Podcast – Harmonising Minds Dementia Friendly Music & Arts

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher podcast, talking careers, research, conference highlights, and so much more.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Hello and welcome to the Dementia Researcher podcast. I’m Dr. Robyn Dowlen, and it’s my absolute pleasure to be guest hosting today’s show. In this episode, we’ll be exploring the beautiful intersections where music, arts, and inclusivity meet, and how they transform the experiences of those living with dementia. Joining me are three fantastic guests who’ve been at the forefront of weaving dementia-friendly initiatives into the rich tapestry of the arts. So, we have Holly Marland, who has enriched lives through her commitment to community music projects, Dr. Andy Northcott from the University of West London, bringing us insights from academia on the impact of the arts and opera, and Liv McLennan from Sounds Better Community Interest Company, an innovator known for her work in using music as a bridge to memory and joy.

Together we’ll uncover the stories behind their inspiring projects, from festivals to operas, and discuss how they’re crafting spaces where every note opens doors to accessibility and understanding. And before we get started, just to tell you a little bit about me as well. I’m a researcher at the University of Manchester, and in my work, I look at how we understand and capture the in-the-moment musical experiences of people with dementia. But that’s enough from me. Let’s meet our guests.

So, before we talk about their individual work, let’s get some proper introductions. Holly, can you start us off? Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Holly Marland:

Well, hi there, Robyn. It’s lovely to be here. I am a freelance professional musician and a music for health specialist, and I work in hospitals, care homes, and daycare settings with people of all ages. I’ve been learning and playing the kora, which is a traditional West African harp, and I’ve been playing for about 13 years now, supported by my amazing teacher, Muhamed Saho, who lives in The Gambia. And I started my musical journey on the piano and in the local church choir, and I’ve always written music, and I’ve always felt that I wanted to bridge the performer-audience divide, which I felt was always a culturally imposed thing. So, I love working within different communities to co-create music and to share ideas together.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Thank you, Holly. That sounds wonderful. I’m looking forward to unpicking all of those things with you later in the episode. Andy, can I come to you next?

Dr Andy Northcott:

Yeah, of course you can. So, I’m Dr. Andy Northcott. I hate how long-winded my job title is. I’m a senior lecturer of sociology of medicine at the Geller Institute of Ageing and Medicine at the University of West London. Takes a deep breath. My main research is unrelated to the arts. If anyone googles me, you’ll find lots of stuff about hospitals. For the last almost ten years, I’ve been doing ethnographies of hospital care, and observing people living with dementia during unplanned acute hospital admissions. And my side second job, because that doesn’t take up enough of my time, is trying to make social spaces more accessible for people with dementia. So, that started with about seven years ago looking at making cinemas dementia-friendly, and in the last year I’ve been working on dementia-friendly operas, which I’ll be talking to you about later.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Amazing. And welcome to this wonderful field of arts and dementia. We’re a friendly bunch. Liv, can I ask you to introduce yourself as well?

Liv McLennan:

Thank you, Robyn. Great to be here. So, my name’s Liv McLennan and I’m a musician and community musician, and I’m based in Wiltshire now. I play the cello and the highland bagpipes, but more recently the ukulele has become quite important to me in my work as well, and also in my research. I’m a part-time doctoral researcher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and I also run a community interest company called Sounds Better.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Thank you so much. It’s just wonderful to have such an array of expertise within the virtual room.

Okay. I think it’s time that we heard a bit more about your individual work. So, Andy, if I come to you first, I know opera isn’t your first look into dementia, but I’d love to hear about how that came about. How have you become immersed in this area?

Dr Andy Northcott:

It’s funny, because I’ve been doing ethnographies of hospitals for about ten years, and nobody’s ever really cared. And then I’ve suddenly got into opera, and I’ve had to make all these various media appearances, and just hope nobody ever asks me anything about opera, because I’ve only ever been to two operas, and I produced one of them. I looked into being able to put on a dementia-friendly opera, in that I’m friends with people who run an opera company in Wiltshire, so probably not far from where Liv is, The Music Troupe, with Edward Lambert. And just over dinner, we were talking about him looking for new audiences, and I suggested, “Have you thought about doing dementia-friendly performances?” And from there, and probably a glass of wine too many, this escalated, and before you know it, we were putting on a production.

