Abstract

Beyond Culture Box will extend and enhance the impact of the Culture Box (CB) pandemic-responsive project. Culture Box used interactive creative resources to alleviate some of the negative impacts of the pandemic on people living with dementia in care homes, particularly rates of social isolation and loneliness. Culture Box resulted in a wide array of commissioned and co-designed creative resources that have not been fully utilised and that Beyond Culture Box will use to support diverse communities who were not involved in the original study.

Beyond Culture Box will achieve this by using the project findings and materials created to develop training activities and exhibitions that improve dementia care and reach new audiences. These will be developed via a series of participatory stakeholder workshops. The Beyond Culture Box stakeholder workshops will facilitate knowledge exchange with a range of non-academic stakeholders, including Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) community groups, care staff, arts and heritage organisations, people with lived experience of dementia and their supporters, and creative practitioners. To maximise the success of these workshops, the team will work closely with project partners: Arts4Dementia, Arts and Culture Exeter, and The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, and our subcontractors Culture& and NAPA.
The workshops will be participative and guided by the CB research findings and resources, whilst also learning from participants with lived experience or other expertise e.g. via delivering training and supporting creative events for those with dementia. The Beyond Culture Box workshops will inform 2 key outputs:

1. A training course for care staff and other stakeholders (e.g. family supporters). This will address the need for arts training provision for care staff, artists, and family supporters to build their confidence and skills in using evidence-based creative materials with older people with dementia. The course will take place alongside the touring exhibition, run by our sub-contractors NAPA and in partnership with Arts4Dementia. There will be 2 events in the locations where each exhibition will be hosted (Exeter and Stoke on Trent) with a hybrid option available to ensure accessibility. The Beyond Culture Box team will work closely with NAPA and Arts4Dementia to learn from their expertise in providing training to ensure that the offer is relevant and useful for a wide audience.

2. A multi-media exhibition: ‘Culture Box Live’. The exhibition will showcase the outcomes of the CB project using engaging and interactive displays, devised in the stakeholder workshops. The exhibition will tour 2 accessible and contrasting venues in different parts of England to ensure the project reaches new audiences, the locations are Positive Light Projects in Exeter and Mitchell Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. We will collaborate with partner The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum to include some of their resources, including their work on the “memory box” in collaboration with local Exeter organisations. Alongside this, our collaboration with Arts and Culture Exeter and Culture& will facilitate wide and diverse attendance, including those from BAME communities.

Beyond Culture Box will be documented in a final report and practice paper that will be widely disseminated, supported by the project collaborators.

Aims

The Beyond Culture Box workshops will inform 2 key outputs:

1. A training course for care staff and other stakeholders (e.g. family supporters). This will address the need for arts training provision for care staff, artists, and family supporters to build their confidence and skills in using evidence-based creative materials with older people with dementia. The course will take place alongside the touring exhibition, run by our sub-contractors NAPA and in partnership with Arts4Dementia. There will be 2 events in the locations where each exhibition will be hosted (Exeter and Stoke on Trent) with a hybrid option available to ensure accessibility. The Beyond Culture Box team will work closely with NAPA and Arts4Dementia to learn from their expertise in providing training to ensure that the offer is relevant and useful for a wide audience.

2. A multi-media exhibition: ‘Culture Box Live’. The exhibition will showcase the outcomes of the CB project using engaging and interactive displays, devised in the stakeholder workshops. The exhibition will tour 2 accessible and contrasting venues in different parts of England to ensure the project reaches new audiences, the locations are Positive Light Projects in Exeter and Mitchell Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. We will collaborate with partner The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum to include some of their resources, including their work on the “memory box” in collaboration with local Exeter organisations. Alongside this, our collaboration with Arts and Culture Exeter and Culture& will facilitate wide and diverse attendance, including those from BAME communities.