For Friends & Family caregivers

Visit our Creativity Center for 100s of ways to meaningfully engage.
Sign up to receive inspiring weekly emails with engagement ideas.
Visit our Network page to find Certified Facilitators or organizations offering creative workshops near you.
We offer beautifully designed products to support you in meaningfully engaging friends and loved ones.
Host an Engagement Party to learn and share simple engagement techniques with friends and family.
Learn about how to host an Engagement Party for family and friends here!
Do you know someone who is isolated or perhaps wrestling with dementia? You want to engage but don't know how?
Let us help. Learn to ask a Beautiful Question and invite someone to imagine, using words, sounds, movements and images. Shift away from the expectation of memory - toward the freedom that imagination can bring.
Creative Care by Anne Basting
TimeSlips Founder and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, Anne Basting, pioneers a radical change in how we interact with older loved ones, especially those experiencing dementia, as she introduces a proven method that uses the creative arts to bring light and joy to the lives of elders. Order now!
As part of our mission to make creative engagement available to all, our Creativity Center is free to use without training. We think the training will be enormously helpful - but it’s not required.
It IS fun isn’t it? TimeSlips was originally designed for people with cognitive disabilities like dementia. Creative engagement is an ideal way for people with cognitive challenges to communicate. Our main audiences are families, care providers and elders experiencing isolation, whether from disabilities or social situations. But it’s fun for everyone and effective for community building of all kinds.
Of course you can! In fact, we designed this site for you so you can have something meaningful and playful to do at home and also invite family members who might be far away to play with you (through the "collaborate" button). The main challenge will be to open yourself to word-play and let go of any desire to “clean up” language. TimeSlips is about experimenting and playing with expression. There are no wrong answers. Also try our Creativity Journal, specifically designed for one-on-one use. It's a beautifully designed keepsake with simple instructions for families, friends, homecare and hospice workers.
Check our our MAP to find TimeSlips near you. If there isn't one near you, try bringing info about the program to your current aging services provider (senior center, day center, early memory loss program, or long term care facility). This approach is inexpensive and easy to learn and can easily be incorporated into any program.
Oh my goodness - the JOY and DELIGHT of the whole shared creative process is so uplifting - who can stop smiling? It affects everyone and ripples out.
One of the participants proudly stated ‘I can’t remember, but here I can imagine’, which I found an incredibly moving testament to the power of this programme.
So many people with dementia are told that they need to try to remember certain things or that it is negative that they are changing cognitively. I think this approach is so wonderful because it throws the dementia stigma out of the window and makes a person with dementia just a person again.
Questions? Drop us a line.