How participatory arts can contribute to Dutch older adults’ wellbeing – revisiting a taxonomy of arts interventions for people with dementia

Figures & data

Table 1. Principles dimension, Cousins et al. (2020).

Principle description	Principle summary
Involvement: Arts interventions involve a range of participants, are welcoming, mutual, and equalizing, and include limitless activities that can embed the arts into everyday life.	The arts can include and welcome people.
Connection: Arts interventions can facilitate connection to the self and others through bonding, morale, and reminiscence, enabling social interaction and relationship building.	The arts can enable social interaction.
Expression: Arts interventions allow participants to share and frame their emotions, sometimes without language, generating enjoyment, discussion, or challenge to make meaning.	The arts can help people share and process their emotions.
Transformation: Arts interventions might transform participants using creativity, imagination, and flow – transporting them to a different time, emotional space, or into the moment	The arts can transform people and change how they feel.
Engagement: Arts interventions engage and stimulate, possibly using improvisation or play, and give participants an opportunity to take part in a live activity.	The arts can be lively and fun.
Possibility: Arts interventions can allow failure-free achievement and the use or development of skills, encouraging curiosity in different places, and providing a focus on enrichment and potential	The arts can give people new experiences.
Selfhood: Arts interventions can generate purpose and feelings of independence, identity, and empowerment, while being personalized and accessible to individual needs and choices.	The arts can create a sense of identity.
Humanity: Arts interventions can offer respite by validating, regulating, or stabilizing mood, and enabling a process of trust, relaxation, and hope.	The arts can be relaxing and supportive.

Table 2. Description of the included art initiatives and participants.

Art-form	Description of art activities and participants
Dance	Dance lessons and events in communities and care facilities; older adults ranged from independent of care, to various stages of dementia and physical frailty (age: 60–100 years; n = 150 in total organization; n = 5–20 in group lessons) Dance labs working towards performances for older adults in care facilities; older adults were both dependent and independent of care (age: 60–99 years; n = 20–25)
Choir singing	Choir with residents of an elderly care facility working towards a performance; older adults ranged from independent of care to various stages of dementia (age: 50–104 years; n = 45)
Visual art	Weekly walk-in intergenerational studio in the community; older adults suffered from various psychosocial issues: psychological trauma, loneliness, discrimination (age: 50–90; n = 10) Weekly walk-in intergenerational meetings focusing on drawing; older adults suffered from a range of psychosocial problems: drug addiction, loneliness, burn-out, depression (age: 50–99; n = 15–20)

Figure 1. Older singer with dementia and her buddy singer, rehearsing in a chapel.

Potographer: Zan van Alderwegen

Figure 2. Older dancer during a dance workshop inside a museum.

Photographer: Lambert de Jong

Figure 3. Art studio located in a church.

Photographer: Janine Schrijver

Cousins, E., Tischler, V., Garabedian, C., & Dening, T. (2020). A taxonomy of arts interventions for people with dementia. The Gerontologist, 60(1), 124–134 doi:10.1093/geront/gnz024.

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