Joan Hampton Fraser |  Teaching Artist Training Consultant

Joan Hampton Fraser is currently Arts for the Aging’s teaching artist training consultant and an emerita teaching artist. She has been affiliated with the organization since 1996 and has been working as a creative arts consultant since 1984. Joan supports the program director in developing and co-leading teaching artist trainings and selecting and onboarding prospective Arts for the Aging teaching artists. Joan has worked as a trainer in the private and government sectors since 1989. She has provided training in the following areas – best practices for arts programs for older adults, crisis management, stress management, managing and valuing diversity, preventing sexual harassment, conflict resolution, team building, best approaches to persons undergoing emotional distress, access to all individuals to services and care, and valuing mentorship.

Her creative arts programming work included dance, creative movement, musical theater, creative writing, and poetry. Joan developed and implemented creative arts programming for persons with mental health, intellectual, physical, auditory, visual, and cognitive disabilities. She specializes in work with older adults, having focused on this population throughout her master’s program at George Washington University and concluding her degree with her thesis in 1986 -“The Positive Impacts of Dance in the Lives of Older Adults.” Joan’s program goals with participants has been to access their cognitive, emotional, and kinesthetic strengths as well as to build a sense of community and appreciation for others.

She trained and worked with Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange and was their coordinator of community programs for older adults. Joan has dance training in modern, jazz, tap, ballroom, improvisation, dance therapy, Alexander and Feldenkreis Techniques, relaxation, and visualization. She also utilizes her extensive background in psychotherapy, family therapy, psychodrama, and system theories to complement her artistic and training work.

Joan has a bachelor of arts in sociology/anthropology from Ithaca College, a master of arts in education and human development with specialization in dance in the community from The George Washington University, and a certificate of completion in psychodrama from The DC Commission on Mental Health Services for a yearlong internship at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington DC.