So, beyond my lack of knowledge of opera, I’m much better on hip-hop and ’80s pop than I am opera. But for me it’s that communal thing. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s opera or if it’s a rock gig or if it’s standup comedy or it’s… It could be reggae or heavy metal or anything. It’s that communal thing of being in a place, sharing, musicians giving you something powerful, visceral that you latch onto, and takes you away from where you are. And also, that thing of just being out of the house.

I have this big thing of [inaudible 00:06:35] to use one in the media, Sir Bobby Charlton died a couple of weeks ago, and all the obituaries talked about how he lived in the shadow of dementia, and this shadow kept coming up. And it’s taking that out of that, that yes, you have that diagnosis of dementia, but that shouldn’t mean that you’re stuck [inaudible 00:06:55] to quote another musician with David Bowie, it shouldn’t be pale blinds drawn all day, nothing to do, nothing to say. You’ve still got years to go, and you’ve got family and friends and people to see, and you should be able to go and see them. And if music was part of your life before, or even if it wasn’t, it should still be that, really up until the point that it really physically can’t be. And so, we did an opera, and I think if you can do an opera, you can do anything.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Thank you so much. And I think it speaks to the real importance of, as you say, not simulating these, but actually giving real opportunities for people with dementia to engage with high quality arts in the real world. So, I’d love to hear a bit more about the process. You said you’ve got this full audience. How was that process for you?

Dr Andy Northcott:

So, the opera, we came up with the basic idea of The Music Troupe had a new opera they were going to premier at the Tête à Tête Festival. It was called The Last Siren. It’s a small contemporary chamber opera based on the Greek myths, Odysseus, and the sirens, willing the ships onto the rocks. And the opera itself, we didn’t change. It was going to be performed the next day, we had the musicians, we had the singers, so it was how do we put this on and make it accessible to people living with dementia? That was the tricky bit. That was when I had to put on my Challenge Anneka hat and start cold-calling venues and seeing what could be done. And we really struggled with… And answered emails, and venues that wanted to help but weren’t quite sure.

And then I stumbled on, by the biggest accident, I emailed the London College of Music, and I hadn’t realised they were actually part of University of West London. And even weirder, I didn’t realise that they had a theatre, and it was next door to my office. Had I ever ventured slightly further down the corridor, like literally three doors down. We had Lawrence Hall, this fantastic… It looks like an old school theatre. We always joke, it looks like it’s where the kids from Fame would hang out. It’s just full of all these young people playing music and being very good-looking and enjoying themselves. And we were like, “So, can we use this space?” And they didn’t ask any questions. They were just like, “Yes, please. How would it work? Can we come in? Everything moves around. What can we do to facilitate this?”

And once we had a venue, it was really quite easy. I mean, I say easy. I’m an academic and it was in a university, so I then had to spent two months going through every health and safety and risk and Prevent procedure you can think of. But beyond the normal university stuff, the actual hosting of the event was okay. In fact, possibly the hardest thing we had was getting an audience. So, we had a venue, we had a production, we had everything in place, but then it’s, how do you communicate to people living with dementia, especially if they’re already feeling cut off, like I discussed before?

I’m worried I’m rambling now, but I’ll keep going. You can’t just stick it on Facebook or Twitter, because not everybody’s online, and people aren’t looking for things, and we timed it just for the moment where the Twitter algorithm fell away and all the people that used to see your tweets stopped seeing your tweets anyway. So, getting the message out was the tricky part, and we had to reach out to lots of organisations and beg for publicity and support. But everybody was really helpful with it, and we managed to put on the production, fill it, sell out all [inaudible 00:10:33] yeah. It was great.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Yeah. I think that’s such a wonderful vision for the world and communities to be more dementia-friendly, so that people can cross those thresholds, as it were, into these spaces, and feel confident that they’re going to be supported when they’re there, no matter what’s going on. And perhaps this is a good point at which to come to you, Holly, in terms of the So Many Beauties festival. I know this is another event that happened within a very established arts venue as well, so I’d love to hear about your process for developing the festival and how it went.

Holly Marland:

I just want to start off by saying that people living with dementia have taught me so much about the joy and potential of being in the present moment, and they’re constantly amazing me with their wit, wisdom, and creativity. So, I set up the So Many Beauties project in 2017 with funding from the Arts Council England to work co-creatively with people living with dementia in their communities of care, to harness this incredible creativity. And so, we work together to compose new music, and we work together to devise large-scale cultural events that counter, as Andy and you have just been talking about, the tragedy narrative. And what we’re doing is showcasing what people living with dementia can do, rather than focusing on what they can’t do any more.

