ARTFARM and Middlesex Community College are co-sponsoring a
“Symposium on the Arts and Aging” on Friday, November 7 at the Community
College. The event, which will run 2:30 – 6:30 pm, is free and open to
the public.
The keynote speaker at the Symposium is Dr. Bernie
Siegel, author of the best-selling book “Love, Medicine and Miracles”.
He is globally influential on the use of painting and visualization in
the treatment of cancer patients. In 2011 he was honored by the Watkins
Review of London as one of the top twenty Spiritually Influential Living
People on the Planet. Bernie is an iconoclast who will be certain to
challenge the assumptions of everyone in the room about how the arts can
play a role in the lives of aging people and their caregivers.
The
afternoon will continue with a session of workshops, followed by a
Panel Discussion with artists and scientists on the effects of aging on
artists and the benefits of the arts to the aging.
Workshops will
include “Memoir Writing” with MxCC Professor of English Dale Griffith,
and “Sharpening the Aging Brain” with actor, storyteller and teacher
John Basinger. Symposium participants will have the choice of attending
one of the two workshops.
Dale teaches memoir writing at the College
and has also worked extensively with women in the State Correctional
System. She specializes in helping people tell their life stories
through writing.
John, who is eighty years old, played the title
role in ARTFARM’s production of King Lear this summer. He is Professor
Emeritus of Theater and Sign Language at Three Rivers Community College,
has appeared in many films and was a long-time performer with the
National Theater of the Deaf. John has memorized and performs Milton’s
Paradise Lost in its entirety, and uses physical and mental memorization
techniques to keep his aging brain sharp.
The Panel, which will
be moderated by Judith Felton, MxCC Professor and Coordinator of the
Human Services Program at the College, will bring together artists,
scholars and scientists to investigate the Arts and Aging. The audience
will be invited to engage in an active dialog with the panelists, and
the Symposium will culminate in a wide-ranging community discussion on
how aging effects artistic people, how creativity and artistic
expression can serve as antidotes to depression, loneliness, memory loss
and other challenges of aging, and how the arts can serve as tools for
persons working with aging populations.
Panelists include Neely
Bruce, composer, pianist and Wesleyan University Music Professor; Donna
Fedus, Gerontologist and Coordinator of Elder Programs at The
Consultation Center, Yale University School of Medicine; Carolyn Kirsch,
actor, director and former Broadway performer; Carlos Hernandez-Chavez,
a painter, musician, and Arts and Humanities Policy Development
Consultant; and Wendy Black-Nasta, director of Artists for World Peace.
The
afternoon will end with light refreshments and an opportunity to
network informally with panelists, presenters and other attendees.
The Symposium will be held in Room 808 in Chapman Hall at Middlesex
Community College, 100 Training Hill Road, Middletown. The event is free
and open to the public, but participants are asked to pre-register by
emailing info@art-farm.org.
This Symposium is intended for artists,
students, caregivers and anyone coping with the challenges of getting
older. For more information, write info@art-farm.org, visit
www.art-farm.org, or call (860) 346-4390.
ARTFARM is
a Middletown-based non-profit which cultivates high-quality theater
with a commitment to simple living, environmental sustainability and
social justice. Since 2006 ARTFARM has been presenting professional
Shakespeare in the Grove on the MxCC campus each summer. The “Symposium
on the Arts and Aging” is the culminating event of “The Lear Project”, a
series of public talks and events around Aging held in association with
this summer’s production of King Lear.
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