‘Thinking outside the box, and making it too’: Piloting an Occupational Therapy Group at an Open-Air Museum

Abstract

This practice-based paper discusses an approach to an innovative collaborative pilot project between Beamish Museum, The Living Museum of the North, and an Occupational Therapist. The “Men's Group” was developed in response to a growing need in the community for more opportunities for men to engage in activities to help combat isolation and mental and physical health issues. Despite the accumulation of qualitative data which indicated a hugely positive impact upon the well-being of the men who attended, this pilot highlighted deficiencies in previous approaches to evaluate and communicate such findings with others. It has since led to further explorations of more appropriate methodologies and key learning outcomes for both partners involved.

Keywords::

• Occupational Therapist
• cognitive impairment
• health and wellbeing
• Open-Air Museum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Equal Arts – http://www.equalarts.com.

^2. RT Projects – http://www.facebook.com/RTProjects.

^3. CST is a treatment for people with mild to moderate dementia. It is a non-drug intervention to help maintain brain function through regular and routine-based cognitive stimulation in group activity sessions. CST – www.csstdementia.com.

^4. Teepa Snow is a leading OT who specialises in supporting people living with dementia. She has developed the Positive Approach™ to care techniques which has been adopted by OTs around the world – http://www.teepasnow.com.

^5. Allen Cognitive – https://allencognitive.com.

^6. CST (2014) – www.cstdementia.com.

^7. All names of the participants of the Men's Group appearing in this paper are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund [grant number HG-10-00425] and [grant number HG-13-10232] which part funded the Active Ageing Programme.