一盒創意，一腔關愛｜UAL研究人員參與推進“文化盒子”項目
天麟海外藝術創意啟發中心 | 2021-07-08
“文化盒子（Culture Box）”是一個由英國國家科研與創新署（UKRI）資助的研究項目，用于使用多感官手段來促進公共衛生指導並支持養老院中痴呆癥患者的福祉。這個項目由埃克塞特大學領導，倫敦藝術大學倫敦時尚學院高級研究員Hannah Zeilig和皇家音樂學院開放學院院長Julian West都是項目成員。
“文化盒子”項目為養老院中的痴呆癥患者設計和分發了定制的盒子，里面包含有關Covid-19傳播和預防的重要信息，以及一些鼓勵患者們創作藝術和音樂的創意活動，這些措施都是為了在疫情期間和之後保護老年人和其他脆弱人群。UAL采訪了項目的重要成員Hannah和Julian，談論了項目的意義和影響。
© University of the Arts London
為什麼會有“文化盒子”項目？
這個項目開啟的基礎是一些藝術家對以不同方式為痴呆癥合作有著長期的興趣，因此埃克塞特大學、UAL和皇家音樂學院的藝術家們產生了合作，同時也受到了疫情的影響，在養老院被封鎖後，痴呆癥患者會感受到更加孤獨。因此藝術家們希望通過這個項目達到兩個目標︰試圖減輕痴呆癥患者的孤獨感和隔離感，並向養老院其他居住者傳達公共衛生信息。
“文化盒子”項目的內容、目標和意義
Julian和Hannah相信藝術可以為老年群體做出巨大的貢獻，尤其是在當下的困難時期，所以她們和團隊的其他成員一起研究如何用不同的藝術形式為痴呆癥患者服務。發放到養老院的實體盒子里面有幾種不同形式的藝術品供患者們使用，包括圖像、音樂和視頻等等，團隊成員還會對患者和護理人員進行跟進采訪。
“文化盒子”項目的發展
盒子第一次交付使用是在去年12月，但與道德倫理相關的工作是從去年6月開始。Hannah提到她在LCF的工作就是教授設計與道德倫理相關的內容，通過這個項目她與英國國民健康服務系統（NHS）一同探討解決了在特殊的疫情時期如何用藝術為弱勢群體服務的問題。而Julian提到她們正在努力思考如何將自然界的體驗帶入養老院。她們正處于研究的關鍵期，需要對收集到的反饋信息進行整合反思。
“文化盒子”項目的未來是什麼？
在今年6月之後，項目團隊還將交付6批次的實體盒子。她們正在考慮是否可以對活動方式進行一些調整，使得患者的家庭成員一同加入。作為藝術倫理領域的研究學者，Hannah希望通過這個項目深入研究社交隔離和孤獨情緒帶來的社會問題，以及她們推行的活動對實際問題的影響程度。
新聞原文︰
'Using multisensory culture boxes to promote public health guidance and to support the wellbeing of people with dementia in care homes' - is a research project funded by UKRI, led by the University of Exeter, the project team includes Hannah Zeilig, Senior Research Fellow at London College of Fashion, and Julian West Head of Open Academy at the Royal Academy of Music.
The Culture Box project designs and distributes bespoke culture boxes to people with dementia in care homes. The boxes contain important information on virus transmission and prevention to protect the elderly and most vulnerable during and after COVID-19; alongside creative activities co-developed with artists and musicians that encourage users to create art and music. We caught up with Hannah and Julian to discuss the project ahead of next week's online event about the research.
How did the project come about?
Hannah: All of the Investigators on the project have had a very long-term interest in the arts and working with people with dementia in different ways, so that's the foundational place that we started from. The study is based at Exeter University, UAL and at the Royal Academy of Music.
Julian: It also came about as a response to the pandemic, care homes being in lockdown, and people being really cut off. We know that people living in care homes, particularly people living with dementia, experience a sense of loneliness and isolation. Care homes are not places where the general public come and go, or socialise - they're already quite isolated. In the context of this pandemic, that has been hugely exacerbated.
There are two key aims of the project. One is attempting to alleviate loneliness and isolation, and the other aim is to communicate public health messages and information to the care homes and their residents.
Can you summarise what the Culture Box is – what is in it, what is its purpose, what does it hope to achieve?
Julian: We know the huge contribution that the arts can make, to people living in residential care, and a huge number of artists have developed practice at working in this setting. Of course, all of that just stopped overnight pretty much, so that's one of the other reasons why the project came about, to look at how we can continue to work with people living with dementia and continue to support them and the staff through this incredibly difficult time.
