Editorial introduction

This chapter is based on data from a large-scale, mixed methods project wherein groups of people with dementia were invited to take part in visual arts activities. The project generated a wide range of data, but this chapter takes a fine-grained approach to analysing the qualitative data from the project. Through this the authors explore the narrative processes and identity work that were evoked through the activities. These are considered from the perspective of resilience to explore how such activities might contribute to the resilience of people with dementia.

Introduction

This chapter explores how visual arts enrichment activities might play a role in the resilience of people in later life living with dementia in care homes, through the development or preservation of narrative identities. This complements previous work on the role of arts enrichment activities in the resilience of older people with dementia (Newman et al, 2018) that originated from the results of the same research project, entitled Dementia and Imagination. That paper concluded that arts enrichment activities support resilience in the domains of creative expression, communication and self-esteem and through their effects on carers and family members. This chapter differs in that it explores the role that the arts enrichment activities might have in supporting narrative agency and expression, and how that might facilitate resilience in older people living with dementia (Randall, 2013). This is viewed as a way through which the personhood of a person living with dementia might be supported or enhanced (Kitwood and Bredin, 1992; Kitwood, 1997). The wider contribution is that the work provides an understanding of the potential of narrative care, where ‘people make sense of their experiences, and indeed their identity, through the creation and sharing of stories’ (Villar and Serrat, 2017, p 44) to improve the lives of people in later life with dementia.

The Dementia and Imagination project examined how arts enrichment activities might improve the lives of people in later life living with dementia in different settings. The research was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council's Connected Communities Programme and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (reference AH/J011029/1) and was undertaken between 2013 and 2017.