Anne Basting is a writer, artist, and activist for the power of creativity to change lives by inviting people of all ages and abilities into the creative process. She works with artists and non-artists collaboratively to create plays, stories, and art projects.
A Professor of English at UW-Milwaukee, she is also the Founder of the award-winning nonprofit Timeslips, which for 25 years has helped bring meaning and purpose into the lives of elders and their care partners through creative engagement. TimeSlips has created a global movement to train, inspire, and support caregivers to infuse creativity into care. Her writing and large-scale public performances extend creative and meaningful expression from childhood, where it is expected, to late life, where it is too often withheld.
Basting has worked to infuse creative engagement into nearly every aging care system, including Meals on Wheels, libraries, home care companies, senior centers, memory cafes, adult day programs, and long-term care facilities. She is the author of four books, many articles, and over a dozen plays and public performances, including Beyond Memory, a large-scale production in which Basting and TimeSlips brought the Creative Community of Care organizational training to 50 nursing homes throughout the state of Wisconsin. Basting’s impact on the power and potential of creative meaning-making practices to change the experience of aging has also been recognized through many grants and awards, including being named UW-Milwaukee's first MacArthur “Genius” Fellow in 2016.
