By Molly Sturges, Roundtable Core member

Over the past few years I have had the honor to work as a collaborating artist and artistic director with elders in New Mexico through a project I started called Lifesongs, a partnership between my artist collective non-profit, Littleglobe, and The Santa Fe Opera. Now housed at the Academy for the Love of Learning, Lifesongs is an intergenerational arts project that promotes social inclusion and dignity for elders and people in hospice care through a collaborative creative process of creating and sharing new musical works. Lifesongs engages “professional” musicans and artists,  youth, and community members in an interactive creative process and hosts public concerts/events that increase awareness and engagement with the processes of aging and dying.

Lifesongs is one of many projects I have worked on that creates spaces for people to reflect deeply upon our individual and collective journeys. Many of my projects take me into a collaboration with  a wide range of communities – cancer centers, veteran centers, border town communities in conflict, communities dealing with environmental justice issues, and more. This project takes me to quiet bedsides and rooms layered with electronic hums and bedside alerts. This project takes me to the edge of life, into the center of my own heart, and into wide and winged moments where we tenderly move towards that which is absolutely essential.  Continue reading →