Art and Agency

Last night Deborah Feiler,  a visual art practitioner working for Alive! and closely involved with us on the project,  started reading “Winter Fires: Art and agency in old age” (published by The Baring Foundation, 2012). She wanted to share this quote,

“Children and young people want to be thought older than they are because with adulthood comes agency – the ability to act autonomously in the world, to make our own decisions, to pursue our desires, to write our own story. And it is the loss of agency, above all through mental incapacity, that is most feared as old age advances…..

But a capacity to create…is in all human beings, including those who do nothing to develop it after primary school. Art is a capacity for agency that….can flourish, indeed, in old age and help preserve individuality and autonomy to the very end.”

Winter Fires: Art and agency in old age, Baring Foundation | London Arts in Health Forum