So, we’re currently working on our second large-scale dementia-friendly music festival, which is going to be at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and it’s next September, on Friday the 20th, so everyone gets your diaries out now, put that in. And what we’ve done is we’ve brought together a stakeholder group of 18 cultural organisations and dementia support organisations who are working across Greater Manchester, and we’re going to be working with members of their dementia support groups to devise all the content for this one-day festival. So, this includes working with support groups that are for members of the South Asian and African Caribbean communities, as well as with Manchester’s LGBTQ+ communities.

You’re probably familiar with the work that the Baring Foundation has been doing around increasing representation in the dementia and mental health workforces. And so, during the pandemic I formed a collective of musicians from different ethnic backgrounds who are going to be developing their skills in this co-creative practise, working with people living with dementia. And the So Many Beauties Collective recently featured, we had a brilliant project launch at the Bridgewater Hall, a smaller event, just a half-day event, and the collective accompanied new music that they’d written, and they performed with the Age UK Salford’s brilliant Buddy Club. And we were so pleased to see the audience, who were a complete mix of people living with dementia, we had four different dementia support groups come, we had researchers, we had strategic decision-makers from Manchester City Council, and everyone was just really positive about this intercultural co-created program premiere, no lyric sheets needed. Buddy Club remembered all their new song lyrics and rhythms with no need for prompts. So, this really combated the popular belief that only old familiar songs will do.

So, the festival itself is actually going to be very diverse. We’re taking over the entire Bridgewater Hall, and we’re going to be curating a program of new music, dance, theatre, workshops, discussions, cabaret, intercultural afternoon tea, whatever our wonderful participants decide that they want to see developed or commissioned. So, watch this space.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

That sounds absolutely wonderful, and I’ve made a note in my diary for next year, so that I can hopefully come along. I’m really interested, we hear this word co-creation a lot within this field. What does it look like in practice?

Holly Marland:

So musically speaking, because we’re devising new music, we are using musical improvisation as a starting point for creating new songs and new pieces of music. So, we will probably build from simple songs, and we’ll try and evolve those. We’ll have lyrical development sessions, throwing ideas into the pot, but it’s very much about being in the moment and being spontaneous. We don’t want people to feel hindered. If they say, “I don’t know,” that becomes a song lyric. You’re validating everybody’s responses, and this enables people’s creativity to come tumbling out.

So, musical improvisation, we use small handheld tuned and untuned percussion instruments as the impetus for creating rhythms and melodies. And then we weave this all together into something that is a high-quality piece of public art. In our first project, we actually created an oratorio specifically to challenge this elitist idea of an oratorio and who could write and perform it. And we had an intergenerational choir of age five, I think, to 98, a group of 150 people performing that work. So, co-creativity is often using present moment improvisation to create something that’s much larger scale, that can be presented publicly.

But we’re also doing co-creation around evaluation tools as well. I think there’s a saying, I’m not sure of the exact wording, “Nothing for us without us.” Everything that is being developed for people living with dementia should be developed with people living with dementia, so this co-creation comes into play even with the project inception for this festival, we actually spoke to people living with dementia about what they wanted.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

That’s fantastic. And I think it speaks to some of what Andy was saying as well. We’re looking at involvement and participation in the arts through this lens of citizenship, as it were. It’s creating spaces where people can have their voices heard, and feeling listened to within the process I think is incredibly important in a dementia context, because so many decisions get taken away from people.

So, maybe this is a good point, Liv, to bring you in and your work with people. Could you tell us a bit about Sounds Better as the organisation, and how you’re approaching using creativity and music and arts with people?

Liv McLennan:

Yeah. So, Sounds Better grew out of a collective of freelancers, actually, and we just wanted a bit more control over our work and being able to set up things in our local communities. It’s really important to us to really live and work and be based and to work with the people we live alongside. So, I’m based in Wiltshire, one of my colleagues is based in London, and we have projects in our communities. So, our work with people with dementia is focused on Wiltshire. And one of the challenges that we really face in Wiltshire is that it’s a very rural county, and there are so many issues around that. There’s transport, there’s isolation, all of these things that aren’t easily rectified. Bigger cities obviously have their own issues too, but the challenge of rural living.

