For You: Breaking down aging and dementia stereotypes in everyday life through creative engagement
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Thank you to everyone who attended our season premiere on September 12, 2024! The recording of this live conversation has been published as an At Home, On Air podcast episode.
“The ‘why’ of what I do is to help people feel seen and heard, find ease in their bodies and live fuller, healthier lives. Put another way, I want to help us feel more connected to ourselves and each other. These goals drive me. So does fun.”
Rowena Richie
Thank You to Our Featured Guest:
Rowena Richie | Interdisciplinary Artist working with people living with neurodiversity and dementia
Thank You to Our Forum Host:
Susanne Stadler | Architect, Executive Director of At Home With Growing Older
Conversation Details:
Rowena Richie’s interactive projects engage people through art making, body dynamics and celebratory events, designing collaborations between artists and elders. This discussion explores her artistic endeavors aimed at tackling prevalent health challenges among older adults living in urban settings: social isolation and dementia. It also delves into the potential expansion of her initiatives, making us all stakeholders in mutual support and envision cities and communities that embrace this contemporary urban lifestyle.
Topics of Discussion:
- Challenges of older adults
- Social isolation
- Dementia
- Initiatives
- Contemporary urban lifestyles
More About Rowena Richie:
Rowena Richie received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance from the University of Michigan and California State University, Long Beach. She holds a Masters’ of Fine Arts in Creative Inquiry from New College of California. For the past 30 years Rowena has been a performance maker and movement practitioner in San Francisco.
In 2019 Rowena was awarded an Atlantic Fellowship for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), at UCSF. The fellowship deepened her resolve to practice and promote the arts across generations as a means of supporting individual and community wellness. For You is a performance group founded by Rowena Richie, Erika Chong Shuch and Ryan Tacata. They create original, participatory performances that bring strangers together for intimate encounters. Each For You performance is grounded in the lived experiences of participant-collaborators. As a direct response to COVID-19, and with awareness that elders are at a higher risk of isolation, For You launched Artists & Elders to inspire new forms of distant socializing.
Takeaway Resources from the Conversation:
- For caregivers: FiveBraveSpirits.info
- Additional resources for caregivers of someone with dementia
- About the production group, For You
- Rowena’s creative engagement project: Party On! Party People
- PBS News Video: How bespoke performances foster connections among older adults in the San Francisco area, featuring Artists and Elders
- The “Yes, and…” communication principle
- Meet Me at MoMA
- Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly, SF
- Calendar of events from OpenHouse SF, including a support group for caregivers on Zoom
- SF Ballet’s dance classes for people with Parkinson’s
- Odile Lavault: A musician mentioned in the Q&A and a previous AHWGO presenter
- Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory
- Sound Health Network: Music for people living with dementia and their care partners
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