Introducing ARTZ-Connect

To Our Website Visitors and Community Members

Sometimes, the most adverse circumstances give us the courage to try something new.

We at ARTZ Philadelphia have recently made the difficult decision to suspend our in-person programs for people living with dementia and their care partners because of concerns around the current outbreak of COVID-19 (the new coronavirus).

We are deeply committed to protecting the health and well-being of our community, and yet we also recognize the impact of program suspensions and doors shut to visitors. We know, even though necessary, these closures and program cancellations will cause an increase in isolation and a decrease in creative and social engagement for people living with dementia and their care partners. ​

And so in this time of prescribed physical distancing, we are experimenting with a complementary but distinctly different Rx – we’re calling it ARTZ-Connect. ​

Thanks to the adventurous spirit of our arts and community partners and our team of program facilitators, we have decided to make our first foray into virtual program delivery. We’ve been wanting to do this for a number of years to make our programs more accessible to people living with dementia and their care partners who are homebound.

We invite you to join us for our first ARTZ-Connect versions of our flagship ARTZ @ The Museum and Café for Care Partners programs starting the week of March 15. We hope to continue offering virtual programs until we and our partner organizations throughout the Greater Philadelphia region are able to return to in-person programming.

WILL YOU HELP US?

If you have interest, skills, or resources (technological or financial) to contribute to our development of this new series of virtual programs for people living with dementia and their care partners, we want to hear from you!

Please email our director at shifrin@artzphilly.org – let’s connect!

As actor/writer/comedian/life coach Jennifer Blaine (who will be kicking off ARTZ-Connect for us with her first-ever virtual performance) reminds us all, “It’s especially important for us to find a way to be together at this time; by meeting virtually we can keep that going. We are hoping that you will join us for this first of a series of meetings to connect us and bring us close.”

Please take care of yourselves, and remember that if we are creative, compassionate, and determined, we can connect with each other and with our community members living with dementia in ways that we’ve never even thought of.

-Susan Shifrin

Founder and Executive Director