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Taking Care: A Methodology for Collaboration

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Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between an artist’s creative practice, and the creativity of people with dementia. Using concepts of domestic creativity and cultural improvisation, it explores some of the ways in which creativity occurs as part of everyday life in a care home. It argues that seemingly mundane activities such as sleeping and watching television can be seen as creative acts, which are associated with homemaking, and negotiating new social situations. Rather than thinking of arts practices in care homes in terms of their transformative potential, it considers collaboration as two sets of creative practice meeting in the middle. It considers some ways that artists can engage with the everyday creativity of a care homes, and how concepts of care are fundamental to this collaboration.

Keywords

  • Collaboration
  • Everyday creativity
  • Attunement
  • Attention
  • Slowing down

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, Oldham Coliseum Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, and Royal Exchange Manchester.

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Hatton, N. (2021). Taking Care: A Methodology for Collaboration. In: Performance and Dementia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51077-0_7

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