The Creative Center at University Settlement has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the Training Institute for Artists and Administrators in Arts-in-Healthcare and Creative Aging for 2022, the agency announced today.
The Creative Center’s Training Institute, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, will again virtually gather national leaders in the field of creative aging together with trainees from across the United States, giving participants the opportunity to replicate TCC’s best practices model in a variety of healthcare settings. This year’s Training Institute will be held throughout October 2022.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts and cultural organizations throughout the nation with these grants, including The Creative Center at University Settlement, providing opportunities for all of us to live artful lives,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “The arts contribute to our individual well-being, the well-being of our communities, and to our local economies. The arts are also crucial to helping us make sense of our circumstances from different perspectives as we emerge from the pandemic and plan for a shared new normal informed by our examined experience.”
The Creative Center’s Training Institute is among 1,125 projects across America totaling more than $26.6 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2022 funding.
“The Creative Center is so excited to have once again received funding from the NEA to bring together thought leaders, practitioners, and trainees who are dedicated to bringing innovative and equitable approaches to Arts-In-Healthcare and Creative Aging,” said Sophia Heinecke, Manager of Arts and Wellness, The Creative Center at University Settlement. “We’re celebrating 20 years of sharing best practices in the field, and this work couldn’t be more timely! Every session of this year’s Training Institute will be dedicated to helping people living with illness and older adults, as well as their caregivers, discover their own creative resources as they navigate the challenges they live with.”
Training Institute participants will learn to implement and sustain high-quality arts programming that serves people living with illness and their caregivers as well as older adults across the aging spectrum through a series of seminars, presentations, hands-on workshops and virtual “site visits.” Trainees will be given everything needed to create “best practice” arts programming in hospitals, healthcare centers, nursing homes, long-term care facilities, and palliative and hospice settings as well as community and senior centers serving older adults across the aging spectrum.
For more information on other projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.