Gov. Cuomo Announces Creative Aging Initiative Led by Lifetime Arts

From Lifetime Arts:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of a three-region Creative Aging Initiative to provide hands-on art-making programs that support comprehensive physical and mental health benefits for older New Yorkers and combat social isolation. Created by a new partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Office for the Aging, the Creative Aging Initiative takes an innovative, evidence-based approach to healthy aging, underscoring New York’s leadership as the first age-friendly state in the nation.

Beginning as a pilot in spring 2020, the new initiative will serve up to 500 older adults at up to 12 senior centers and libraries throughout Long Island, the Capital Region and the North Country. The initiative will also create jobs for professional teaching artists, who will lead hands-on skill-building workshops in a variety of creative disciplines, building on extensive research demonstrating the role of the arts in improving health outcomes for older adults.

The program will be administered by Lifetime Arts and will build on a successful 2017 New York State Council on the Arts-Monroe County Office of the Aging arts programming pilot in Rochester that delivered services in four senior centers citywide.

Founded in New York State in 2008, Lifetime Arts has designed and led several Creative Aging capacity-building initiatives in New York State along with multiple others across the U.S. serving over well over 10,000 older adults and training over 1,500 teaching artists and hundreds of librarians, aging service professionals and community arts organizations.

Lifetime Arts co-founder and CEO Maura O’Malley said, “Lifetime Arts is pleased to work with this cross-sector alliance to advance Creative Aging in our home state. By implementing a proven program model that embraces older adults as learners, expands the impact of teaching artists and provides community organizations with a positive and creative approach to programming, this work will enrich the lives of older adults in New York. Importantly, it will provide a replicable model for other states as the population continues to age at a rapid rate.”