Mark your calendars for the UW School of Nursing de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging’s 9th annual Ignite Aging symposium! This year’s event will highlight the connection between creativity and healthy aging. In addition to our usual lightning-quick talks, each talk will be followed by an interactive activity. Join us to learn how mindfulness, music, garden activities, and more can enhance our lives and health as we age.
What: Ignite Aging 2025: Creative Arts and Healthy Aging
When: Thursday, September 25, 9 a.m.– noon
Where: The UW Center for Urban Horticulture
The event is free and open to the public.
2025 presenters:
Lea Lovelace is the Associate Director of Creative Aging Programs at the Frye Art Museum and leads a team dedicated to fostering creative arts experiences for older adults. Since 2010, the Frye has been at the forefront of Creative Aging programming in museums, offering dementia-friendly arts programming focused on present moment awareness, community building, and creative engagement.
Genevieve Wanucha is the Communications Specialist for the UW Memory and Brain Wellness Center, overseeing content creation for websites and outreach materials. She also works as the project lead for Maude’s Garden at the Memory Hub, which serves as a healing space for the memory loss community, focusing on the garden’s ongoing development, health, and programming.
Madison McKee holds dual degrees in Landscape Architecture and Nursing. Her work focuses on the intersection of healthcare and forms of outdoor and holistic healing.
Kristoffer Rhoads is a Professor of Neurology at the UW School of Medicine, the dirctor and co-lead of UW Project ECHO Dementia, and the director of neuropsychology at Harborview Medical Center, specializing in mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Dr. Rhoads currently serves as the Chair of the Health and Medical Subcommittee for the WA State Dementia Action Collaborative.
Sarah McKiddy is a PhD Candidate in Nursing Science with a background in nursing and music. Her dissertation explores how a performing arts organization and a dementia-specific community center can co-design memory loss programming. More broadly, her work explores how creative practices like music can be infused into community and clinical settings.
Keys To Connection is a student-led initiative aimed to increase access to music at facilities for older adults by connecting the residents to student musicians.