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Hodson Drama Group, Grandma's home remedy show, 1982 (photo by A. Heppenheimer)
Elders Share the Arts (ESTA) was a community arts organization founded in 1979 by Susan Perlstein. Based in New York City, ESTA programs combined arts with oral history, life review, reminiscence theory, and intergenerational arts. Programs included Pearls of Wisdom, Legacy Arts, Living history, and Arts and Memory.
ESTA began as a single living-history theater workshop at the Hodson Senior Center in the South Bronx and then spread to other senior centers in New York City. The original living-history theater workshop laid the groundwork for Pearls of Wisdom, a touring ensemble of elder storytellers who use material from their own lives in their performances.
ESTA expanded their living history programs to include other art forms including theater, murals, collage, writing, photography, and dance. ESTA worked with senior, youth, and cultural institutions in the greater New York City area to form partnerships that provide intergenerational arts programs. Intergenerational programs partnered children and youth with the elderly. Participants in these programs shared their stories with each other and then transformed them into original works of art. Living History theater programs translated the stories into plays or drama while Legacy Works transformed the stories into paintings, collages, murals, writings, photography, mixed media, and other non-performing art forms.
As a pioneer in the field of creative aging and worked to educate and train others in the field of creative aging, Elders Share the Arts worked diligently to train administrators, artists, educators, social workers, students, seniors, therapists, gerontologists, and volunteers in the skills required to create oral history and arts programs for seniors. They were instrumental too in founding the National Center for Creative Aging (NCCA), an advocacy, policy, and networking organization, established by Susan Perlstein as an ESTA program in 2001 through a partnership with the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). NCCA became an independent non-profit based out of Washington, D.C., in 2007.
After nearly forty years of operation, ESTA closed on June 30, 2018. They live on, however, in the work of those they inspired and trained, and many of their programs -- including Pearls of Wisdom, History Alive, and Legacy Arts -- will be continued by other well-established organizations in the field of creative aging.
The records of Elders Share the Arts offer vital documentation of the origins and development of the field of creative aging and the growth of one of the innovators. The collection includes a full set of board minutes, action plans, and by-laws, marketing materials, photographs and media, and a relatively complete record of grants sought and won. Of particular importance are files for ESTA's senior programs and intergenerational programs, and a thick series of materials relating to the National Center for Creative Aging and the history of creative aging as a field.
The collection is organized into four series:
The collection is open for research.
Acquired from Lynne Winters and Susan Perlstein, April 2018.
Processed by Kyle Boyd, 2018.
The administration series consists of material relating to the operation of Elders Share the Arts, the National Center for Creative Aging, and the National Council on Aging including board meeting minutes, by-laws, strategic action plans, marketing materials, newsletters, grant applications, and workshop reports.
The programming series consists of marketing, planning, and products produced by ESTA programs over the years including Pearls of Wisdom, Legacy Arts, Living history, History Alive!, and Intergenerational Partnerships.
The photographs series consists of images of various ESTA programs and events including Legacy Arts, Pearls of Wisdom, and Intergenerational Programs.
The audiovisual series consists of recordings of ESTA programs including tapes of Pearls of Wisdom performances, the Living History Theater Festival, and other events.