Hannah: One of the things to outline is that it's a research study, and part of the study is that we work as a team. Julian is leading the production of a physical box, which has been sent to care homes, so I'll let him tell you more about what that is.
Julian: Each month, the care homes taking part receive a physical box, which has a collection of resources inside it. These can be pictures, or objects with suggestions of activities and artistic processes that people can explore together. There's also a large number of digital resources, which support the physical resources. These incorporate sounds, access music, and video too. We're working with a large number of other organisations, who have kindly agreed for their content to be included within the digital deliveries.
Hannah: We're also trying to foreground the needs of people from Black and Asian minority groups with dementia in care homes, who's experiences are so often neglected. In each care home, we're working with a number of people with dementia and an activities coordinator, who is using the activities with the residents that are part of the study. We're then following up with interviews with the people with dementia, and the activity coordinator, or care staff.
How is it progressing and evolving since it began?
Julian: The first delivery of the box was in December of last year, so we're nearly six months in. We're interviewing participants using video conferencing software, to talk with them about the resources and what's coming through really strongly is people's interest in the natural world - in plants, animals, gardening. I think it's interesting because it's one of the things that has come through strongly from the general population in the pandemic - the importance of finding one's place within nature and the role that nature has, to console us, support us and maybe help us to contextualise this experience, that we're all going through. It should come as no surprise that people living with dementia are first and foremost people, and the things we're finding most meaningful and important are the same for people living in residential care, as well.
Hannah: The project started last June beginning with the ethics processes. It's been interesting from my work at LCF, teaching students about ethics, and at the same time, going through this extraordinary ethics procedure, because there was no protocol or understanding of how you would work in care homes with vulnerable people, using the arts, during a pandemic. There's, there's no framework for that, so it took us a really long time to work it out with the NHS, before we could even begin to deliver boxes.
Julian: We're trying to think really hard about how to bring that experience of the natural world into a residential care home. People are also enjoying music very much as well - we know that there's a lot of research supporting that already. We're at a critical point in the research, of incorporating feedback, and really reflecting on the resources that we're sending, in response to the feedback that we're getting.
What have been some highlights so far?
Julian: One of the things that has really stayed with me was one of the activities from a partner organisation, which was Drawing Life. It featured a person holding a kind of sculpture that they'd made as a square frame to their face, and had been made with sticks. The idea was that you drew what you saw in the frame, and one of the care homes interpreted it completely differently. Instead, they sent us photographs of their residents who had created sculptures out of the everyday objects that they found around them. I loved that because, one of the things that we're hoping to enable, is for creativity and improvisation to happen.
Hannah: One of the things which is an ongoing highlight, is that whilst we're all working remotely, you don't know how the activities are going to land. And then we do interviews, and realise it has landed, and people have interpreted it, just as Julian was saying. There was another exercise about making a snowman out of a kind of a sock, and there were some resources in the box that you could do this with. Some people absolutely hated it, other people made the snowman into a character called Samantha that had long hair and that danced around, and in one interview, somebody had gotten really attached to their snowman and was doing the interview with the snowman. It was so lovely to see how this exercise had been interpreted, or how unexpected it was, and how it wasn't what we would have expected - which is exactly what you want.
What have you learned from the project, and how has your own awareness of dementia changed over the course of it?
Hannah: One of the gifts of working with people with dementia is that I'm always on a learning curve. I've learned to not have expectations about what people will do or what people will like, and to understand how individual people's reactions are, to both the arts activities and the public health information.
Julian: When we started the project, I was thinking how on earth is this going to work - we're going to be using Microsoft Teams to chat and interview people with dementia in residential care homes, is that even in any way possible? And then each time, we log on, and there they are. We chat, and they tell us stories about having the highest heels in the whole of Nottingham or travels around the world, or sailing across the Atlantic on a yacht. People are people, and I've been really surprised at the willingness and patience that they have had.
What is the future of the project from this point?
Julian: The project finishes in December so after June, we still have another six deliveries to go. It will be interesting to see whether we can adapt some of the activities to include family members who are visiting. In the long term, all of the activities we've curated, created and commissioned, will be kept as an archive, by the National Activity Providers Association - hopefully a resource that will continue to be used going forward. We hope that we'll have a better understanding of the role that the arts and creative processes have, for people living with dementia in residential care homes and the feasibility of working remotely.
Hannah: From a research perspective we've also got the focus on social isolation, and loneliness, and how far the activities can actually affect those - I'm hoping we're going to have a sense of that. I realised that we're going to have quite a lot of insight into how these activities, when they're done in a group or through the home, provoke conversation and a sense of togetherness.
來源︰倫敦藝術大學官網
翻譯︰倫敦藝術大學授權廣州招生代表處
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