Alumni Anne Basting TED Talk

Anne Basting is a Center for Artistic Activism alumni, MacArthur fellow, and TED Speaker who has brought insights from her theater practice into elder care settings. Her work shows the power of artistic thinking and processes to improve people’s lives, as well as change policy and paradigms.

Anne Basting at TED

By incorporating art and creativity into elder care settings, gerontologist Anne Basting helps families reconnect with loved ones who have dementia. In this moving talk, she shares how asking “beautiful questions” — questions that don’t have a right or wrong answer — opens up a shared path of discovery, imagination and wonder. “If we can infuse creativity into care, caregivers can invite a partner into meaning-making,” Basting says. “In that moment, care, which is so often associated with loss, can become generative.”