| |
| |
| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Bring on the health economists
— time for a rigorous evaluation of senior participative arts | | Author(s) | Clair Chapwell |
| Journal title | Working with Older People, vol 18, no 1, 2014 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2014 |
| Pages | pp 4-9 |
| Source | www.emeraldinsight.com/wwop.htm |
| Keywords | Cultural activities ; Participation ; Well being ; Evaluation ; United States of America ; United Kingdom. |
| Annotation | As our older population increases, scheduled to rise by 61 per cent in the next 20 years, a national panic has set in about what to do. This paper makes a radical plea to change our thinking about how the lives of our senior citizens are lived: bring on the health economists, and let us put some serious funding into studying the effects of participative arts on the lives of older people. In 2014, the author was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study participative arts for older people in the USA. The author interviewed Professor Julene Johnson of University of California San Francisco about "Community of Voices", an ambitious, well-funded five year programme which is launching 12 one-year choirs with low income, non-singers, after which findings will be rigorously tested. In the USA, proper evaluation of participative arts is being taken seriously as a means of whittling down massive Medicare costs. In the UK, evaluations are governed by what things will cost, and generally consist of questionnaires filled in by participants. Findings centre around the psychological arena, rather than physical aspects (balance, hospital visits). It is imperative that we start to think about participative arts for older people in a scientific and serious way, if we are not to end up with roomfuls of older people on antidepressants. This and other articles in this issue of Working with Older People has as its theme creativity, the arts and older people. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150529230 A |
| Classmark | H4: TMB: D:F:5HH: 4C: 7T: 8 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|
|