Co-production: Myth, Fact or Aspiration

Deepness is a not-for-profit organisation run by people living with dementia and cognitive impairment. So far, The Ideas Fund has enabled Deepness to work with partners across the Western Isles, and with three researchers, to explore the impact of participation in creative activities on experiences of agency, autonomy and mental wellbeing for people with a lived experience of dementia and their unpaid supporters. Participants in the project worked in group or individual creative disciplines to explore and document their dementia stories auto-ethnographically. The researchers collaborated with Deepness, arts centres, and facilitators to support peer researchers as they participated in the arts activities. This work culminated in a festival of dementia arts and mental wellbeing including music, movement, dance, crafting, painting, poetry, printing, sculpting and multi-media installations.

Our goal is a collective conversation and voice across decision-making contexts and spaces of power, to decolonize dementia care and research spaces and processes.

There have been two main areas of exploration in the work to date; how to make co-production truly equitable and using the arts to disseminate research outcomes. The next phase of their work will draw upon the learning so far to explore peer research and radical collaboration with people living with dementia nationally, in the context of Scotland’s new dementia strategy. Deepness, with their researchers, will continue to explore alternative dissemination forms and equitable co-production, as well as growing a new cohort of researchers working in peer research with people living with dementia.

We wish to create a coordinated multi-perspective, multi-stakeholder conversation around experiences of living with dementia which activate community led and focused evidence/testimony/knowledge, build better community models of care and connection and sustain the wellbeing of people living with dementia on their own terms.

Find out more about Dementia Arts Festival