The committee organizing the Ashby Village creativity focus, timed to coincide with the Village's 10th anniversary, has begun to set up concrete ways of implementing the ideas members presented in breakout sessions during a Zoom membership meeting on May 22.
As a first step, the committee renamed the venture, initially known as Creative Aging. It will now be called Exploring Creativity. The intent is unchanged: To assist members in identifying and pursuing their creative passions, in much the way that a previous Village-wide emphasis encouraged members to pursue healthy aging.
The programs and tools the committee is planning will be accessible to members and volunteers from a centralized Creativity section on the Village's website, once technical issues are resolved. The major features are:
* A rotating online gallery of members' and volunteers' artistic work, with an archive of past exhibits. Several artists in different media will be featured each month, with each represented by several works. The mechanics will be worked out by the committee, in coordination with technology experts who are still being recruited.
* Formation and online listing of a "starter package" of interest groups, classes and workshops formed under Village auspices. Details are still being finalized, but based on member interest, there will be a photography group (which, depending on the response, may be divided into several groups of manageable size). Also under consideration or in the preliminary planning stages are writing classes, craft workshops and a drawing class that is scheduled to start when pandemic restrictions are sufficiently eased. Each interest group will be announced to the membership when it is ready to solicit members.
In two separate stories in the July newsletter "Announcements" section are details on two of the initial groups that are ready to launch now. Both will meet on Zoom and begin in July: a two-session Support Group for Exploring Your Creativity, for members and volunteers who could use additional support getting started on a creative undertaking, and a six-session Life Story Writing Group with author and longtime writing coach Amy Gorman.
Meantime, the committee remains open to your ideas about other groups and classes you'd like to see formed in the future, along with offers from artists, members or volunteers who wish to serve as group coordinators or class or workshop leaders. (Please send your requests and offers to Arlene Reiff).
* An online Creativity Resources Exchange, which will act as a "want ad" message board for members looking for artistic collaborators, seeking formation of new groups based on shared artistic interests and searching for other creative resources. After technical details are resolved and the initial groups and websites are up and running, the Resource Exchange will be the place where members could plumb enthusiasm for new creative interest groups, for instance in crafts and other artistic media.
The committee's ambitious plans will take a few months to implement and will be rolled out in stages, but meantime, members and volunteers are again urged to write to coordinator Arlene Reiff with their wish list of ideas for other ways of encouraging the creative passions that animate and intrigue so many of our members and volunteers. The organizing committee will consider ways of accommodating your ideas.
For now, the committee has its hands full responding in concrete ways to the enthusiasm evident in our previous two Zoom sessions. Anyone interested in catching up on those earlier sessions can do so here and here, or below.