Jennifer Moss Logan shows an insect display to seniors in front of the Botswana diorama at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

When she retired eight years ago, Robin Cohen didn’t want to sit at home in front of the television, but she didn’t realize just how busy she was going to be. Her days are filled with free activities for seniors—from taking photography classes, to attending lectures, to participating in an intergenerational choir—that are all organized by the Denver Public Library.

Cohen says that the activities give meaning to her life. “I love that I’m not invisible. They call it the All Seasons Choir because it intentionally tries to bring together people of all ages. The library sets a tone so that everyone treats each other as interesting peers.” She says it’s that sense of community and connection that has made her feel valued. “I don’t have children and I live alone. But I find that these ‘flash’ communities are just as satisfactory as family.”

Helping people over 50 appreciate a new stage of life is exactly what these programs are designed to do, says Amy Delpo, manager of Older Adult Services at the Denver Public Library. “Our approach is asset-based and meaning-based. We want people to embrace their older years, to view it as a time of growth, lifelong learning, finding meaning, and creating new connections as they continue to explore the world and themselves.”

Delpo helps organize a broad array of programs and tries to make them as accessible as possible, whether it’s online meditation, art classes, Chi Gong in a park, lectures by University of Denver professors, the weekly choir sessions at Swallow Hill, or a monthly movie club at the Sie Film Center.

One of the latest partnerships that Delpo has forged is with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Seniors get an up-close look at the dioramas—those large-scale displays that show animals in 3-D habitats from around the globe—while museum scientists share information about how they were created and some interesting facts about the wildlife in the scene. Then the audience is broken into small groups and encouraged to tell stories about their own experiences with the natural world.

Director Roy Wiley leads an All Seasons Choir rehearsal in preparation for concerts on Dec. 11 at Swallow Hill and Dec. 18 at the Sam Gary Library.

Jennifer Moss Logan is in charge of the Creative Aging Program at the museum. She says the museum has always served older adults, but in recent years has begun experimenting with more robust programming. “Older adults are living longer, healthier lives,” says Moss Logan. “And we realized that we need to provide programming that is more dynamic, social, skill-building, and participatory to match where adults are now.”

She believes that the diorama visits are popular because seniors want to keep learning, but that it is equally important for them to share stories about their lives and create connections with other people.

In another collaboration with the library, museum officials brought objects from an Apollo space exhibit to seniors with memory issues. They also drank Tang and ate space ice cream. “We had them talk about what it was like to watch the astronauts go to the moon­—they had some incredible stories,” says Moss Logan. “They bring a lifetime of experience and we want to make a space where they can share that.”

She credits the Denver Art Museum (DAM) with helping to jumpstart methods that Denver’s cultural organizations can use to better serve older residents. It holds regular “creative aging forums” with a wide variety of groups so they can share best practices and form partnerships. Over the past 10 years, DAM has conducted research about the importance of embracing creativity. “We know that as we age, we need to eat well and exercise. But engaging in creative pursuits is also a key part of healthy aging,” says Danielle Schulz, who leads Lifelong Learning and Access at DAM.

She says the Denver Public Library is well-positioned to do this work because having branches in every neighborhood provides easy access for many seniors. Since DAM has only one location, it needed to develop innovative ways to  reach people who can’t travel downtown. “We realize we have a role to play that is outside the walls of the museum, so we’ve created a program called Art at Hand.” The museum puts together small boxes with photos of art from DAM’s collection along with some information about the work and the artist. The box also includes materials that enable the seniors to create their own works of art. The boxes are distributed to individuals and senior centers. Schulz says the next step is to form more partnerships with health centers. “We want providers to be able to say, ‘engaging with this box will lower your anxiety or your blood pressure.’ We’d like to see them give ‘prescriptions’ like a membership to the Denver Art Museum.”

For more information about the programs mentioned in this story, visit the following websites: denverlibrary.org/olderadults, denverartmuseum.org/en/creative-aging, and dmns.org.

Front Porch photos by Christie Gosch