Arts Activities Support
ACHF Arts Access
Approximately 100 older adult participants, many with memory loss; staff, and intergenerational volunteers in four Minneapolis adult day centers will enjoy and learn visual art and poetry techniques, feel a sense of mastery over artistic processes, share stories, learn about each other, and surprise themselves and their communities with what they are capable of. Their work will be shared through community celebratory exhibits and performances, the distribution of postcards, and via social and print and web media, creating a stronger presence for elder artists in our community. Alzheimer's Poetry Project of Minnesota uses a 10-point evaluation form for each session, completed by the session leader: data gathered includes statistical information about makeup and diversity of participant groups and encourages further outreach, and tracks levels of positive facial expressions, verbal engagement, emotional reactions, and any significant moments with and comments from participants, allowing plenty of room to note what content did or did not resonate and why. We will use these, and feedback from participants and their family and friends, and staff and volunteers, to help evaluate the impact of our work and plan for future programming.
We were able to directly serve more adults than initially estimated; approximately 120, including staff and volunteers. We were grateful to also have a contingent of several teen volunteers assisting with the Eastside sessions. According to teaching artist evaluations completed after each session, positive verbal and emotional responses to the activity were consistently very or extremely high.
Other, local or private