Anne Basting
Anne Basting
writer. artist. activist
 

EMC2 (2023+)

I learned something about naming projects from (lucky to call him) my friend, Gene Cohen. Give it a snappy acronym. So when I read the Memory Cafe Environmental Scan, and got obsessed that Japan had over 4,000 Memory Cafes to the 900 in the U.S…. I named the project Expanding Memory Cafes, Enhancing Meaningful Connection or EMC2. And I immediately emailed Susan McFadden and Beth Soltzberg and begged them to join me. Luckily, they agreed.

And luckily, the Ferry Foundations supported a year-long planning process to figure out how to grow Memory Cafes from 900 to 9,000. Memory Cafes are a life-line to people experiencing cognitive changes and their care partners. There they can find acceptance, friendship, and - yes - fun.

The result of the year of planning (with an amazing group of Alliance members and expert consultants) is a plan with five strategies and a lot of hope. You can find it here.

Care Showers (2023+)

When artists Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Anne Basting came together to catch up - talk naturally turned to caring for their mothers. Meuninck-Ganger was overseeing her mother’s hospice care in her home. Basting’s mother was just moving into memory care. When Meuninck-Ganger lamented that “when this is all over I will have SO much knowledge and no one to share it with…” an idea was born. The two set out to culture hack a new ritual into being - a shower to mark and support the transition into becoming a caregiver for an adult or elder.

Building on the existing rituals of baby and wedding showers, the artists hacked Evite event templates to create “Care Shower” invitations, registry systems on Amazon and Target to create a Care Shower registry, and traditional shower games toward adult caregiving - emphasizing the joy and humor in care while honoring the challenges and sorrows.

The first Care Shower was held on July 22nd at Madison’s Art Lit Lab, as part of the Aesthetics of Loss exhibit. It began with a raucous game of “Spill the Pills,” in which the 20 attendees raced to put 5 of the same colored tictacs into the plastic, weekly pill organizers without repeating two colors in a row. The winner yelled “Axithromyicin!” and was awarded a prize.

Anne and Jessica shared the origin story of the Care Shower, and the goals for culture hacking it into existence (“everyone should contact Evite and ask them to make this an option on their event templates!”). The group also made their own Care Cards (to create a space between Get Well and Sympathy on the card rack!) - and then shared Care Stories - that ranged from hilarious to deeply, deeply moving.

In the end, Anne and Jessica invited attendees to share their thoughts on how best to shape and evolve the Care Shower, advice already incorporated into the ritual as it heads to a second performance on November 4th at Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, MN (with the Aesthetics of Loss).
learn more: https://www.careshowers.org/

 

 Within a Single Rose (2022 +)

“How beautiful it is... everything is connected.”
— Storytellers at St. Johns on the Lake

Within a Single Rose (WASR) is a devised theater collaboration between artists experienced in caregiving, elders with dementia living at home and their care partners. Inspired by archetypal themes in The Little Prince, a story by Antoine Saint-Exupéry, WASR explores themes of love, longing for home, connection with community, and using one’s imagination to see beyond the surface. We are developing and touring a series of creative invitations and prompts in music, poetry, visual art and movement that form the scaffolding for a performance that will be crafted and performed by the elders with dementia and their care partners with whom our ensemble collaborates. Together, through our open, improvisational process, we will design and create a whimsical world that transforms before our eyes. 

Writer, performer and changemaker Dasha Kelly Hamilton joins me and several members of the team from Wendy’s Neverland, including designer Jeff Becker, music director Cheyenne Mize, and choreographer and dancer Iega Jeff. We’ll collaborate with the Wisconsin-based TimeSlips team of Sam Goodrich, Rob Knapp, and Jackie Kostichka.

Our aim is to create a performance model that brings beautiful and immersive art-making experiences to people with dementia and their care partners through the Memory Cafe network. Once we polish the form, other arts companies can follow the same path to bring participatory performance to people without the programming structures of residential care.
NOTE: we hit a snag with grants on this one… but it WILL happen!

 

Beautiful Questions (ongoing)

This series of projects evolved out of the community-engaged Islands of Milwaukee project. TimeSlips offers training in phrasing and infusing Beautiful Questions into cross-sector partnerships including social service agencies, health systems, educational, business, arts & culture, and faith-based groups.

Beautiful Questions Durham (2020-2022)

In collaboration with the Dementia Inclusive Durham Initiative (DID), Anne facilitated a team of TimeSlips artists to train the DID Action Team to infuse Beautiful Questions into their engagements with people with dementia and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Action Team included a diverse, cross-sector network of seven community sites. Dr. Sarah Wilbur (PhD) integrated the project into her classes at Duke University. Her students partnered with three TimeSlips Artists in Residence (Brittany Green, Teli Shabu, and Amy Sawyers Williams) to facilitate the Beautiful Question feedback loop - shaping the responses and sharing them back with the community. TimeSlips received an NEA ArtWorks grant to support transforming the responses into Toward Something New, an original composition by Alex Gartner, performed by the Durham Children’s Choir in April, 2022.

