Creativity in Later Life: Beyond Late Style 9781138293793, 9781315231877

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Beyond late style
Creativity, humanity, demography, age
Creativity, criticality, gerontology
Gerontology and arts-and-humanities in dialogue
References
PART I: The challenges of late-life creativity
1.
Imagining otherwise: The disciplinary identity of gerontology
References
2.
The singing voice in late life
References
3.
Creative ageing: The social policy challenge
Five Ways to Wellbeing
What does creative ageing look like? The British social policy context
The Five Ways to Wellbeing in action
Connect
Be active
Take notice
Keep learning
Give
Discussion and conclusion
Notes
References
PART II:
Rethinking late style
4.
Turner’s last works and his critics
Notes
References
5.
Constructing a late style for David Bowie: Old age, late-life creativity, popular culture
References
6.
An ‘old man in the dimming world’: Theodor Adorno, Derek Walcott and a defence of the idea of late style
Notes
References
PART III:
The varieties of late-life creativity
7.
Late-life creativity: Assessing the value of theatre in later life
Introduction
Researching cultural value
The cultural value of older people’s experiences of
theatre-making: a review
Ages and Stages: developing methodology and empowering older people
Discussion and conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
8.
Late-life creativity: methods for understanding arts-generated social capital in the lives of older people
Social capital: methodological gaps?
Arts, ageing and social capital
About the research: designing a methodology
The project context
Findings
Reflections on the potential of creative research methods
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
9.
‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’: Dress, creativity, old age
Introduction
Self-actualisation and aesthetic pleasure
Dress as a multi-faceted creative practice
The effect of time: restraint and resistance
Conclusion
Note
References
10.
Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life
Introduction
The project
Photographing Everyday Lives
Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life
Concluding remarks
Acknowledgements
Copyright of visual images
References
11.
Self, civic engagement and late-life creativity
PART IV:
Narrating dementia
12.
A critical narrative on late-life creativity and dementia: Integrating citizenship, embodiment and relationality
Introduction
The turn to the arts in dementia care
A relational model of citizenship
Conclusion
References
13.
‘The artistry of it all’: Narrating The Tempest, dementia and the mapping of identity in a Manchester extra-care housing scheme
Outline
Small Things Creative Projects – an introduction
The Island
Structure and process
Conclusion
References
14.
Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s as a case study in late-life creativity
Notes
References
15.
Narratives as talking therapy: Research with Sikh carers of a family member with dementia in Wolverhampton
Introduction
Narratives and storytelling
Research with Sikh carers: Methods and methodology
Case examples
Personal reflections
Concluding comments
References
PART V:
Old age, creativity and the late city
16.
‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’: an McKay and the conserving radicalism of the Gorton Visual Arts Group, public artists in later life
Introduction: neighbourhood characteristics
Art is for everyone
The origin and evolution of Gorton Visual Arts Group
Something I wanted to do all my life
The working practice: narrative, technique and style
What group membership affords
Outreach: turning towards a community for all ages
Widening the options for the future
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgements
References
17.
The late Peter Rice: Late-style stories of ageing and the city in A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent
The late Peter Rice
Contexts: the older artist, ‘the longevity dividend’ and
generic hybridity
Narrating visual impact: reading ‘A Bright Past for
Stoke on Trent’
Narratives of lateness: late style and the late city
Upwave cities: the culture dividend and place-making
Conclusion: Beyond late style: cultural capital as a resource of hope in the late city
Notes
References
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Creativity in Later Life

This collection begins with two premises: that our understanding of the nature and forms of creativity in later life remains limited and that dialogue between specialists in gerontology and in the arts and humanities can produce the crucial new insights that are so obviously needed. Representing the outcome of ongoing dialogue across the disciplinary divide, the contributions to this volume reflect anew on what we share and how we differ, creating new narratives so as to build an understanding of late-life creativity that goes far beyond the narrow confines of the pervasively received idea of ‘late style’. Creativity in Later Life encompasses a range of personal reflections and discussions of the boundaries of creativity, including:   

Canonical artistic achievements to community art projects Narratives of carers for those living with dementia Analyses of creative theory

Through these insightful chapters, the authors consequently offer an understanding of creativity in later life as varied, socialised and – above all – located in the cultural and economic circumstances of the here and now. This title will appeal to academics, practitioners and students in the various gerontological, arts and humanities fields; and to anyone with an interest in the nature of creativity in later life and the forms it takes. David Amigoni is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Enterprise and Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University, UK Gordon McMullan is Professor of English at King’s College London, UK, and Director of the London Shakespeare Centre.

