Inspiring a New Old  is a free community forum, to be held on May 16, 2013 in Greensboro, starting with an introduction and preview of Anne Basting’s documentary, The Penelope Project.  Following the film, Basting will lead a discussion on issues associated with aging, including societal views, memory loss, dementia, and ageism. This discussion is tied not only to the documentary, but also her two books, Forget Memory: Creating better lives for people with dementia and The Stages of Age: Performing Age in Contemporary American Culture.

Basting is an educator, scholar, and artist whose work focuses on the potential for the arts and humanities to improve our quality of life as communities and individuals. She is also author and/or producer of nearly a dozen plays and public performances, including Finding Penelope (2011), a play inspired by a year of intergenerational conversations about the myth of Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey, and professionally staged throughout Luther Manor, a long term care facility in Wisconsin.

Basting confronts issues of ageism and societal norms with thought provoking questions such as “When we think of aging, what images come to mind?”, “Where do those images come from?”  She goes on to ask “Why is America obsessed with memory?”, “How did we come to view memory as the center of our identity?” and “Just what is it that we’re afraid of?” These questions will be posed to the audience to open up dialogue about the views, ideas, and concerns of the residents of North Carolina.

Bladen Community College will host four guest speakers through the Writers Series in spring 2013. The Writers Series aims to enrich students' culture and interest in writing and reading. It allows the students a chance to meet award winning writers and listen to their experiences. Moreover, since Bladen Community College serves a very rural area where very few well-established authors would routinely visit, the college assumes an active role in engaging the community in its literary activities. The speakers are chosen very carefully to represent a diversity of genres and experiences.

Funding for this project encompasses the production of a series of digital videos of significant women in the history of Wake Forest for a museum exhibition, online access, and a panel presentation. Each of their lives bears witness to the crucial period when Wake Forest College left this community for Winston-Salem in 1956. The exhibition will be available in April.

This project consists of three events. The first event is a Global Town Hall at the recently opened Nature Research Center in Raleigh with world-renowned entomologist Dr. E.O. Wilson. He will focus his remarks on the convergence of science and the humanities. The second event is a discussion of the book Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage with author Dr. Dianne Glave. The final event features a panel of scientists and historians discussing the latest use of autobiographies in the history and communication of science.