Main description:

This book explores how theatre and performance can change the way we think about dementia and some of the environments in which dementia care takes place. Drawing on the author's creative practice and other performance projects in the UK, it explores some of the challenges and opportunities of making performance in care homes. Rather than focusing on the transformative potential of the arts, it asks how artists can engage with the different types of relationships that exist in a care community. These include the relationships that residents and staff have with each other as well as relationships with care spaces. Exploring the intersection between participatory performance and the everyday creativity of a care home, it argues that the arts have a cultural role to play in supporting dementia care as a relational practice. Moreover, it celebrates the intrinsic creativity of caregiving and how principles and practices of care work can inform theatre and performance in diverse ways.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Performance, Creativity and Care.- Part I. A Cultural Response.- 2. A Cultural Response to Dementia: Moving Beyond the Wellbeing Agenda.- 3. Performative Responses and Dementia-Friendly Theatre.- 4. A Relational Approach to Dementia Care.- Part II. Performance and the Care Environment.- 5.'A Poetics of Sound': Towards an Aural Re-imagining of a Care Home Dining Room.- 6. Negotiating Space through Taste.- 7. Taking Care: A Methodology for Collaboration.- 8. A Caring Effect.- 9. Conclusion.