11:00 - 12:10
Developing successful partnerships within applied creative ageing research. BSG Creative Ageing Special Interest Group.
Following the launch of Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing(APPG, 2017), there is a heightened national awareness around the role the arts can play in promoting health and wellbeing across the life-course. With an ever-increasing ageing population, the burgeoning field ofCreative Ageing is also rapidly gaining interest within research and practice. From its infancy in the 1980s, beginning with a primary focus on reminiscence activities, the creative ageing field has matured and evolved to include partnerships working across an assortment of person-centred, creative activities (including music, visual arts and participatory theatre), which support quality of life for people in later life. These developments are reflected in a paradigm shift in the current policy landscape, moving away from a deficit model of later life, towards finding creative ways of supporting individuals to flourish in their own communities (Hogan & Bradfield, 2018).
The symposium will showcase a collection of arts-based, collaborative projects which have increased opportunities for creative engagement and social connections. The presentations will consider the strengths and challenges of cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary work employing a range of methodologies, and highlight areas of best practice and recommendations for further research. The symposium concludes with a facilitated discussion about what is needed for successful partnerships, including cross-sectoral, cross-disciplinary and multiple stakeholder ways of working.
APPG (2017) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing Inquiry Report.
Hogan, S. & Bradfield, E. (2018) Creative Ageing: The Social Policy Challenge, in Amigoni, D. & McMullan, G. (eds) Creativity in Later Life: Beyond Late Style.
This paper reflects on the workings of a cross sector partnership and its participatory theatre approach to engaging people of all ages, in conversations about later life housing. In 2015, Elders Council Newcastle, with public health academics at Northumbria University and Skimstone Arts, facilitated 22 older people from a range of backgrounds, to participate in open conversations and an arts residency. ‘Doorbells’, a theatre production, was developed with participants to fictionalise their shared health and housing issues.
A revised theatre version, ‘Doorbells – Dreaming of the Future’, was developed in response to a Care & Repair England commission, as part of an Esmѐe Fairbairn funded, UK initiative, showcasing how local people’s groups and organizations may influence housing strategies. This recent iteration stimulated conversation about where we imagine ourselves living in later life. A freely available film-on-location was also produced with a resource pack to stimulate a shared, national conversation.
Our work fits a growing interdisciplinary ‘creative ageing’ agenda, focusing on improving quality of later life through participatory engagement in arts-based activities and performances. This is garnering policy and cultural commissioning interest, with some good evidence of its human and economic efficacy (APPG, 2017). This paper considers ongoing challenges in creative ageing: How can we build and sustain partnerships that facilitate people from all backgrounds to take part? How do we measure positive change through participatory approaches and audience feedback? How do we scale up pilot activity? In short, how do we develop and evidence accessible and inclusive approaches to creative ageing?
There is an increasing evidence-base of the benefits of the arts for people living with dementia and those who support them (APPG, 2017). Here we celebrate two examples of creativity in Wales and reflect on the partnerships that have contributed to their success.
cARTrefu aims to create and increase opportunities for care home residents and staff in Wales to participate in the arts. Thought to be the largest project of its kind in Europe, cARTrefu is delivered by Age Cymru and funded by the Baring Foundation and Arts Council Wales. An independent evaluation was led by Bangor University. In the first two years, 1952 hours of free arts provision were delivered in 20% of the care homes in Wales. Participating in the cARTrefu programme was found to have a significant impact on older people’s well-being and staff attitudes towards residents, especially those living with dementia. Staff also gained the confidence to lead creative activities themselves.
Creative Conversations is an arts-based programme for developing the skills of dementia care staff. The project was a partnership between Bangor University, Dementia Positive, and Flintshire County Council Social Services. Following the success of the project, Flintshire County Council have secured funding to deliver Creative Conversations for another year.
This paper presents the two projects and considers the lessons learned to enable the sharing of best-practice in the field of creativity in dementia care.
APPG (2017) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing. All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing Inquiry Report.
Music programmes are the most commonly reported arts-based intervention for people with dementia, and have been shown to enable an outlet for creativity and facilitate connections between people with dementia and those who support them. Current methods for understanding the benefits of music for people with dementia largely focus on before/after measures of ‘symptoms’, such as agitation. As such, sensory and embodied experiences, as well as the creative music-making of people with dementia can be overlooked, which is a concern as the benefits of music are largely observed ‘in the moment’.
This presentation will focus on the collaboration between The University of Manchester, Lancaster University and Manchester Camerata (a chamber orchestra based in Manchester) in the development of a new music assessment framework (In the Moment Profiles or IMPs). IMPs combine observed, visual and sensory approaches to recording the musical interactions of people with dementia, and place musical processes, as well as outcomes, as central in measuring ‘in the moment’ experiences. The context for the research was Manchester Camerata’s Music in Mind programme, an improvisation-based programme for people with dementia which provides a platform for musical agency, spontaneity and creativity supported by a music therapist and orchestral musician.
This presentation will share the journey of the research from its inception through to dissemination of findings, highlighting strengths and challenges relating to the cross-disciplinary nature of the research. The presentation will also make recommendations for applied creative ageing research, based on the experiences of both academic and industry partners.