Paper short abstract:

A practical exploration of past, current and future possibilities of embodied creativity in research with people living with advanced dementia. We will examine to what extent this can be a collaborative process, creative approaches that might achieve this, and discuss potential ethical concerns.

Paper long abstract:

People living with advanced dementia can be excluded from opportunities and treated as ‘the other’ when society continues to overvalue cognitive skills, language ability and verbal communication. Here, we will consider our own real-world research, which identifies the person through an embodied, inter-embodied or post-humanist perspective. People living with advanced dementia are at risk of exclusion from studies because of inadequate research methodologies and methods, and/or complex ethical processes.

Learning from our previous research where traditional methods initially predominated, we will examine a move towards creative methods to achieve potential collaboration with people living with advanced dementia. We will question how collaboration can be achieved with this group, how we know we are collaborating, and if/how creative methods extend collaboration. In addition, ethical concerns will be discussed for this vulnerable group, who are considered unable to give informed consent. Finally, we will speculate how past and current research can influence the future of collaborative, creative methods with people living with advanced dementia.