Innovation 80 2.0 carries forward a proven model of intergenerational arts, community investment, and relationship building while expanding the organization's capacity to fund, convene, strengthen, and champion the field.
Innovation 80 2.0 supports and advances arts-based programs that build life skills, develop human potential, and foster meaningful intergenerational relationships. Through its CoGen initiative, it funds, connects, and champions organizations where older adults and younger generations create together, learn from one another, and build the trust, belonging, and social bonds that sustain healthy communities through shared creative experience.
These results reflect Innovation 80’s work. Innovation 80 2.0 builds on that foundation, carrying the model forward and expanding its capacity to support intergenerational arts.
Relationship-based support for intergenerational arts organizations.
Quarterly cohort gatherings and peer learning.
Direct organizational support, evaluation frameworks, and access to expertise.
Relationships among organizations, funders, partners, and community leaders.
Research, public storytelling, and field-level learning.
Innovation 80 does not simply place younger and older adults in the same room. The model creates repeated opportunities to make something together, exchange perspectives, build trust, and form reciprocal relationships across generations.
The arts create more than art. The arts are not simply an activity. They help develop the human capacities healthy communities require.
Through artistic creation, people develop identity, voice, self-reflection, and creativity. Art gives people space to explore who they are and what matters to them.
Creating together requires listening, empathy, trust, perspective-taking, and collaboration. It allows people from different generations to encounter one another in ways ordinary conversation often does not.
An initiative focused on providing educational resources to underprivileged children.
Arnie Kanter, Carol Kanter, and Janis Mendelsohn co-founded Innovation 80 in 2020. Their vision and commitment established the foundation on which Innovation 80 2.0 will build.
Innovation 80 2.0’s leadership will steward the mission, model, and relationships established by Innovation 80. Its responsibility is to strengthen the organization, support the CoGen community, and create opportunities for the work to grow.
A selection of organizations supported by Innovation 80, whose work helped shape the legacy Innovation 80 2.0 carries forward.
Your support helps create meaningful intergenerational arts experiences while strengthening the organizations that make those experiences possible.
Connecting the Young and the Young at Heart
