Featured Member Project

Featured Member

Fredric Franklin, 90, is a legendary English ballet dancer, choreographer, director and teacher. He is one of the artists featured in the film, Do Not Go Gently.

With baby boomers starting to hit their 60s and medical advancements improving daily, America’s population will become more and more silver in the next couple of decades. It is widely known that this shift will that have an effect on the arts in terms of staff changes, but few in the arts have considered how it will affect programming. A few organizations are ahead of the curve, creating programs for aging adults. Montclair Arts Council in Montclair, NJ, started the Creative Aging Initiative this year, an innovative two-part program for Montclair's seniors, senior-care providers, and interested members of the public. The project's goal is to enrich the lives of the elderly through engagement with the arts, and to proclaim and support their primary place in the community.

The first program of the Creative Aging Initiative, a sneak preview of the public television documentary, Do Not Go Gently, took place this past April. Narrated by 90-year-old Walter Cronkite, Do Not Go Gently is an American Public Television film documenting the power of the imagination in the elderly. Montclair Arts Council sponsored the special advanced screening, which took place at the Montclair Art Museum, co-sponsor of the sneak preview, preceding the film's premiere on national television.

Do Not Go Gently focuses on three extraordinary elder artists and weaves in the work of Dr. Gene Cohen, who studies the aging brain and the role creativity plays in improving the long-term health of seniors. The film explores the need for new approaches to communication in a world where the aging population is growing rapidly, and the triumph of the imagination and spirit over the aging body. Following the film, viewers participated in a Q & A with the film's producer and director and were invited to take a tour of the Montclair Art Museum’s featured exhibition, Recent Work, by 95-year-old artist, Will Barnet. Susan Perlstein, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging, led a follow up workshop, specifically for service providers, to learn from successful creative aging programs around the country as a basis on which to design programming for local seniors. The film preview and workshop were funded in part by the Wallerstein Foundation for Geriatric Life Improvement.

The second project of the Creative Aging Initiative, Passports to Remembrance: These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things, is an ongoing community project made by, for, and about seniors. In addition to showcasing the creativity of seniors through the photographic and storytelling arts, the project will provide the public with insights into the personal histories and experiences of this generation. Seniors are photographed with a piece of memorabilia of special significance to them by a senior photographer while a senior interviewer records each participant's remembrance. The photographs and stories will be exhibited at the Montclair Public Library in late 2007, as well as in a CD catalogue. Each participant will receive a framed photograph and copy of his or her story. Montclair Arts Council hopes to bring seniors into the Montclair Public Schools to share their stories, and to turn this project into a traveling exhibition. Montclair Arts Council says these first two projects are just the beginning, already planning to build on the program's success in 2008.