Our dementia work is based in a little village called Downton, and it has echoes of what both Holly and Andy were saying, is that we work alongside and with people, and very much try and shape the group as to what they want to do. Music is at its core, and it started off as a pure music project, one where we sang songs that were familiar, did pieces of music that were familiar, but also wrote our own based on our own experiences of life and our memories. So, we’ve got more than an album’s worth that I’d love to get recording. But at the moment we are working towards a mini performance. It’s very much on a very small scale, nothing compared to Holly’s amazing festivals, but we are going to be part of a Christmas tree festival in Salisbury, which is really exciting for me. We’re writing our own Christmas carol. But because our group also works with people with other health conditions, we’re bringing them together, they are writing parts of the Christmas carol together, we’re going to have a practise, and then we’ll perform together as well. So, we’re connecting people across different health conditions, different communities as well.

So, we see [inaudible 00:19:42] our music and our music-making, and it’s all participatory, and I suppose co-creative. I do shy away from that term a little bit, but we work with people. That’s the bridge, really. The music is the bridge to bring people to together, and it’s so lovely to hear about the intergenerational work and the opera work as well, and just see how so many different forms of music and musicking in different styles can just bring people together. So, in essence it’s music with people and music to bridge any divides that might be there.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

That sounds really wonderful, and it sparked this question in my mind. We’ve been talking about dementia-friendly initiatives, whereas some of the language that you’re all using comes down to this dementia-inclusive, so it’s beyond the dementia-friendly, it seems, the work that you’re doing. So, in terms of that rural context, could you tell me a bit more about how you develop those sense of connection through music, when people are not next door to each other, say, in terms of physical location?

Liv McLennan:

Good question. It’s around experience, I think, and life experience. And what you find when you get people in a room together, no matter where they’re from or where they live, there’s always a commonality, and that’s obviously our humanness, but we have experiences that we can draw on that are probably similar to someone sat next to us, whether that’s travel or whether that’s having a family, or throughout the life course there are things that connect us. So, it’s really trying to draw on those, and draw on our togetherness, our humanness, our connections, and using that as the basis to then take that forward to a group song or piece of music or production, whatever that looks like, whatever the group decides. So, we’re going from individuals to a group, really using that sense of relationship and relational music-making too, to bring people together.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

That’s really fantastic. I love the different ways in which people can connect without words as well in those situations, music can provide opportunities for that self-expression. So just picking up on that, and maybe it’s something that you’re thinking about more widely in your role outside of the CIC, I’d love to hear more about how what you’ve learned doing the practical, on-the-grounds, grassroots music-making with people with dementia has impacted on you in your research, when you put your research hat on.

Liv McLennan:

Yes. So, my own research is intergenerational music-making in care homes. [inaudible 00:22:28] as we know, a huge proportion of people in care homes live with a dementia. So, in terms of the impact on research, I think the way I see it is that it has to be meaningful for the people taking part, the subjects I suppose [inaudible 00:22:49] practise research, so actually I take everything from my practise, and it becomes my research when I’m in that kind of project context anyway. So, it is things like ensuring that everyone understands what we’re doing, that everyone can participate to a level that they are comfortable with, if they choose to and if they want to. The ability to say no and withdraw. Absolutely fine with that. So, all those underpinning values that I have as a practitioner, I take into my research as well.

And I think one of the things that I find interesting when people talk about doing the ethics form and that kind of thing, for me that’s absolutely common sense, and I have to put it in slightly different language in my ethics form, but I’m like, well, this is what I do every day, and it always surprises me when people aren’t working in that way, in that inclusive, in that mindful way about other people. So, it’s that taking those values, those underpinning values of social justice and inclusion, and really being intrigued about other people, and then transferring that exactly into my research.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Absolutely fascinating, and resonates a lot with, I’m sure, both Holly and Andy as well, in terms of the work that they’ve been doing. I’m really interested just as a broad question, and I can come to you each in turn about this, but obviously we’ve talked about the process of it happening, but I’m just interested to know, what was your biggest takeaway at this moment in time from a recent project or something like that? Something that’s just stood out to you in terms of the impacts that this work can have on people with dementia. So, maybe Holly, if I come to you first.

