Poetic Memory Program
- David Hong
- College of Arts & Sciences, Kelly Writers House, Penn Memory Center
- Student Arts Innovation Grant
David Hong, in collaboration with Kelly Writers House and the Penn Memory Center, will steward the Poetic Memory Program, a student-driven initiative which aims to provide guided poetry workshops to people with dementia in the local Philadelphia community. In order to begin holding workshops, student volunteers from Penn will receive training from Gary Glazner, the Director and Founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, which is a national organization that serves people with dementia through poetry-based programming. Using their tried and tested training curriculum, Mr. Glazner will train student volunteers during the 2019 Fall semester with a series of training sessions and hands-on workshops with people with dementia (and their caretakers) in Philadelphia. In the Spring 2020 semester, experienced student volunteers will train new members while holding at least one workshop per month, streamlining the training process and crystallizing a sustainable student-led initiative.