About Lola Fraknoi
Lola Fraknoi has more than three decades of experience in the aging field, having worked as a program director, a community services manager, and as the founder and director of Ruth’s Table (a center for multi-generational creative learning, rooted in the life and work of artist Ruth Asawa.) Trained as a professional artist, she has always found ways to bring art, music, and creativity of all kinds into the programs she has led. She has also been a consultant and invited speaker on creative aging, multi-cultural approaches to senior programming, and the development of video records of significant cultural events.
Her professional strengths include finding effective collaborations with institutions and individuals in the community; developing programs that engage body, mind, and imagination; bringing together people from different generations; and finding the creative spark in everyone. Currently, she is teaching art in the Older Adults Department at City College of San Francisco.
Born in Lima, Peru and educated in the U.S., she holds a BA from Rice University and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. Before creating Ruth’s Table at Bethany Center Senior Housing, she served as Director of Art with Elders, and as Director of Holocaust Services for Jewish Family and Children’s Services. (Bashert, a documentary of the trip she led for Holocaust Survivors to the Washington DC Holocaust museum has won a number of festival awards.)
While she was at Bethany Center in the 1990’s, she organized, fund-raised for and publicized the development of Salud!, the tallest mural in San Francisco. She also directed a documentary called Salud! that’s been screened all over the world.
Ruth’s Table, which she opened at Bethany in 2011, brought the residents and the community together to explore their creativity. Programming included art classes and exhibits (with a professional curated gallery and shows), an artist-in-residence program, an inter-generational dance company, tai chi and other wellness programs, musical performances, and cultural holiday celebrations. A faculty member at the Academy of Art University made a documentary called Ruth Asawa: Roots of an Artist, that prominently featured Lola Fraknoi and Ruth’s Table.
She developed “Lola’s ArtKit after many years of working with seniors who showed evidence of memory loss. She saw that they retained their creativity much longer than verbal or numerical abilities, something now shown by a number of researchers in the aging field.
What Others Say About Lola’s Work
“Lola Fraknoi collaborated regularly with the Community Music Center to offer musical programming for the residents of the senior housing center where she worked and for the community. She is especially gifted at bringing people together, honoring the diversity in a community of older adults, and weaving the arts into the lives of the people she touches. She opened up arts activities to the community, encouraging multi-generational exchange between residents and the broader public.”
Christopher Borg, Executive Director, Community Music Center
“It takes an exceptional person to embody imagination, talent, lively curiosity, rigor, an artistic sensibility, administrative excellence, and the ability to engage others on multiple levels. Lola Fraknoi engages others in her work on multiple levels. I have seen Lola work with professional artists, older adults, undergraduate students, and children — people from all cultural backgrounds and walks of life. She is able to bring out their best — and in some cases previously unknown — selves. Lola is a rare, and, in my opinion invaluable individual.”
Amie Dowling, Chair, UCSF Dance Department
“Moving to a new city can be a daunting experience—unless you happen to come under the spell of Lola Fraknoi, whose genius is creating community. In her role as program director, Lola pulled me in as soon as we met. She opened my imagination, encouraged my ideas, and welcomed my participation. I watched Lola repeat this process with others—listening, asking, connecting—making each of us feel like we ‘count’. Her ability to enlist talent in the service of a vision is extraordinary. When I am part of a workshop or class that Lola has made possible, it is truly a shared experience. Not only am I enriched, but, in that time and place, a mini-community comes alive.”
Sharon Cox, Program Participant