Graying arts access: crafting creative online programming to promote older adults' artistic engagement in and beyond pandemic time

Jami McFarland; Carla Rice; Nadine Changfoot; Tara La Rose; Carmela Alfaro-Laganse; Suad Badri; Kathy Smith; Becky Katz

doi:10.3389/fsoc.2024.1454143

Graying arts access: crafting creative online programming to promote older adults' artistic engagement in and beyond pandemic time

Front Sociol. 2024 Dec 4:9:1454143. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1454143. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Jami McFarland^{1

2}, Carla Rice¹, Nadine Changfoot³, Tara La Rose⁴, Carmela Alfaro-Laganse⁵, Suad Badri^{6

7}, Kathy Smith^{8

9}, Becky Katz¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ The Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada.
² School of Occupational Therapy, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
³ Political Studies and Trent Centre for Aging & Society, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada.
⁴ School of Social Work, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
⁵ School of Arts, Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
⁶ Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, Sudan.
⁷ Hamilton Artistic Inc., Hamilton, ON, Canada.
⁸ Creative Age Network, London, ON, Canada.
⁹ Creative Age Art Studio, Dorchester, ON, Canada.
¹⁰ Independent Artist, Hamilton, ON, Canada.

Abstract

Introduction: Declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020, the COVID-19 virus and attendant patchwork of local, regional, and national government-initiated public health responses to it unexpectedly opened possibilities for greater access to culture for disabled and chronically ill people in ways that were unimagined in pre-pandemic times. During the "emergency" period of the pandemic, the fields of critical disability studies and aging studies independently demonstrated the importance and value of shifting to digital technologies for disabled people and older adults respectively; however, to date, little scholarship has considered the value of digital technologies for older adults aging with and into disabilities beyond pandemic time.

Methods: Informed by the theoretical insights of scholarship exploring critical access and the aging-disability nexus, this paper draws from empirical data collected during Phase 2 of Direct[Message]: Digital Access to Artistic Engagement, a collaborative, community-based, arts-informed research project based in Southwestern Ontario (Canada). Drawing from 50 qualitative interviews with aging adults from un/under/represented communities, findings explore the intersections of older age and disability, including dynamics related to gender, sexuality, migration, size, race/ethnicity, and other differences, as these relate to access to and enjoyment of creative spaces before, during, and "after" the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: Results show that older adults aging with/into disabilities in Southwestern Ontario express an overwhelming desire and even urgent need to access interactive arts programming from the relatively safe spaces of their homes both within and outside pandemic time.

Discussion: As the normative world pushed for a return to ableist normative life in 2022, a year marked by "severe" rates of the highly infectious Omicron variant and the loss of effective public measures, such as community masking and widely available testing, participants described the need for continued access to creative and social participation via remote options that sidestepped socially exclusive and physically inaccessible spaces. Findings indicate a need for increased investment in digital arts programming for older adults aging with/into disabilities.

Keywords: COVID-19; aging; aging-disability nexus; arts access; remote access; underrepresented older adults.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategy Fund, the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (Grant #895-2016-1024), and Mitacs through the Mitacs Accelerate Program.