Current Work

Magda is a teaching artist and creative-aging advocate. As an artist, educator and researcher, she has devoted her career to promoting and supporting communities through the transformative power of creative expression through dance.

Personal Hero

Those who dare to dream.

Words of Strength

Insatiable drive to connect communities

Vision

Through harnessing our individual and collective power of creative expression, Magda believes we can rewrite narratives around aging and dementia and design systems that support a present and a future we all would want to age into together.

Strategy

Magda is developing a training model for dance educators and non-dancers who work with older adults to understand the inherent elements in dance, which support brain health and build a cognitive reserve across the lifespan.

Impact

Magda aims to connect with interdisciplinary professionals at the forefront of dementia research and clinical practice, to expand evidence-based creative aging programming, ensuring the longevity, expansion and continued recognition of the field as one essential to the mental, physical and social health of older adults globally.

Motivation

Magda believes that part of the challenges we face around dementia and aging in the United States is that we are in desperate need of rewriting social narratives to person-centered systems, which view people not through the metric of what they can produce, but who there are, uniquely.

Education & Experience

Magda is a teaching artist and creative-aging advocate based in New York City. She received her MFA in Dance Performance & Choreography and her BS in Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics from the University of Arizona. She spent 10 years working in pre-clinical neuropharmacology research and over 15 years in community based education settings in dance and creative expression for persons of all ages, specifically older adults. With the NGO Dances For A Variable Population, she has served NYC older adults in exploring their creativity through movement, developed creative aging training programs and led academic presentations promoting the benefits of creative expression on healthy aging and community integration.

Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI)
current
Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health
University of Arizona
Dance Performance & Choreography
MFA
University of Arizona
Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics
BS

Podcasts

Near FM

Talkin’ About Neurodegeneration: Mike Hanrahan, Roman Romero Ortuno, Dana Walrath and Magda Kaczmarska

Vascular Dementia and The Arts in Dementia Care

July 19, 2021
Near FM

Voyage Around My Brain: Magda Kaczmarska and Peggy Finn

The importance of Dance and Movement for Brain Health

November 30, 2020