 to underwrite their participation in a project to document and disseminate the promising practices they employ.

2013 Grantees »

About the Program

The Creative Aging Program was initiated in 2009 by MetLife Foundation and the National Guild in response to the rapid population growth of Americans aged 60+, as well as the research demonstrating the health benefits generated by professionally-led, participatory arts programs for older adults.

The goals of the Creative Aging Program are to:

1. increase the capacity of nonprofit community arts education providers to serve older adults;
2. expand and/or deepen existing creative aging programs of high quality; and
3. identify exemplary creative aging programs as models for the field.

The program is part of the National Guild's multi-year Creative Aging Initiative, which, in partnership with the National Center for Creative Aging and the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, published Creativity Matters: The Arts and Aging Toolkit in English and Spanish (www.artsandaging.org) and which also produces training institutes for community arts education leaders.

For more information about the Creative Aging Program, contact Ken Cole or call (212) 268-3337 ext. 18.