North Dakota: Creative Aging Program Leveraged with Foundation Support

A recent $100,000 Community Creativity Cohort grant from the Bush Foundation is enabling the North Dakota Council on the Arts (NDCA) to expand its creative aging work. Through its Art for Life program, NDCA supports arts activities—such as combining traditional dance and a mobile painting device—in eldercare facilities in effort to improve the emotional and physical well-being of aging North Dakotans. With the grant’s unrestricted funding, NDCA is developing a toolkit to help care providers, visiting artists, family members and volunteers to perceive, conceive and conduct art activities that promote well-being. The toolkits, which will be available to every eldercare facility in the state, are being designed by North Dakotan fine artists and folk artists, including those working with folklorists as well as those working with physicians, speech therapists, nurses or other health care professionals. So far, the draft toolkit includes more than 50 activity plans, all inspired by NDCA’s Sundogs and Sunflowers: Folklore and Folk Art of the Northern Great Plains, as well as two CDs with guided imagery and American Indian flute music. Additionally, it presents a method of creative storytelling that helps people with dementia more fully experience art. To learn more, contact NDCA Folklorist Troyd Geist.