Invitation to Creative Aging

Introduction to the Creative Aging Symposium
Presented by Katie Wade, Associate Director of Social Call and Well Connected

This is our second year hosting the Creative Aging Symposium, Power to Change. This online symposium is a place for us to gather around a really profound notion: that aging is a journey ripe with opportunities for creative exploration. This may seem radical. It’s contrary to society’s story that aging is all about loss, but this view of aging as creative growth has been an emerging thread for quite some time, and I’m so appreciative that it’s now reaching our collective conscious. I’ve never been so excited to become an older adult myself.

I recently read this quote in The Creative Age by Gene Cohen, whose work laid the foundation for the current movement that we call creative aging. “When we talk about creativity, I’m not referring simply to the paint on canvas type of artistic creativity, nor do I mean those visionary thinkers whose imaginative ideas and inventions have shaped or shaken civilizations. Creativity is built into our species, innate in every one of us, whether we are plumbers, professors, short order cooks or investment bankers. It is ours, whether we are career oriented or home centered. It is the flame that heats the human spirit and kindles our desires for inner growth and self-expression. Our creativity may emerge in many different ways, from the realm of art, science, politics, to the pursuit of an advanced college degree, a new hobby, or a public spirited community activism.”

So today, for the symposium, I invite you to think about your own creativity and how it relates to growing older. What is it about being older that puts you in a unique position for creative growth?

Click here to read the full transcript of the 2019 Creative Aging Symposium.