Do you feel at a loss in providing end-of-life care? Join us to discuss the use of the Arts to create a meaningful end-of-life experience for those you love.

What do a Native American flute player, a storyteller, a gospel singer, a performance artist, a Bharatanatyam dancer and a Buddhist Chaplain and painter have to teach us about how to care for and prepare for our own deaths? Understanding how death and dying have come to be expressed in diverse and often culturally specific art forms offers remarkable insight into end-of-life situations. It can help us make sense of death, care for those facing it, and ensure the best endings possible for our lives.

This presentation by folklorist Steve Zeitlin, PhD, Phyllis Zimmer, MN, FNP, FAANP, FAAN, and special guest, painter and Buddhist Chaplain Soren Glassing, offers stories and insights from their work in death and dying, and showcases resources in an End-of-Life Toolkit you can use in caring for your friends and family who are facing end-of-life. Through poignant video clips of stories from tradition bearers, storytellers and community-based artists, links to textbooks, stories, poems, and cultural perspectives on death and dying, they will showcase their newly developed End-of-Life Toolkit. Examples of various art forms, and “how to” information for creating meaningful memorials when an individual passes away are also presented. Participants take part in the program by sharing their personal stories of death and dying.

Steve Zeitlin is a folklorist, filmmaker, writer, and cultural Committed activist. He has a PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the founding director of City Lore. He has served as a commentator for public radio, and is the author or co-author of ten books onAmerica's folk culture -- his latest is The Poetry ofEveryday Life: Storytelling and the Art ofAwareness (Cornell U. Press). He is the recipient of the Botkin Award for Lifetime Achievement in public folklore from the American Folklore Society. He has documented, recorded and fallen in love with carnival pitches, children's rhymes, family stories, subway stories, ancient cosmologies, and oral poetry traditions from around the world.

Phyllis Zimmer is a Nurse Practitioner(NP) and the President of the NPHF. She holds a faculty position at the University of Washington. Phyllis has provided major leadership in the nurse practitioner (NP) profession at state, national, and international levels. She is an experienced nurse educator, and is a recipient of the NONPF Nurse Practitioner Educator award. She has developed numerous educational programs for RNs/NPs and co-authored "Cultural Competence", a book chapter in the text, Adult Prima(Y. Care (W.B. Saunders Co.). She presented a TED talk highlighting the contributions of Nursing to advancing healthcare innovation. She has presented at the World Health Organization, and the UN Women Leaders Forum. She is a Fellow of the American : Academy of Nursing and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and a recipient of the Loretta Ford Lifetime Achievement Award. She co-led the two Heritage to Health initiatives (w/City Lore).

This program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

End-of-Life Toolkit: https://citylore.org/special-projects...
Harnessing the Power of the Arts in End-of-Life Care (E-Learning Course): https://www.mycme.com/courses/harness...