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

McFarland, J., Rice, C., Changfoot, N., La Rose, T., Alfaro-Laganse, C., Badri, S., Smith, K., & Katz, B. (2024). Graying arts access: Crafting creative online programming to promote older adults' artistic engagement in and beyond pandemic time. Frontier in Sociology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2024.1454143

Abstract

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.