LifeWords Reading Circles is a free lifelong-learning initiative designed to help older adults stay sharp, maintain a high quality of life, and create a meaningful literary legacy.
Since Winter 2014, Knoxville-based organization Own the Boards has been designing a lifelong-learning initiative that will serve as a local facet of its broader mission. LifeWords Reading Circles grew out of of these planning sessions, and we began conducting pilot sessions at Sherrill Hills Retirement Community in Fall 2015.
The program is designed to help older adults remain socially active and cognitively fit. Studies have shown that activities such as reading, group discussion, and reminiscence can help bolster cognitive health, and we built our weekly seminars around these findings. Participants will engage with literature through independent reading and group discussion, and in the process, they’ll get to know themselves and their neighbors a little bit better.
Participants may also take part in one of our recitation showcases at the end of each semester, where they’ll select pieces of literature that are meaningful to them, memorize them, and perform them. These performances are intellectually challenging, but they also speak to the participants’ passions, to what matters in their lives. Recorded performances – preserved on the Own the Boards archive – serve as a means of saving and sharing those sentiments.
As we explain on our parent site, to “own the boards” “symbolizes a…general affirmation of empowerment – of willfully stepping into the thick of life and meetings its joys, challenges, and fears with hopefulness, a clear head, and an open heart.” This philosophy carries over into our seminars. Our goal is to help individuals take control of their aging and to challenge themselves creatively, intellectually, and emotionally through the study and performance of literature.