IMAGINED: Investigating Meaning-making and the cocreation of Guidelines for Evaluation IN participatory Arts for Dementia

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BACKGROUNDReceiving a dementia diagnosis may bring about new practical and existential questions for those receiving a diagnosis, as well as for family members and carers. There is a clear need to provide support for these groups living with experiences of dementia and to facilitate spaces of meaning-making and connection. Research exploring the role of participatory arts in supporting people living with dementia (PLWD) shows promise to facilitate meaningful engagements between PLWD, artists, health and social care staff, and family members. However, current evaluation approaches are often criticised as 'reducing down' artistic and relational experiences to linear 'impacts'. Many artists and arts managers seek new evaluation approaches that may support with evidencing the nuances of meaning-making that their work facilitates, helping to demonstrate to funders and stakeholders the significance of their work to the lives and improved wellbeing of PLWD. We therefore ask:1) What are the meaning-making processes of engagement with participatory arts in community and social care (non-clinical) settings for PLWD and their families and carers, and how do these processes connect to health and wellbeing?2) What do arts and charitable organisations delivering arts and dementia programmes feel are the benefits and challenges of current evaluation processes in relation to capturing meaningful aspects of engagement?3) How do professional artists who are embedded within organisational practices cocreate meaning-making processes with PLWD that may support health and wellbeing?4) How can evaluation processes utilised by artists and arts organisations be improved to incorporate 'meaning' to support with articulating their work to stakeholders, thereby optimising future implementation and delivery of programmes?METHODSThe project will involve creating a coproduction/advisory group (CoG) to support with the codesign, development and delivery of the research. The group will work with us on three work streams (WS). WS1 will provide a deeper understanding of the context of participatory arts and dementia evaluation and provide the academic and strategic foundation of the research. It will involve a mapping survey of evaluation processes and a scoping of the literature in participatory arts for dementia in view of meaning-making and the challenges of evaluation. WS2 will involve unpacking the meaning-making processes of participatory arts programmes for PLWD and the role of professional artists in these processes using qualitative, ethnographic, creative and participatory approaches. We will work in partnership with two organisations who deliver participatory arts and dementia programmes: Scottish Ballet (SB) and Music in Hospitals and Care (MiHC). We will carry out empirical data collection across multiple sites where these organisations deliver their work, including care homes in Newcastle and Edinburgh and the SB studios in Glasgow. WS3 will focus on synthesising key findings from WS 1 and 2, alongside input from those with dementia and experts in the field to coproduce a new evaluation framework focused on meaning-making for health. IMPACTThe potential impact of the project is significant. It will provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the meaningful processes of artistic engagement than current evaluation approaches currently provide. This will support with improving our understanding of why the arts may be important to support PLWD, how arts organisations can capture these complex processes, and the role of artists in meaningful arts' experiences. It will be of particular interest to lived experience researchers, artists, arts organisations and charities delivering and evaluating arts and dementia projects and to policymakers wishing to understand better the current gaps in the evaluation landscape and how to articulate the meaning of artistic engagements in view of health outcomes and experiences.