Bloomsbury Festival in a Box: engaging socially isolated people with dementia

The Bloomsbury Festival is an established annual event dedicated to celebrating the cultural, intellectual and social wealth of Bloomsbury and its diverse communities. A registered charity, the festival supports community projects year-round that inspire positive change in people's lives through the creation of beautiful art. Via the AHRC-funded Bloomsbury Festival Cultural Engagement Project hosted by the School of Advanced Study, University of London (Feb-May 2013), in 2013 the Festival has drawn upon the interdisciplinary humanities research expertise in the School of Advanced Study to develop and refine its cultural engagement programme. Specifically, it has sought to find a means of both extending and critically interrogating the impact of its work with hard-to-reach and vulnerable social groups in the Bloomsbury and broader Camden areas. Identifying older people with dementia as a core population capable of multi-sensory cultural engagement, but typically unable to participate in the Festival's outreach programme, an early outcome of this project has been the establishment of a reciprocal relationship with Age UK Camden's Dementia Befriending Service, which supports people living with dementia in Camden.

Working closely with this service, and drawing upon the expertise of Dr Claudia Cooper--honorary consultant old age psychiatrist to the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust--the 'Bloomsbury Festival in a Box' project will between August and October 2013 develop, trial, and analyse a peripatetic 'Festival in a Box' outreach project that takes boxes of materials associated with the Festival out to people unable to leave their homes to take part in cultural life. As well as being therapeutic devices, these boxes will form innovative research vessels that will gather qualitative data on the value of cultural participation among older people with dementia in Camden. Carefully designed to include a range of sensory and cultural materials that will prompt narrative responses and recollections from service users, the Bloomsbury Festival boxes will engender social stimulation as well as interests in new activities, ideas and experiences among those living with dementia. The project will therefore benefit not only the individuals directly involved, but the broader research community.

The Bloomsbury Festival in a Box will offer service users a unique opportunity to participate in a cultural event from which they would normally be excluded, and will in turn raise awareness of those living with dementia via a highly respected cultural forum. Moreover, it will offer those living with dementia an opportunity to share their knowledge and stories of the area, providing history and insight into Bloomsbury and the surrounding locale. As some service users have lived in the area for many years, participation in the outreach programme will not only be an opportunity for them to actively re-engage with community life, but also to participate in re-narrating the history of Bloomsbury itself. Over the course of weekly visits to the homes of service users, these boxes will become miniature 'archives of engagement', gathering rich and unusual data over the course of the outreach experience.

A high level of interest in the proposed research project is anticipated, both within the area and on a national scale. Reflecting this, the final results of the project will be disseminated via a website and an academic publication, and via a one day event that will bring together practitioners and researchers in fields of gerontology and arts and health for a knowledge exchange opportunity intended to further the sharing of expertise and research methodologies in this field.

'Bloomsbury Festival in a Box: engaging socially isolated people with dementia' will have significant impact upon a number of fronts. Firstly, the research will seek to directly enhance the quality of life of older people living in isolation within Bloomsbury. Older residents taking part in the study will be offered a unique opportunity to engage with a cultural event (the Bloomsbury Festival) from which they have previously been excluded. Furthermore, by developing the collaborative relationships between academic, cultural, and community outreach organisations in the Bloomsbury area forged by the AHRC-funded Bloomsbury Festival Cultural Engagement Project, the research will also present an opportunity to strengthen the support network available to older people in Camden in a broader sense.
Researchers and staff working on the project will benefit from working closely with older people in Camden, furthering academic skills in non-academic environments. Furthermore, the nature of the project's initial outcomes: in the form of a launch exhibition and debate, followed by academic publications and a knowledge share event, will benefit the broader academic community in the fields of social healthcare, gerontology, and arts and health.

The dissemination of the first phase of the project via a high profile cultural event (the Bloomsbury Festival) will benefit the local community and the general public by raising awareness and encouraging debate around issues of ageing, dementia, and social isolation in contemporary Britain. This event will in itself work to explore the value of cultural activity in challenging stigma and prejudice in these areas. Both the Bloomsbury Festival and Age UK Camden will thus benefit from the project not only by being able to use the data gathered to more accurately refine their services and community engagement activities in the Camden area, but by raising awareness of their broader programme of outreach activities. Age UK Camden, particularly, will benefit from raising awareness of its volunteer 'Dementia Befriending Service'.

In the longer term, the research will influence further innovations in community outreach and engagement, and is designed to help influence policy decisions concerning social outreach and care for the elderly. Success factors taken from the research will lay grounding for the development of further innovations within the field, and may form a reference for training those working with socially isolated older people.