Holly Marland:

Crikey. I’ve got a takeaway bag the size of the moon, but I think it was people’s responses to hearing different types of music. When I worked with members of the collective, we took wonderful Egyptian musician Mina Salama, brought all his incredible ouds and ney flutes and all these sounds that people might’ve heard on film soundtracks, but they’d never actually experienced close to. And to see the delight and intrigue of predominantly white British group that we were working with, in hearing sounds from other cultures, and the gospel music, the Turkish song, and just how that sparked conversations around intercultural collaboration. And I think that’s something that our world needs so much at the moment. So, this open dialogue, as you were saying, Liv, this interest and appreciation for each other’s cultural differences, as well as our human similarities. So, I think for me, seeing an audience that was quite ethnically diverse itself respond so positively to something new and intercultural, and having conversations, was really what was fantastic from our September launch.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Wow. That’s amazing, and really speaks to how we define community in this day and age, when we have so many different people, different voices who can be part of these conversations and creative activities. How about you, Andy? What’s your biggest thing that you’ve taken away in terms of the impacts?

Dr Andy Northcott:

The key takeaway you always take away is kind of what you just said, it’s when you witness the power that music has on an audience, and an audience living with dementia is no different to any other audience. They’re taken to another place while that’s happening. I think the biggest takeaway I’ve had from putting on events is getting over… So, we talk about making things dementia-friendly, and you have all these things around risk and things, and you have to go through all of this, so we’re going to have a quiet space over here, we’re going to signpost the toilets, we want to make sure this, this, this happens, and if this happens, we can do it.

And all these things are necessary in a way, but in all my time of doing dementia-friendly opera, and I did dementia-friendly cinema in Cardiff for years before that. I’ve never used any of them. Once the event starts, people are taken with the event, with the music, with the spectacle. And when an opera is going, it’s very hard not to be taken in. It’s this incredibly loud, powerful thing. It’s very visceral to be part of. And all of our feedback said that this was something new, people hadn’t heard this before, but it didn’t matter. It took them to a new place. But then when everyone’s left, you have all the people from the venue, all the people that you’ve given the swift dementia-friendly training and the volunteers [inaudible 00:27:23] and they’re all thinking, “Well, I didn’t need to be here.” [inaudible 00:27:26] Well, you did need to be here, but you were a safety net that we never really needed. And that says something about, why aren’t more events dementia accessible? Because when we make these things dementia accessible, we don’t really use any of the dementia accessible stuff anyway. It’s just there just in case.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Yeah. That’s really interesting and will tie a bit into a question that I’ve got to round us off in a few minutes. But Liv, I was just wondering if you had any key takeaways from this type of way of working.

Liv McLennan:

I think because my work is participatory rather than focused on a performance, we don’t have an audience in the same way, although we’re all performers and all audience, and there’s all underlying theories around that. I just made a little note for myself there, but we have different ways of knowing as people, and we have different ways of being as well. And I think the way my work or any music-related work in dementia enables those different ways of knowing and different ways of being to really come to the fore. And because it’s relational as well, people can relate to others in a different way. And also, it can help reconnect people.

So, if we have a person living with dementia and their care partners or care team, things can get quite tough, and it’s a way of reconnecting them to get to their essence, and to see people in either a different way or to be reminded of the person that they fell in love with or that they grew up with, whatever that relationship is. And that is so powerful, and it can help to give people the resilience and the strength to carry on another week in a caring role, for example, because that can be quite tough. So, just that way of connecting, and a different way of being with someone else, is so important, particularly with the challenges that dementia can bring as well.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Absolutely. And I think between the three of you, you have such a wealth of, I guess it’s embodied expertise, in terms of how you’re working with these people, but also the practical skills, knowledge, experience to be able to facilitate things like this. So, I know in the broader dementia landscape there are more and more initiatives that are looking to become dementia-friendly, dementia-inclusive. So, I guess one of my questions too is to flip it on its head, and maybe Andy this is something you might want to jump in on in terms of accessibility in the first instance, is what makes an arts venue, place, space, dementia-friendly, for this work to happen in? What needs to be put in place to allow for the successes that you’ve observed?

