Growing a Spark: The Vision Behind Creative Spark E-Learning

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Creative Spark started as a way to help staff keep older adults engaged when so much of our in-person interaction had to pause. What I didn’t expect was how deeply staff responded—not just to the creative content, but to the sense of connection and creative confidence. An early comment from one of our trainees shows that this kind of staff professional development was so needed. “Creative Spark inspired me to be more brave when thinking of how to engage our residents.” There was a lot of bravery and out-of-the-box thinking going on during the pandemic. So inspiring to be a part of it.

This was the spark that lit a bigger vision.

Often, it's a single staff member responsible for engaging a hundred or more older adults in one community. And those staff are doing incredible, creative, deeply human work—often without a network of support or shared resources. I saw an opportunity to scale the connection and the learning: not just to give people tools, but to build a sense of community across roles, locations, and even organizations. We had been doing this for years with our Spark Gatherings. The question was, could this be applied in an e-learning experience.

The challenge was: How do we make an online experience feel just as interactive, collaborative, and heart-centered as a live training? That’s where our amazing team came in. With their help—and Circle, a community platform that supports both learning and real-time discussion—we’re shaping something more than just a course. We’re building a scalable training tool and creative exchange space for those supporting older adults, whether they’re in a large organization or working solo. Because connection fuels creativity—and we all do better when we learn together.

As we prepare to beta test the Creative Spark e-learning platform this fall (September 2025), what excites me most is the discussion board feature. It invites practitioners to reflect, share, and learn with each other. And we’ll be listening, because we’re building this together. My hope is that this space becomes a resource not just for Front Porch staff, but for anyone supporting people on the aging journey—which, really, includes all of us in some way.

“Education is not filing the pail but lighting the fire.” William Butler Yeats

Jessica McCracken is the Senior Director of Creative Spark and leads the development of arts-based learning and engagement strategies across the Front Porch network and beyond.

Read more about what we're building at: https://www.creativespark.org/e-learning-community