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Creativity in Later Life Beyond Late Style

Edited by David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan; individual chapters, the contributors The right of David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-29379-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-23187-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

in memoriam Noreen Amigoni (1928–2012) Hilda Brooks (1920–2018) Muriel McMullan (1927–2016)

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Contents

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Beyond late style

x xi xv 1

DAVID AMIGONI AND GORDON MCMULLAN

PART I

The challenges of late-life creativity 1 Imagining otherwise: The disciplinary identity of gerontology

17 19

RUTH RAY KARPEN

2 The singing voice in late life

24

JANE MANNING

3 Creative ageing: The social policy challenge

31

SUSAN HOGAN AND EMILY BRADFIELD

PART II

Rethinking late style 4 Turner’s last works and his critics

47 49

SAM SMILES

5 Constructing a late style for David Bowie: Old age, late-life creativity, popular culture

61

GORDON MCMULLAN

6 An ‘old man in the dimming world’: Theodor Adorno, Derek Walcott and a defence of the idea of late style ROBERT SPENCER

77

viii Contents PART III

The varieties of late-life creativity 7 Late-life creativity: Assessing the value of theatre in later life

99 101

MIRIAM BERNARD AND MICHELLE RICKETT

8 Late-life creativity: methods for understanding arts-generated social capital in the lives of older people

114

JACKIE REYNOLDS

9 ‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’: Dress, creativity, old age

131

HANNAH ZEILIG AND ANNA-MARI ALMILA

10 Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life

145

WENDY MARTIN AND KATY PILCHER

11 Self, civic engagement and late-life creativity

161

ANGELA GLENDENNING

PART IV

Narrating dementia

165

12 A critical narrative on late-life creativity and dementia: Integrating citizenship, embodiment and relationality

167

PIA KONTOS AND ALISA GRIGOROVICH

13 ‘The artistry of it all’: Narrating The Tempest, dementia and the mapping of identity in a Manchester extra-care housing scheme

182

LIZ POSTLETHWAITE

14 Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s as a case study in late-life creativity

198

MARTINA ZIMMERMANN

15 Narratives as talking therapy: Research with Sikh carers of a family member with dementia in Wolverhampton

208

KARAN JUTLLA

PART V

Old age, creativity and the late city

221

16 ‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’: Ian McKay and the conserving radicalism of the Gorton Visual Arts Group, public artists in later life

223

JOHN MILES

Contents 17 The late Peter Rice: Late-style stories of ageing and the city in A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent

ix 242

DAVID AMIGONI

Conclusion

258

DAVID AMIGONI AND GORDON MCMULLAN

Index

262

Figures

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 16.1 16.2

16.3 17.1

Visual Diary image Visual Diary image Visual Diary image Visual Diary image Visual Diary image Visual Diary image Photographing Everyday Life Exhibition Photographing Everyday Life Exhibition Turning the care home setting into a Tempest-themed island Informal conversation and dialogue was central to the success of the project. Visual minutes of each workshop using simple comic book-style apps helped participants revisit and recall the work under creation Puppets came to play a crucial part in the development and performance of the work created Creating the storm as part of the project’s final performances Studio work on the batik picnic blankets in August 2017 One of the Park Life canvases mounted on the Aviary corridor wall at Debdale Park The members’ outlook: generation, expectation and experience ‘Chaos’ exhibited at Gorton Monastery in 2012 Peter Rice, ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ (2013).

148 150 152 154 155 156 158 159 188 189 191 192 194 227

230 236 246

Contributors

Anna-Mari Almila is a research fellow in the sociology of fashion at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London, UK. Her research interests encompass a range of topics including global Islamic fashion, gendered consumption and mediation of food and wine, and the history of the construction of fashion studies. David Amigoni is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Enterprise and Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University, UK. He is widely published in the field of Victorian culture. He was a member of the interdisciplinary team for the cross-council NDA-funded ‘Ages and Stages’ project (RES356-25-0005), and he was Principal Investigator for the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Late-Life Creativity’ research network (AH/J002593/1). Miriam Bernard is Professor of Social Gerontology at Keele University, UK. She was Principal Investigator of the NDA-funded interdisciplinary ‘Ages and Stages’ project (RES-356-25-0005), its AHRC-funded follow-on project (AH/K000764/1) and two related AHRC ‘Cultural Value Project’ awards (AH/L005522/1 and AH/L006103/1). She continues to work with the Ages and Stages Company hosted at the New Vic Theatre and with the annual Live Age Festival. She was President (2010–12) of the British Society of Gerontology. Her many age-related publications combine social scientific research with insights drawn from literature and the arts. Emily Bradfield is a PhD student and research assistant to Professor Susan Hogan at the University of Derby, UK; she is also administrator for the Creative Ageing Research Consortium. Her primary research interest is in bridging the gap between creative ageing research and practice. Angela Glendenning worked with offenders for 25 years. When she retired she was a non-executive director of a community health trust for 6 years. For 8 years she was chair of PARINS, a multi-agency partnership in Staffordshire which offered advocacy and support to victims of racism. Currently, she is a trustee and volunteer with ASHA North Staffordshire, a charity which offers support and services to asylum seekers and refugees in

xii

List of contributors Stoke-on-Trent. She is a founder of Sumud Palestine which campaigns for peace and social justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