Dr Andy Northcott:

Most places are accessible and wheelchair accessible and everything else. I think an issue we have with venues is the assumption that a person living with dementia is living in a care home, is not able to move around independently, and it forgets all those stages from diagnosis through to… There is a group of people living with dementia, with advanced dementia, that perhaps it would be a challenge to move into a venue because of mobility issues, but that’s a very small section of late-stage people living with dementia, and it’s everyone else in between.

And a lot of them, it’s not as if people are coming on their own. Most people coming to events are coming with somebody. We did have people come to the opera on their own, which is brilliant. People with early stage from a diagnosis, came on their own, got themselves to the venue, came on the tube, on the bus, because dementia is such a wide spectrum of people. But you had other people that did need help, and our biggest issue is parking. You go through all of these things for dementia-friendly, and the thing it comes down to is parking close to the venue and being able to help people out of cars. And that’s not to belittle the idea of making… We should do everything we can to make things more dementia-friendly, dementia [inaudible 00:31:25] and the more we can do to do that, to promote it and everything else.

But the reality of it is, any building can be dementia friendly. It just has to be willing to promote it, and hopefully get to a point where we don’t have to promote it, and just a cinema is both a dementia-friendly cinema and a cinema, a gig venue is dementia-friendly, and we shouldn’t have to put a special thing if this is an accessible performance. It should just be accepted that it’s a performance, and some people there might have dementia. But until we get there, it’s what we need. But with my research, we’re going to keep… We’ve got another event coming up in February, which we’re going to do, not at University of West London, at a separate venue. Hopefully we have the same things, we’ll put all the dementia-friendly things in place to make it safe and to manage risk. Again, hopefully we won’t need them, and then we can come up with some sort of blueprint, which will help venues to be able to do this and to promote it further. And it doesn’t have to be opera, it could be anything.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

I think that’s fantastic. And I think you’ve highlighted such an important point in terms of the assumptions of others are often the biggest barriers, in terms of [inaudible 00:32:31] someone can or can’t access something. I mean, in my own research work, it tends to be things like automatic taps and things like that, the things that people pick up on when they’re auditing a space like this. And so, it’s actually the performance itself being as inclusive as possible, and then just putting stuff around it to make it…

Dr Andy Northcott:

Yeah. And there’s parts… I know in my other research, with my hospital hat on, there’s a big thing to make hospitals dementia friendly. There was this big thing to paint toilet doors yellow. And I was thinking, unless toilet doors are yellow at their house, why would yellow mean toilets? So, sometimes we push things too far and forget that a toilet’s a toilet, and the toilet at the venue, as long as there’s a sign [inaudible 00:33:13] anyway, I’m wittering now. I’ll let you move on to everyone else.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Not at all. Holly or Liv, do you have any thoughts on that?

Holly Marland:

It’s really interesting to hear Andy’s experience, and obviously recognising that if we’ve met one person living with dementia, we’ve met one person living with dementia. I think what we tried to do with the way we ran the festival was to curate the experience, so that it wasn’t an overload from the get-go. So, as soon as people arrived, we thought about how to make the space tranquil, and able to orientate yourself in the space by having live harp music, just to settle people down. We curated the flow of the festival so that people weren’t over-faced with choice, but yet there were choices. It felt like a festival, it was quite chaotic and lively and loud, but we built the whole scope of the day so that we curated the events so that there were quiet times, there were quiet rooms, which Andy has mentioned already.

I think one of the most important things, I don’t know if you can see it, we had these yellow happy to help badges. And I think most of making things dementia-friendly comes down to people’s awareness of what dementia actually is, and the fact that it’s an umbrella term for over 100 different diseases of the brain. And I think it is helpful for people to know that people’s visuals can be impaired through certain types of dementia, so they might see something on the floor, if the carpet’s got some dark flooring, they may see it as a hole. So, just to have people on hand who are aware of these things, who can guide people and help them on a human level.

I think Andy’s quite right. Signposting with yellow signs and all this kind of stuff is all very well and good, but what it comes down to is people guiding and making people feel comfortable in the space, which is what we were very careful to do. And we did work with the Bridgewater Hall’s venue staff. We created a package that was drawing from some of the Alzheimer’s dementia-friendly awareness sessions, but we also made it music specific. How can you help somebody? Don’t tower over them, consider bringing yourself to eye level with somebody, especially if they’re in a wheelchair, to talk to them rather than towering over them. Just these tiny little details of human interrelation can make a massive impact on whether an event is inclusive or not.

