Dr Hannah Zeilig, Senior Research Fellow, Arts & Dementia, UAL

1. The role and value
of the arts for people
living with dementia

2. Dr Hannah Zeilig
John Killick
Dr Chris Fox

3. • Dementia?
• What are the arts and what is value?
• Themes from the literature review
• Concluding thoughts

6. What are the arts?
What is value?

7. “Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in
the same feelings, and indispensible for the life and progress
towards the well-being of individuals and of humanity.”
Leo Tolstoy

9. Participative arts for people with dementia

10. Music for thought Verd-de-gris
Visual to vocal Elderflowers

11. Literature review
- case studies to large scale
RCTs
- quality of life
- wellbeing
- cognition
- emotion and mood
- activity level
- behavioural change
- episodic memory
- long-term memory
- verbal fluency

12. Song, music, dance, poetry, writing, visual art and
drama have all positively contributed to dementia care.

13. Major themes:
Arts enjoyable, new learning, help social isolation, positive
impact on cognition, arts as a place of contact, stable
aesthetic judgments

14. Community-based arts
• Literary arts have a positive
social impact
• Live music improves mental
wellbeing
• Singing and viewing and
discussing visual art increases
sustained attention
• Singing and dance can reduce
challenging behaviour in people
with severe dementia

15. “Music connects us and makes
us all equal, essentially.”

16. www.markmaking.arts.ac.uk
h.zeilig@fashion.arts.ac.uk