Dr Chloe Bradwell

This article considers how artists can help highlight the value of negative emotions for care home residents living with dementia. It continues the discussion on arts and health in dementia care by looking at wellbeing beyond mere individual happiness and considering sadness as an integral part of it. This study focuses on Entelechy Arts, a participatory arts company creating cultural programmes for isolated older adults and those in care environments. Focusing on a specific interaction from their Walking Through Walls programme, this article offers a thick description and theoretical analysis of how the creative practitioners fostered solidarity among artists, residents, and staff by validating a resident's feelings of sadness and anger through kinaesthetic attunement. The study argues that by attuning to negative emotions, artists can challenge notions of utopian happiness. This counters the idea that negative emotions must be suppressed to promote wellbeing and enact solidarity as a collective and activist act of care. This is critical in the context of care home residents living with dementia, for whom negative feelings are often interpreted as challenging behaviours that can lead to medication and isolation. Instead, this paper suggests that artists can help re-frame such behaviours as important relational acts that challenge the normalisation of oppressive institutional systems.

This article considers how intergenerational arts can help support the resilience of people living with dementia. Theorising a moment of process from Magic Me’s Reflections of Stepney, it analyses how art facilitators help a child and care home resident to overcome the challenge of relating and create a performance together. It particularly considers the possibilities offered by touch as a way for participants to connect. It argues that a creative process which focuses on a physical relationship can help facilitate resilient responses in the co-creation of meaningful relationships between participants living with and without dementia.

Playwork is a profession that focuses on enabling and enriching children’s play experiences, creating a space for spontaneous, self-directed play. The application of playwork principles to dementia care holds promise and resonates with a relational approach to care. However, this area of practice has not yet been explored. This study aimed to explore if and how playwork approaches could be applied with people living with dementia and their impact on residents and those delivering the programme. A five-week playwork programme, delivered by undergraduate playwork students and lecturers, was piloted in a care home, with residents living with dementia. Interviews were conducted with care home staff, students, and playwork lecturers, and reflective diaries of the playwork sessions were maintained by students and lecturers. The findings indicate that playworkers can feasibly adapt their approaches so they are appropriate for older adults living with dementia. Playworkers can encourage agency and support free expression and exploration for residents. The sessions were perceived as having a positive impact on residents’ emotional wellbeing, sense of recognition, social interaction, and engagement, as well as on some staff members’ assessments of residents’ abilities. The study also highlights the crucial role of care staff expertise during the sessions, particularly in addressing the medical and physiological needs of residents. However, engaging care staff proved challenging, resulting in a lack of continuity after the project concluded.