Anne Basting
I am an artist, scholar, speaker, and non-profit founder who has worked at the nexus of research and practice in arts and health for over 25 years. I was founding Director of the UWMilwaukee's Center on Age & Community. I founded TimeSlips in 1998 to offer training to infuse creative, improvisational communication and engagement into care. I'm thrilled with the growth of this field!
Anne Basting (PhD) is a writer, artist and advocate for the power of creativity to transform lives. Emerita Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, she is Founder of TimeSlips.org, which trains caregivers to unlock the meaning and joy in elder care. Her speaking, writing, and large-scale public performances have helped shape an international movement to extend creative and meaningful expression from childhood, where it is expected, through late life, where it has been too long withheld.
Basting is author of numerous articles and four books, including Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Elder and Dementia Care (Harper). Internationally recognized for her speaking and innovative work, Anne is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She is currently at work on the Memory Cafe Alliance, an effort to sustainably grow the memory cafe infrastructure across the United States. Her new writing can be found on substack @LittleCaregiverRepairShop.
Bio!
Anne Basting is a writer, artist and advocate for the power of creativity to transform our lives. She is Emerita Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and Founder of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips.org, which inspires and supports the infusion of creativity and meaning-making into care systems. Her writing and large-scale public performances have helped shape an international movement to extend creative and meaningful expression from childhood, where it is expected, through late life, where it has been too long withheld.
Her books include Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Elder and Dementia Care (Harper), Penelope: An Arts-based Odyssey to Transform Eldercare (U of Iowa), and Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia (Johns Hopkins). Internationally recognized for her speaking and her innovative work, Anne is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and numerous major awards and grants. She believes that creative engagement can and should be infused into every care system and has trained/consulted with Meals on Wheels, libraries, home care companies, senior centers, memory cafes, museums, adult day programs, and every level of long-term care.
Anne is currently at work on multiple projects including the Memory Cafe Alliance, an effort to sustainably grow the memory cafe infrastructure across the United States.
Interests
I am interested in:
How we can exponentially expand Memory Cafes (a low-cost, community-based infrastructure to support people with dementia and care partners who do not live in residential care settings). And how the arts/culture sector can lead this effort.
How we can achieve widespread, sustainable social prescribing (without losing the transformative power of the arts. )
How high school and service learning in high schools and colleges/universities can expand from their focus on youth to regularly include aging/older adults with a mutual growth mindset.
How humor and playfulness can lead to Systems Change.
Understanding the common mechanism that different artistic modalities share - so that we can advocate across disciplines.
Understanding research and marketing cycles so that we can anticipate how to extend and expand upon this growth moment in arts & health.
(How we don't exhaust the word Joy. )
