Offering a refreshed perspective to support people living with dementia through dance and creative arts.

Hello and welcome for popping by today. This week is Dementia awareness week, a very important week. I’m sure if you’re reading this, you will have been impacted in some way by knowing someone affected by dementia. So with this, I really want to reintroduce a research paper I contributed to on Dance and Dementia, looking at the impact of a project I delivered on those accessing dance through a local dementia day centre service.  It really seems like there’s no better time than now, especially as Dancemind shifts into reintroducing more dance and dementia classes into their programme of work, already delivering 2 weekly classes in care homes…and hopefully into the community soon (watch this space).

 The articles

So let’s unearth and celebrate this fantastic work sitting in the depths of my archives, where you can read the UNESCO article here written alongside Dr Richard Coaten and Naaama Spitzer, and also an evaluation of an Alzheimer’s Society dance project here. Two wonderful humbling dance and dementia projects I had the privilege of delivering.

Before you go…

But before you grab a cuppa and delve in, especially for those of you who may not have time to delve in (wink face) – I wanted to say, there are vast amounts of leverage in developing contemporary community-based arts and health.  This work offers new perspectives to support advancing understanding of process, product and context in relation to people living with dementia and those who care for them. This is of such great importance. This work represents a growing national and international interest in raising awareness of the benefits of movement, dance and other inexpensive, non-pharmacological arts-based approaches, in working with and caring for, older people including those living with dementia and their carers.

Psst, the bottom line is, creativity and dance for those living with dementia are positive.

Happy reading folks

Tina