Art with Elders

Laguna Honda Hospital

Art With Elders teaches more than 300 elders in 30 nursing homes and residential care and assisted living facilities in the Bay Area. One of these facilities — Laguna Honda Hospital — is quite unusual.

Laguna Honda (LHH), which first invited AWE to provide arts education for its residents in the fall of 1997, is a 1,200-bed skilled nursing facility owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. It is the largest nursing home in the United States. LHH, which sits on a prominent 65-acre parcel of land in the City's geographic center, has been in existence since 1866 and is currently in the early stages of a 10-year, $600 million re-building process that will provide state-of-the-art healthcare for San Francisco's indigent elderly and disabled. It is a remarkable commitment by San Franciscans to its growing elder population and provides a model for the rest of the country.

Art With Elders holds morning and afternoon classes three days a week for a total of between 75 and 100 residents on this sprawling campus. AWE's program staff not only teach these classes, but, with the help of the Hospital's own Volunteer Office, recruit and manage volunteers who augment their teaching responsibilities. AWE staff also mount semi-annual art exhibits inside the Hospital, take residents on field trips to local museums, organize interactive visits to the Hospital by national and internationally known artists and contribute to the AWE Annual Exhibit and reception. The AWE staff is highly appreciated by residents and by Hospital personnel. Art With Elders is an important enough feature of Laguna Honda's activity program that it is being given a dedicated studio and gallery space in the new buildings.