Image: drawings from an IMAGINED workshop at St Columba’s Hospice Care during a music and dance activity.
It’s Creativity & Wellbeing Week and charity Music in Hospitals & Care is celebrating the work they’ve been doing with the Edinburgh Centre for Research Experience of Dementia (ECRED) at the University of Edinburgh on the IMAGINED project. It explores ‘meaning-making’ and how people living with dementia engage with arts activities such as music and dance, and how meaningful arts activities may link to social and mental wellbeing.
Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council, the two-year project brings together partners including the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of Florida, Queen Margaret University, St Columba’s Hospice Care and Scottish Ballet. It has included workshops in Edinburgh, bringing together researchers, artists, partners and people living with dementia, alongside a review of current evaluation practices and ethnographic research into arts provision for older people living with dementia.
Research informing the project builds on existing evidence that live music in care settings can reduce agitation and anti-social behaviour for people living with dementia, while improving wellbeing for families.
Dr Olivia Turner, Deputy Director of ECRED explains:
“We have been delighted to work in partnership with participatory arts organisations Music in Hospitals & Care and Scottish Ballet. This project focuses on how to evaluate meaning-making and wellbeing in community and social care settings. IMAGINED’s findings are informing policymakers’ and practitioners' understandings of how participatory arts and people living with dementia are valued and evaluated.”
One participant who attended an activity in a social care setting delivered by Music in Hospitals & Care adds:
“It’s connected me with others, I’m less lonely. In the music, I enjoyed being together.”
Set against ongoing pressures in health and social care, IMAGINED is working to develop more equitable and sustainable approaches to wellbeing through the arts. Its findings will inform future evaluation guidelines for arts and dementia programmes across the UK.
The co-production group aim to create an inclusive, creative environment, bringing people together to share learning, build connections, challenge traditional research power structures, and foster both critical and creative collaboration.