DEMENTIA AND THE ARTS:

SHARING PRACTICE, DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING

AND ENHANCING LIVES

WEEK 2 How can moments be understood, experienced and measured?

STEP 2.2 Why does a moment matter and how can it be defined?

TRANSCRIPT

We're interested in the moment because all of our lives are made up of moments. And
some of those moments are wonderful and exciting. Others are mundane, and others can
be painful and disappointing. And for not only the general population, but people with
dementia also have these same moments. If we can understand, better understand the
experiences that people with dementia have in moments in their day-to-day lives, in
particular our interest in their experiences with the arts and with cultural activities, I think
we'll understand their lived experiences more and will be able to offer them, as
researchers and as practitioners, different types of services that more meet their needs.

For people with dementia or their carers, to only rely on memory can cause a great deal
of tension and conflict where the family member is desperately hoping that the person
with dementia remembers something, and the person with dementia is beginning to feel
quite badly about themselves and really challenging their own identity because they can't
remember certain things. And in the moment experiences allows them to stay focused in
a particular moment in time rather than having to recall memories where they might have
more difficulty and struggle with, or to be focused on just reminiscence, which many arts
and dementia programmes are.

Whereas in the moment allows a person to participate fully in that moment, emotionally
and cognitively, as they're learning and also discovering something about themselves. I
think arts-based activities lend themselves particularly well to in-the-moment experiences
because they do not necessarily rely on memory or previous knowledge. Now, that's

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certainly not to say that learning how to play an instrument or learning how to paint, for
example, does not require many, many years of practise. But putting that aside, people
can still experience many art forms without having had previous learning. Or perhaps the
last time they've had that is in primary school.

And in particular, many people that we've worked with now-- there's been several
hundred-- are consistently saying many things that they're surprised by being engaged
with art activities that they hadn't thought they had any ability or skill to be involved with.
And we're hearing reports from their caregivers that they've begun talking about these
activities after sessions are over, which is something that hasn't happened for many of
them before. The different ways we have been researching moments vary. One is to look
at different time frames. And we've been looking at a 60 to 90-minute time frame which
occurs in many art activities. And in those time frames, we've done some-- look at
measures before and after that event.

But we're also very interested in micro-moments, those moments that occur before one
song is sung and the other one has just ended; those moments where someone is
handling a museum object and they've passed it to the person next to them, or those
moments where someone has picked up a drum and is starting to be in tune with the
rhythm for the first time in a group singing session. We're trying to understand what's
happening during those experiences for people with a dementia.

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