Gary Glazner
Gary Glazner, Poet and Founding Executive Director, Alzheimer's Poetry Project, (APP), New York, USA.
The National Endowment for the Arts listed the APP as a "best practice" for their 2006 Arts and Aging Initiative. APP received the 2012 MetLife Foundation, "Creativity and Aging in America Leadership Award" in the Community Engagement category.
Gary Glazner has given talks at over 30 conferences for among others: the Alzheimer's Association; Alzheimer's Foundation of America; Generations United; National Center for Creative Aging; the University of San Diego, Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; U.S. Embassy in Berlin and the Veteran's Administration teaching over 4,000 healthcare workers and family members on how to use poetry with people living with dementia. NBC's "Today" show, NPR's "All Things Considered" and Voice of America have featured segments on Glazner's work. Harper Collins, W.W. Norton and Salon.com have published his work.
Gary Glazner has worked with many institutions using their art to inspire the performance and creation of poetry by people living with memory loss including the Museum of Modern Art.
APP is working with the National Center for Creative Aging and other leading dementia arts groups to create a "creativity toolkit," for use by family caregivers to enhance the creativity of their loved ones.
APP co-produces a monthly Memory Arts Cafe with New York Memory Center in Brooklyn.
Working with the Korean Arts and Culture Education Service and U.S. Embassies in Berlin and Warsaw, APP has expanded programming to South Korea, Germany and Poland, highlighting on an international level the quality of programming APP brings to serving people living with dementia and their care partners. To date the APP has held programming in 24 states and served over 20,000 people living with dementia.
Gary Glazer was a keynote speaker at the 5th annual international arts and health conference “The Art of Good Health and Wellbeing” at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2013 and participated in the post conference Creative Ageing Forum in Sydney, hosted by the NSW Minister for Ageing, the Hon John Ajaka MP, at the State Library of NSW.
The Alzheimer's Poetry Project (APP) was featured on PBS News Hour's "Where Poetry Lives".