Dr Andy Northcott:

You put that much better than me, Holly. Thank you.

Holly Marland:

Not at all. I just paraphrased you wildly.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Thank you so much. Liv, did you have any thoughts on this?

Liv McLennan:

I do fully agree with Holly and Andy, and it is just the ways of being a venue staff really, because a building is a building, and there are little things you can do [inaudible 00:36:02] lighting or having it in a particular time of day that might be more useful. But actually, it is the people and how they support other people, regardless of a diagnosis or not, and accepting people for who they are when they walk in, and not trying to put expectations, behavior or otherwise, onto those people. I think that’s a way to be dementia-friendly, is to accept that people with dementia, they behave as all humans do. We all behave differently, and accept that, and that’s okay. We can be ourselves in the space, a welcoming, inclusive space.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Absolutely. So well said. And honestly, I could talk about this for a lot longer than we have available to us today, but I just have one final question about the kind of… So, many of our listeners will be early career researchers, or perhaps practise-based researchers like yourself, Liv, and they’ll be wanting to organise events like this or work with communities. So, I just really wanted to pick your brains, maybe a one or two-sentence answer, about what your hopes are for research or practise in this space going forwards. Holly, maybe I’ll start with you.

Holly Marland:

I would be really keen for researchers to address the current underrepresentation of people from different ethnic communities in the research story. And I think the most important way is not to make assumptions. We’ve talked about assumptions before. I think to go out and see good practise, go, and talk to organisations like Touchstone in Leeds, who are really paving the way for fantastic provision for their BME communities. Go out and observe and listen to, before you make any decisions on what your research questions are going to be, and really try and listen to and understand people who come from different cultural backgrounds.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

So important. Thank you, Holly. And Liv?

Liv McLennan:

Good question. I think for me as a community musician practise researcher, it would be about how community music works in this space. So, we have a lot of what are the outcomes, what are the benefits, yada, yada, yada. What actually happens? We’re not articulating that in research. And it’s not about, it’s this welcome song and that goodbye song. What are those processes? What actually happens? What underpins our sessions with people with dementia? So, I’m very intrigued about that. What happens in rooms to get to these outcomes, benefits? So, if anyone else wants to help me take on that mantle, let’s chat.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Yeah. That’s absolutely music to my ears, Liv. Andy, what would you say about this?

Dr Andy Northcott:

I mean, if I was speaking directly to early career researchers, if you’ve got an idea for an event, my advice would go out there and do it. Go and speak to the local theatre, the local cinema, or local bar. Go and speak to local groups of people living with dementia and put on the event. Just go and do it. This is your chances to almost do something outside of the boundaries and rigors of academia. You don’t need peer review for this. You don’t need to apply for funding that you know, even though your idea is brilliant, only 10% of people are going to get that. And all of those irritants [inaudible 00:39:32] early career academia. You don’t need your supervisor’s permission. You just need to think of what you want to do, and then go out there and set it up. And it might be something that you want to do that you think other people will enjoy, and then just be ready that they might not enjoy it, or it might be something that you want to co-produce with people living with dementia, and you can go and speak to them.

And then all those things that we talk about as being really difficult, of building up networks of diverse people living with dementia, you’ll have found a shortcut to do it, because you’ve had an audience, you’ve spoken to them, you know what they like. It will not only help you, and it will help people living with dementia, but it will help your research, it’ll help your networks, it helps everybody. So, go out and do it. Do an event. Everyone should do it.

Dr Robyn Dowlen:

Well, hopefully we’ve had some people very inspired by what’s been said during this episode, and we’ll have some more events popping up, cropping up in the future. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for them myself. I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today. I really enjoyed today’s discussion, and if you want to find out more, you can have a look at the Dementia Researcher website, where you’ll find a full transcript and biographies of all our guests, blogs, and much more on the topic. So, I’d just like to extend my thanks to our incredible guests today, Liv McLennan, Holly Marland, and Andy Northcott. And I’m Robyn Dowlen, and you’ve been listening to the Dementia Researcher podcast.

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The Dementia Researcher podcast was brought to you by University College London, with generous funding from the UK National Institute for Health Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Association, and Race Against Dementia. Please subscribe, leave us a review, and register on our website for full access to all our great resources, dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.

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