Elders Share the Arts - Brooklyn, NY, USA

ESTA's central strategy is bringing together young people and the elderly using the medium of the visual and dramatic arts. Storytelling, with a focus on oral history and intergenerational communication, is a key focus. Exhibitions celebrating the work of older artists and in-school programmes that feature interaction between young people and older adults are also central.

To support this strategy, ESTA draws on the skills and energy of older volunteers/artists. An invitation on the ESTA site asks, "Does your gumbo pot of stoop top stories simmer with songs of survival? Are you proud of your culture and heritage?" Senior citizens are invited to participate in ESTA's Living History Arts Programs. Life review workshops are based on participants' oral histories, which are transformed into theatre, dance, storytelling, and literary presentations - culminating in city-wide festivals featuring senior citizen drama groups. Some of these groups use their plays to celebrate community life and bring community issues to the public. These programmes serve older adults and seniors with impairments in community and senior centres, nursing homes, and hospitals. Living History Arts also links up with young people through classroom visits, workshops, and oral history storytelling and interviewing. Bilingual (Spanish and English) sessions are offered.

Specific ESTA projects have included:

• Model Life Review (St. Albans VA Hospital)
• Chinatown historical project (Queens, NY)
• Living History Theater Project about the Holocaust
• Living Legends - pairs renowned elder artists with disadvantaged young people so they may pass on artistic legacy and arts skills
• Life Review Training Program (Hunter College School for Social Work) - involves expanded programming for populations including deaf visually impaired, older psychiatric clients, and the wheelchair-bound
• Pearls of Wisdom - involved community-based touring elder storytellers passing on their stories to diverse audiences throughout the city and beyond.
• Rediscovering America, a multicultural intergenerational arts programme
• Community Service Learning programmes - conducted in partnership with the Board of Education - Alternative High Schools
• Changing Chelsea: An Intergenerational Oral History/Photo Essay Project, a project to explore housing issues
• Legacy Art Works - brings professional artists in to create oral history collages and memory books of older adults in institutionalised settings, which draw from the life stories of each elder
• Intergenerational Recognition of the Arts Fellowship - interested youths with demonstrated talent and motivation received a stipend award to attend a 12-week intergenerational workshop with an elder artist and an ESTA teaching artist. The sessions were held in community after-school programmes in Spanish Harlem. An exhibition was the project culmination
• "Why Vote?: The Roots of Change" - involved a series of intergenerational workshops in two underserved Brooklyn communities and a youth- and elder-produced play/festival designed to educate citizens about their rights, responsibilities, and potential power as active participants in the political process.

An additional component of ESTA's work involves training. Workshops held as part of "Conflict Resolution Theater" involve problem solving and leadership training sessions for youth and intergenerational groups using theatre as a means of addressing complex social problems. Groups emphasise the role of citizenship, action, and leadership. Further, the Center for Creative Aging (CCA) assists professionals in gerontology, education, and the arts in their efforts to provide better services and care for older people and their communities. Individuals learn new skills and share their resources in an effort to equip themselves with the experience to help reduce the sense of loss and isolation that older adults may suffer with. The Creative Aging Institute is an intensive programme designed to train arts professionals nationwide in ESTA's programme development strategies.

Partnership-building is also central to ESTA's work. Generating Community is a project providing planning, implementation, and programming resources for neighborhoods throughout the city to initiate and sustain collaborations. Led by ESTA's teaching artists and staff, old and young create original works of art through transforming their stories, negotiating differences, and celebrating their commonalities for community building. The programme provides training and consultation to enable communities to initiate their own intergenerational arts partnerships.

Materials, bibliographies, links, and resources are also available; please click here for more details. Selected publications include A Stage for Memory, a book based on ESTA's work, Elder Voices, a training videotape, Life Review Training Manual for social service providers, and Generating Community - Intergenerational Arts.

Ageing, Youth.

ESTA is inspired by a philosophy called Creative Aging, which is a strategy for self-expression designed to enables people to find meaning through their life experiences. It emphasises lifelong learning as an aspect of healthy and productive ageing.

In 1985, ESTA was named "Outstanding Organization in the U.S. in the Field of Arts & Aging" by the National Council on Aging.