Anne Basting

Anne Basting (Ph.D.) is a scholar and artist whose work focuses on the potential for the arts and humanities to transform our lives as individuals and communities. For over 20 years, Basting has researched ways to infuse the arts into care settings with a particular focus on people with cognitive disabilities like dementia. She is author of numerous articles and three books, The Penelope Project: An Arts-based Odyssey to Change Elder-care (University of Iowa Press, 2016); Forget Memory: Creating better lives for people with dementia (2009) and The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture. Named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, Basting is also the recipient of an Ashoka Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, a Brookdale National Fellowship, The Randy Martin Spirit Award, and numerous major grants across both the arts and social services. She is author and/or producer of nearly a dozen plays and public performances, including Slightly Bigger Women (2015) and Finding Penelope (2011). In all her work, Basting is striving toward a moment when the arts are fully infused into care systems.

Basting holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota, and a Masters in Theatre from the University of Wisconsin. She is founder and President of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips Creative Storytelling, an international alliance of artists and caregivers bringing meaning to late life through creativity. Founded in 1998, TimeSlips became an independent non-profit in 2013 and how has certified facilitators in 47 states and 18 countries.