Anne Basting meets with UWM Chancellor Mark Mone after the announcement that she had been named a MacArthur Fellow. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
UWM theater professor Anne Basting meets with the media after the announcement of her MacArthur award. (UWM Photo/Elora Hennessey)
UWM students lead seniors at St. John's on the Lake through a storytelling exercise as part of the TimeSlips program created by UWM theater professor Anne Basting. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Anne Basting monitors UWM students as they present stories to senior citizens at Luther Manor, as part of the Penelope Project. (UWM Photo/Alan Magayne-Roshak)
Students help seniors create stories at Luther Manor as part of Anne Basting's programs. (UWM Photo/Alan Magayne-Roshak)
UWM Professor Anne Basting’s work to help seniors cope with memory issues earned her a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. (UWM Photo/Alan Magayne-Roshak)
Theater professor Anne Basting has been named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow, making her the first UWM faculty member to earn the esteemed MacArthur Foundation’s highest honor.
Basting’s focus at UWM’s Peck School of the Arts is on community-engaged performance, and she’s an expert on integrating arts into aging services and long-term care. She’s founder of the Creative Trust, an alliance that fosters lifelong learning through the arts, and which supports a Student Artists in Residence program that trains and embeds students with aging services organizations.
Among Basting’s many other projects are TimeSlips Creative Storytelling, The Penelope Project and the Islands of Milwaukee. They all exhibit the kind of creativity and community involvement to which Basting has devoted her professional career, and which ultimately drew the foundation’s attention.
