A reflection on the process that led to the development of dementia friendly theatre performances at Leeds Playhouse (formerly West Yorkshire Playhouse) including the vital involvement of people living with dementia as creative consultants. This article outlines the inspiration behind such performances, the steps required to make the necessary…

Over the past decade or so, developments in language comprehension research in the domain of cognitive aging have converged on support for resilience in older adults with regard to situation model updating when reading texts. Several studies have shown that even though age-related declines in language comprehension appear at the level of the…

The perspective of people with dementia, particularly late-stage dementia, is often excluded from research, even from methods like Participatory Action Research (PAR), which aim to democratise research. This research note outlines how a PAR project engaged with the perspective of people with late-stage dementia in a residential aged care facility.…

The number of people aged 60 and over across the globe is expected to double by 2050, reaching a share of more than 20 percent of the population total. Governments are therefore taking more and more policy actions to encourage ageing workers to extend their working lives and their employers to retain them. According to the OECD lifelong learning…

'Dis-identifications from dominant models of subject-formation can be productive and creative' (Braidotti 2013, 167). This problematises applied theatre practices informed by received understandings of dementia, and their implications for memory and identity. "Forgotten Futures"(2017) and "Never-Ending Story" (2016-ongoing)…

Equating of psychometric scales and tests is frequently required and conducted in educational, behavioral, and clinical research. Construct comparability or equivalence between measuring instruments is a necessary condition for making decisions about linking and equating resulting scores. This article is concerned with a widely applicable method…

This chapter focuses on the learning that happens in an intergenerational music and arts intervention with pre-verbal children and elderly people with dementia. It draws on qualitative work using a posthumanist framework of observations exploring the embodied engagement of children and elderly people with instruments, space and each other and the…

Community engagement provides kinesiology undergraduate students with valuable experience and allows for personal and professional growth. Kinesiology students often seek out opportunities that pertain to their future career goals. As many of them aspire to allied health professions, working with special populations is of interest, including…

Thailand is ageing rapidly, and it has taken about two decades to transform from an ageing society to an aged society. This chapter explores the socio-economic critical issues related to policies and measures for the well-being of the Thai older adults under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the upcoming development of the UN…

This article considers the type of attention that is particular to creative partnerships between performance practitioners and care homes. Drawing on the author's practice, and the work of Manchester-based company "Small Things", it advocates for 'slower collaborations' which take account of the individual qualities of a care community.…

The guiding principles of the education of older adults have been stated in three landmark publications. In their statements of principles, the authors of those publications affiliated themselves with one of two older-adult learning philosophies: a humanist or a critical one. Thirty years since the first statement, the field of educational…

This article considers how intergenerational arts can help support the resilience of people living with dementia. Theorising a moment of process from Magic Me's "Reflections of Stepney," it analyses how art facilitators help a child and care home resident to overcome the challenge of relating and create a performance together. It…

This paper aims at connecting Self-Determination Theory (SDT) with research on moral identity. It is argued that SDT provides a unique and integrative framework for addressing important questions that have guided research on moral identity for many years: What is a moral identity? How is it linked to moral action? How do moral identities develop?…

"Dementia's Journey" explores the year-long process of a playwright working with a charity and its partners in writing a play focussing on experiences of dementia in a South Asian community, and how the need to tell an emotionally engaging and resonant story is balanced with the requirement to raise awareness of the issues involved. It…

In this keynote presentation given at the 2016 Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference, I considered the field of gerontology from a transdisciplinary perspective. Juxtaposing personal narratives with dominant and alternative discourses on issues of aging, later life, and old age, I explored such questions as: Given the multifaceted,…