As we were set to launch the project in April of 2020 with in-person training workshops in Durham, COVID 19 changed everyone’s plans. The team shifted course and began offering weekly Creative Care Engagement sessions, 20-minute, live sessions accessible by zoom or phone. Each session was facilitated by an artist (Anne Basting, Ebony Golden, Bobby Martin, and Sarah Wilbur), began with a Beautiful Question, and evolved into an exploration of emotions, movements, words, and senses.

Beautiful Question Postcards (2020)

In response to the tremendous need for meaningful engagement spurred by COVID lockdowns, the TimeSlips team and our partner Detroit-based creative agency Lafayette/American, designed four Beautiful Question postcards that we printed (250,000) and shipped them out for free to 250+ aging services providers across the country. Elders and their care partners could respond by emailing TimeSlips, mailing the card to a loved one, or calling in their response to TimeSlips’ 800#. Postcards were made possible by our supporting partners, HarperCollins and Leading Age.

Beautiful Questions Milwaukee (2021)

With support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, St. Johns on the Lake, and the Marianne and Sheldon Lubar Family Foundation, Anne worked with TimeSlips to offer training in using Beautiful Questions to staff and volunteers offering meal delivery and well-check phone calls to Milwaukee elders. Partnering agencies United Community Center and Goodwill offered a Beautiful Question each week from March through May. TimeSlips engaged three Milwaukee-based artists to hold weekly group creative engagement sessions accessible by phone, and to gather and shape the elders responses across the systems into a public art offering. United Community Center worked with bi-lingual TimeSlips artist Jackie Kostichka to offer the Beautiful Question training in Spanish and translate the questions themselves. Here is the video that emerged from the project, which played on Milwaukee Public Television.

 
 

I Won’t Grow Up (2018-2019)

I Won’t Grow Up aimed to transform nursing homes into vibrant cultural centers by reimagining the story of Peter Pan in collaboration with artists, elders, staff, family, and volunteers.

TimeSlips collaborated with 12 rural Signature HealthCARE nursing homes across the state of Kentucky. A year of training and creative exploration culminated in three, professionally produced, original plays in three nursing homes in spring 2019, Morgantown Care and Rehab (Morgantown, KY) (March 23-26); Lee County Care and Rehab (Beattyville, KY) (May 11-14); and SHC at Sunrise Manor (Hodgenville, KY) (June 1-4).

The I Won’t Grow Up project was funded by a Civil Money Penalty (CMP) Grant through the Kentucky Office of Inspector General and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS); and a National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks grant.

COVID interrupted the project’s vital third phase, evaluation and continuation (when artists advised staff as they created their own collaborative arts project. The photographs and video are a powerful remembrance of too many lost to the pandemic, and to the hope that nursing homes can indeed be places of purpose and meaning.

A series of short videos tells the story of the evolution of the collaboration with Signature HealthCARE.

 
 

Beyond Memory (2016-2017)

In 2016-17, Basting and TimeSlips brought the Creative Community of Care organizational training to 50 nursing homes all across the state of Wisconsin. Each home learned creative storytelling and how to shape creative celebration events. Gathering 100s of stories from all 50 nursing homes, the TimeSlips team selected 5 stories and collaborated with elders and artists to choreograph them, read them aloud, and shape them into an interactive performance that taught the audience both the joy of storytelling with elders and basic creative engagement techniques. Created with support of NEA ArtWorks, Beyond Memory is now a keynote/performance available for conferences and events around the world.

Collaborators:
Visual arts team: Jessica Meuninck-Ganger; Madison Dawne; Karen Parr; Adam Wertel
Dance/Choreography team: Amy Sutheimer; Liz Heinz; Jackie Kostichka; Tom Hjelmgren; Dani Kuepper
Presentation Team: Angela Fingard; Elaine Maly; Joan Williamson.

 
 

Slightly Bigger Women

In the fall of 2014, Basting collaborated with UWM Intro to Women's Studies Instructor Casey O'Brien and elders from Milwaukee care settings to create a cross-generational letter exchange exploring how our dreams of who/what we might become have changed since the 19th century, when Little Women's Jo March dared to dream of being a writer. The exchange proved to be a rich experience for all ages. Basting also held workshops in the care sites exploring "What does it mean to be 'ladylike?' or 'a gentleman?'" What historical shifts changed what we can dream of becoming? What changes still need to take place? These questions informed the creation of an original performance/dialogue that was staged on the UWM Theatre Department season, opening April 22nd. Student Tina Binns co-wrote. Basting directed alongside student assistant Devlin Grimm. 

The play began with a Brechtian twist - as the characters of Little Women bumped up against the limits of the novel and the 19th century. In the second scene, they open their hope chests to find them filled with voices of the elders from the workshops and the letters from the cross-generational exchange. In the third scene, the lights come up to suddenly reveal another portal to the future - the audience. The characters bravely engage them, asking "what still needs to change for us all to reach our potential?"

