Entry level exploration & questions (15–20 min scavenger hunt activity)

Learning objectives:

• To identify terms and ideas that are unfamiliar in order to begin to develop a lexicon for critical thinking about aging and the aging-disability nexus.
• To attend to accessible curatorial in relation to experiences of aging and think about how they change the way we experience art and culture.
• To explore and critically engage the intersection of disability and aging

Preamble: In this digital catalogue, you will find images and audio descriptions of the work featured included the Age & Creativity exhibition, artists bios, artist statements, curatorial essays, the accessibility plan for the exhibition, and press about the exhibition. These activities will prompt you to make critical connections and deepen your knowledge of aging studies and disability studies as you explore this resource.

Take 15-20 minutes to explore this digital catalogue, making sure to take at least a cursory glance at all of the components. Consider the below questions and prompts as you explore.

• Make a list of three terms that you are not familiar with. Can you find definitions or descriptions of these terms in the digital catalogue? If so, include a brief explanation of these terms either in your own words or by quoting passages from the catalogue. If you can’t find a definition or description of the term, make a note to bring this up in our activity debrief and we will try to develop an understanding using the collective knowledge within our class.
• Jot down one passage that surprised you. Briefly reflect on why you were surprised by this passage. As you do, consider what you might be learning or unlearning about aging. Where – through what perspective or knowledge source – is this learning coming from?
• What are some of the ways that the Age & Creativity exhibition was made accessible? Accessible to whom? 
• Reflecting on your own experiences in art galleries or other cultural spaces, such as public parks, libraries, and movie theatres, how do you think these access practices might have changed the ways people experienced this exhibition?
• Formally, this exhibition explores the intersection between aging and disability. However, can you find examples of how artists’ work explore other intersections within their identity and lived experiences? Name at least one other intersection that is animated in this work. 

Have students’ debrief their explorations in pairs, as a large group, or on discussion boards or google docs, or any combination of these forums.

Second level questions (15–20 min reflection activity)

Questions for individual reflection or small group or online forum discussion:

• In her curatorial statement, Eliza Chandler states that this exhibition featured artists whose work animates “the intersections between aging bodies and the artistic process.”
  • Reflecting on this statement, explore the artists’ work and artist statements in the Age & Creativity digital catalogue and write a reflection on how this intersection shows up in various artists’ work and discuss how this work changes your understanding of aging. In your responses, be sure to include a brief description of normative understandings of aging and the cultural investments they uphold.

• In her Forward, curator Ingrid Jenkner tells us that this work invited artists to address “various facets of aging, including disability.”
  • In a brief individual or collectively-written response, what are some of the ways the artists in the Age & Creativity address this “nexus”? In your responses, be sure to consider what social, cultural, and political forces and/or investments might prevent us from thinking about disability and aging as conjoined experiences.

• Though this exhibition formally asked artists to animate their relationship with aging, as curator Ingrid Jenkner writes in her Forward, many artists explore aging in relation to other parts of their identity. Reflecting on this, what are some of the ways that artists take up themes of separation and connection in this work? 

Third level questions (15-20 min activity)

Questions for a large group discussion prior to the scavenger hunt:

• What have you been taught about “successful aging”? Prompt: What comes to mind when you hear the term “successful aging”?
• How have you been taught what “successful aging” is or should be? Can you identify some of the cultural investments upheld by the normative construction of “successful aging”? Prompts: For example, consider the way neoliberalism values “independence,” a value that constructs people who depend on state supports, such as assisted living and living in a long term care home, as being less desirable as “burdens on the state.”

[Debrief]

Second set of questions: Now, let’s put our critiques of successful aging into relation with other critical frameworks.

• How, in what ways, do notions of “aging independently” uphold neoliberal values? What are these values?
• How, in what ways, are values placed on “aging independently” consistent with colonial ideals? What are these ideals?
• How do ageist, ableist, colonialist rhetorics become mobilized within narratives of “successful aging?” Who is excluded from this narrative? (e.g., Elders, disabled people and others who have always relied on institutional or radical models of care [interdependency, care collectives, mutual aid networks], poor people, people who acquire disability with aging, etc.)

Given what we’ve just discussed and the critiques we have formulated sparked by the Age & Creativity exhibition, we might find it necessary to disrupt narratives of “successful aging.” This can be difficult to do given the neoliberal, colonial investments in this narrative. However, disability studies and disability culture, along with aging studies, offer some effective ways to identify and resist such narratives. 

Scavenger Hunt

Let’s engage some of these counter-narratives through the Age & Creativity exhibition.

Object: Your overall objective is to explore the Age & Creativity digital catalogue to find counter-hegemonic narratives through which aging is represented differently. 

Take 15 minutes to work through as many of the artists profiles as you can with these questions at hand:

• What are some of the affordances of aging as discussed by these artists in relation to their work?
• What do the artists describe as some of the changes to their artistic processes and interests that aging brings?

Studio class activity (15–20 minutes)

Audio descriptions—written descriptions of visual artwork or performance that are read aloud or audio recorded—are standard practice in disability arts as one way of providing access for blind people or people with low vision. You can learn more about audio descriptions in the Disability Arts module here. Audio descriptions can be created by artists, curators, professional audio describers, or through collaboration. For the Age & Creativity exhibition, we asked artists to create their own audio descriptions, which audiences could listen to and read through as they interacted with this exhibition. You can access these audio descriptions and their transcriptions through the artists’ profiles in the digital catalogue. 

Although necessary access components, audio descriptions are the subject of conversation and debate within disability arts and culture. We invite you into these conversations by asking you to consider the following questions as you listen or read through these descriptions:

• Please listen to or read an audio description of one of the artworks. What surprised you about these descriptions?
• These audio descriptions were created by the artists who created this work. As you read through or listen to these descriptions, make note of what you observed or learned about these artworks that you may not have noticed simply by looking at this work. What do the artists describe of their work that you may not have thought of?
• Variation for blind/low vision students: Working with a partner, listen to the audio descriptions of these works and make note of and ask questions about the artwork. From your perspective as their intended audience, what are the successes and challenges of these descriptions? What works and what could be improved?
• While the name audio description suggests that they describe artwork, many in the disability arts community believe that an artwork cannot be objectively described through a singular perspective. They suggest that rather than describe artwork, the best we can do is offer our interpretation. As you are engaging these audio descriptions, consider the difference between descriptions and interpretations. We will come back to this.
• Many curators and artists choose to commission more than one audio description in order to disrupt the understanding that a work of art or performance can be objectively captured by a singular description. In order to test this theory, scroll through to an artwork for which you haven’t read or listen to the audio description and create an audio description of your own. After you do this, read this description aloud to a fellow student (or give it to them to read). Have your partner sketch out (or otherwise create a rendering of) what they think the artwork looks like. When you are finished, compare both descriptions and your partner’s rendering to the original artwork. As you are making these comparisons, consider the differences between descriptions and interpretations.