Abstract

Western society is being altered significantly by the growing prevalence of the incurable, degenerative group of disorders known as dementia, which will affect one million in the UK by 2025. Our expectations of old age are overshadowed by the probability of progressive memory loss, families are under pressure to support frail older members in the community, while health and social care services worldwide are struggling to meet the challenge of unprecedented numbers of people living with memory loss. The issues thrown up by this phenomenon have implications for scholars in the Arts and Humanities, as well as in the Social Sciences and Medicine, and the Dementia and Wellbeing Network (DAWN) will address one facet of dementia where the interests of many academics from different disciplines converge: the use of the visual and performing arts to promote wellbeing in dementia.

Much existing knowledge is tacit and lies with the artists and individuals affected by dementia, so DAWN will help to draw this out, by bringing the complementary perspectives of people with mild to moderate dementia together with practising artists and academic researchers from a range of disciplines to advance knowledge about wellbeing for people living in the community with dementia through the visual and performing arts. People with dementia clearly enjoy making music, listening to music, singing, dancing, painting or visiting galleries and museums, according to their tastes. The film ‘Alive Inside’ (YouTube and Netflix) illustrates how individuals who appeared to be uncommunicative can respond to art – music in this instance, in an astonishing way. The potential benefits to be gained from the widespread adoption of arts interventions that have such positive effects on individuals with dementia make the topic worthy of academic attention. However, with the exception of music therapy which is offered to people with dementia by only about 120 professionals in the UK, research evidence is weak, and then only for a limited number of specific interventions including choral singing; visual art appreciation and creation activities; dance in care homes; and applied theatre. More thought needs to be given to the principles and values reflected in artistic approaches to wellbeing; for instance, when creations by a person with dementia are shown publicly what messages are being communicated? What is the relationship between music, dance, visual and performance art and the wellbeing of people living with dementia? How do people with dementia regard the arts? What can we learn from the ways in which arts practitioners relate successfully with people with dementia? These and similar questions will be tackled theoretically and empirically through DAWN, operating through four, two-day workshops, as described in ‘Objectives’.

Both academics and the wider society recognize that dementia is not simply a medical challenge; it has implications for how we live our lives and our relationships within families and in communities. Since many people are living at home for years with declining mental abilities, we need better ways to promote quality of life, personal dignity and respect. Music, dance, visual art and theatre or performance – the arts – are one area where the impairments of dementia do not necessarily present impediments to engagement and enjoyment. DAWN will help to advance knowledge and understanding about how to enable more people with dementia to retain or improve their wellbeing through the arts.

Planned Impact
Each academic participant and arts consultant will formulate an agreement with the PI and Co-I concerning the impact-related activities for which they are responsible, and approximately half of the time in workshops will be spent generating these ‘outputs’. DAWN members will use a wide range of modes of communication (conference presentations, professional associations, policy connections, blogs, websites, peer-reviewed and popular press) to achieve impact with this work, the content of which will be generated during the workshops through co-production with people with dementia. To quantify these deliverables, we anticipate that the 8 artists and 12 academics will co-produce at least 20 items comprising an estimated 6 creative works (e.g. curate an exhibition, produce a script, a video of dance or music therapy, or new sculpture or visual art), 6 jointly-authored academic papers, 6 conference presentations; and two major research proposals – all on the topic of wellbeing in dementia and benefitting from the cross-disciplinary dialogue fostered by DAWN.

DAWN’s strong ethos of coproduction amongst consumers, artists and academics will afford an excellent creative environment to pursue novel and impactful outputs. Dissemination of all final outputs will be facilitated by the members’ existing affiliations, while their reach will be extended by the diversity of the network. The Communications resources of the UoN Institute of Mental Health (IMH) will be used to publicise the products via email lists, newsletters, websites, press releases and public events such as the IMH annual research day. Where research proposals are produced, the infrastructure of the IMH will be available to develop these, whether they are submitted to arts funders or to health research and innovation funders. Both its Centre of Excellence for Social Futures which advances social and cultural investigations in mental health (led by Crawford) and its Centre for Dementia advancing research in dementia (led by Dening) will promote the network via their extensive research communities and conference programmes which have national and international reach (see for example www.idea.nottingham.ac.uk)

All members of DAWN will act as key and ongoing disseminators, extending and advancing their connectivity with multiple partners and organisations, delivering keynotes, plenaries and peer-reviewed papers at major conferences. Collectively, the members of DAWN will drive forward arts for well-being in dementia, stimulating fresh debates and user creative approaches as distinct from merely expert solutions.