Video and Photographs

 
 

Islands of Milwaukee (IOM)

IOM is a participatory arts project aimed at bringing creative engagement to older adults living alone or under-connected to community. IOM was created in collaboration with co-lead artist Maureen Towey of Sojourn Theatre, and with a team of community partners, including: Milwaukee County Dept on Aging, Interfaith Older Adult Programs, Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin, and Stowell Associates.

Together we created the Question of the Day system to bring a creative inquiry to older adults. Answers poured in by hand-delivered card, email, FB, and voicemail. Out of these riches, we created 21 radio segments, two performances, an art installation, and a series of "artistic housecalls." 

Artistic Team

Maureen Towey (Co-lead artist and Director); James Hart (performer); Rebecca Martinez (performer); Eddie Massey (performer); Shannon Scrofano (designer); Chelsea Wait and Sarah Freimuth (graduate student researchers).

Funding Partners

MAP Fund; NEA ArtWorks; the Helen Bader Foundation; the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's Research Growth Initiative. Princess Grace Fellowship; the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. 

Installation/Performance

The installation opened in conjunction with Milwaukee's city-wide Doors Open event in September, 2014. 10-minute performance each hour engaged passersby with the exhibit, inviting them to explore and ask a stranger a "Question of the Day." The ground floor featured visual and audio stations inspired by elders we met through the project. "Connection lines" led up from each station to a panel on the 2nd or 3rd floor that describe how we met that person, and interactive question stations. 

Video and Photographs

 
 

The Crossings

We were inspired by the social isolation we encountered in our visits with Home Delivered Meals. Many older adults receiving meals live across the street from food sources. But the street, to a disabled elder, was completely impassable. We (me and Sojourn Theatre) partnered with Southshore Connecting Caring Community, a senior advocacy group on Milwaukee's southside, to amplify their efforts at promoting pedestrian safety with a performance event that would draw the attention of civic officials and press. We performed Crossings at three intersections in three different municipalities, Milwaukee, St. Francis, and Cudahy. Mayors from all three municipalities, county supervisors and state senators crossed with us, alongside elders, neighbors and student and professional performers. To learn more, visit the Crossing page of UWM website.

Video and Photographs

 
 

The Penelope Project

This multi-year collaboration between UWM, Sojourn Theatre, and Luther Manor aimed to improve the quality of life for all who live, work, and visit a long term care facility through creative engagement. Over a two-year period, partners explored the story of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey through creative discussions and shaped those discussions into a professionally produced play that moved throughout the care facility. I served as producer, writer, and instructor for the three-semesters of student involvement (with colleague Robin Mello). The project received significant funding, including a MAP Fund grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was surrounded by a comprehensive evaluation plan. The Penelope Project is the subject of a PBS documentary and a book, now available from University of Iowa Press.

Reviews/Press Coverage

Third Coast Digest Podcast on the Penelope Project (3/24/11)
Broadway World article 3/21/11
Leading Age article (Jan/Feb 2011)
American Theatre (July 2011)
WPTV Interview

Video and Photographs

 
 

TimeSlips Creative Storytelling

TimeSlips is a non-profit that brings meaning and joy to late life through creative engagement. TimeSlips offers training resources for infusing creativity into care relationships and systems. Its online training in improvisational storytelling has certified facilitators in 47 states and 20 countries. The ritualized steps of improvisational storytelling are easily learned, practiced, and shared. Research shows that the method significantly improves in the quality of life of people with dementia and the attitudes of care partners.

TimeSlips resources include:

  • A website with over 300 inspiring and downloadable prompts for creative engagement

  • An online training in improvisational storytelling

  • A Creativity Journal for families and one-on-one use

  • Training for organizations to become Creative Communities of Care (online or in-person)

TimeSlips has also created multiple, public celebrations of the stories told by and with elders. These include:

  • Beyond Memory (2017) - an interactive performance of stories from 50 nursing homes across the state of Wisconsin, with animation from Adam Wertl, and choreography by participating elders and Liz Heinz.

  • Moving Images (2016) - an interactive performance of stories from 42 elders and 18 student facilitators in Milwaukee featuring the voices of the elders reading their stories and choreography by professional dancers (directed by Angela Fingard, performed at Bader Philanthropies)

  • Moving Images (2015) - an interactive performance of stories at the 5 Museum Mile cultural institutions, Milwaukee (directed by Joan Williamson).

  • TimeSlips is Community Artists in Residence in Hiding Places: Memory in Art (2011 )at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI.

  • TimeSlips - the play (2005) by the Door Community Auditorium, Door County, WI

  • TimeSlips - the play (2001). Director Christopher Bayes. Performed at Here Art Center, New York.

  • TimeSlips Art exhibit (2001) featuring Beth Thielen’s playful 12-foot figures from the TimeSlips stories. Elsa Mott Ives Gallery, New York.

  • TimeSlips - the play (2000). Director Gulgun Kayim. University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.

  • TimeSlips - Art exhibit (2000) featuring photographs of storytellers by Dick Blau and pop-up books of the stories by artist Beth Thielen. Charles Allis Museum, Milwaukee.