The Gift Exchange: Artists, Elders, and Creative Witnessing (Rowena Richie)

During COVID-19, Rowena Richie and her colleagues were struck by the unprecedented isolation faced by elders. Their response was to connect artists—suddenly without performance venues—with older adults through a project called "For You." What makes this approach unique is its focus on reciprocity. "We started calling it a gift FOR them," Ritchie explains, "but then it really became a gift WITH them." Richie took these insights into her work with Memory Cafes, where people with dementia share poems aloud, and as a Fellow with the Atlantic Foundation's Global Brain Health Institute, where she observed different cultural approaches to care around the world.Collectively, these experience help us see what creative care can accomplish: reciprocal courage, patient listening, and the recognition that each of us—regardless of age or cognitive ability—has something valuable to give.