Alisa Grigorovich is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada, funded by an Ontario Women’s Health Scholars Award, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Her research approaches gender and sexuality as key social determinants of health and quality of life in the context of health services and systems. She is also interested in the use of the arts in dementia care and arts-based knowledge translation. Susan Hogan is Professor in Cultural Studies and Art Therapy and College Research Lead at the University of Derby, UK. Her publications include The Introductory Guide to Art Therapy (with Annette Coulter, 2014), Art Therapy Theories: A Critical Overview (2015) and a prizewinning essay, ‘Interrogating Women’s Experience of Ageing: Reinforcing or Challenging Clichés?’ for The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review. Karan Jutlla is Senior Lecturer and the Dementia Lead for the School of Nursing and Midwifery at De Montfort University, UK. Her doctoral study at Keele University focused on ethnicity and dementia. Based on her research findings, Karan has developed and delivered bespoke dementia education programmes to support services to be culturally engaged. She has published a series of essays on dementia, care, ethnicity and identity. Pia Kontos is a Senior Scientist at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-University Health Network and is an Associate Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is a committed to the transformation of long-term dementia care so that it is more humanistic and socially just. She draws on the arts to enrich the lives of people living with dementia; she also creates research-based dramas to challenge structural violence in dementia care settings and to foster relational caring. She has presented and published across multiple disciplines on embodiment, relationality, ethics and dementia. Jane Manning OBE is an opera and concert soprano, a Professor of Vocal Studies at the Guildhall School of Music and a Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music. She has been described as ‘the voice of contemporary classical music in Britain’: leading composers – Harrison Birtwistle, James Macmillan, Colin Matthews, Judith Weir and others – have written new works for her, and she is perhaps most closely associated with, and has written a book about, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Wendy Martin is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London, UK. Her research focuses on ageing, embodiment and daily life and the use of visual methods in ageing research. She was Principal Investigator for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research project Photographing Everyday Life: Ageing, Lived

List of contributors

xiii

Experiences, Time and Space. She is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology (2015). Gordon McMullan is Professor of English at King’s College London, UK, and Director of the London Shakespeare Centre. His publications include the Arden edition of Shakespeare’s late play Henry VIII (2000), Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing (2007), and Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music, edited with Sam Smiles (2016); and he was a general textual editor of The Norton Shakespeare, 3E (2015). He was CoInvestigator for the AHRC-funded ‘Late-Life Creativity’ research network (AH/J002593/1). John Miles is Research Associate with Kilburn Older Voices Exchange. His work in community development included time as a carer support worker in Hackney and development officer for Camden Council. More recently, he was a member of the British Society for Gerontology’s executive. He completed a PhD at Keele University in 2014. He continues to have wideranging interests at the critical intersection between the intergenerational experiences of older people, well-being and creativity. Katy Pilcher is a Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Her research focusses on gender, sexualities, embodiment, ageing, sex work and night-time economies. She has published on feminism, the personal, labour and power. She co-edited, with Nicola Smith and Mary Laing, a collection of essays entitled Queer Sex Work (2015). Liz Postlethwaite trained as a theatre director; this included periods of international work in Madrid and Moscow. She began her career as a youth theatre director. She presently divides her time between work as creative director of Small Things Creative Projects and The Storybox Project – where one of her specialisms is to work on creative projects with those experiencing dementia and approaching end of life – and work as a life coach. She led a creative dementia programme in Hull during its tenure as UK City of Culture, 2017. Ruth Ray Karpen is Professor Emerita in the College of Liberal Arts, and former Faculty Associate with the Institute of Gerontology, at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. Her publications include Beyond Nostalgia: Aging and Life-Story Writing (2000) and, with Thomas Cole and Robert Kastenbaum, A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging (2010). She retired from her faculty position in 2013 and is now a freelance researcher and writer with a blog on emotional and spiritual development in later life. Jackie Reynolds has held a number of research posts including Senior Researcher in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Technologies at Staffordshire University and as Research Associate on Miriam Bernard’s Leverhulmefunded ‘The Ageing of British Gerontology’ project. Her research focusses on arts engagement, community, social capital and ageing. Her PhD

xiv List of contributors investigated the meanings that older people attach to their participation in group arts activities throughout their lives. She is currently a Research Impact Manager at Staffordshire University. Michelle Rickett trained as an ethnographer and was the Research Associate for the Ages and Stages project from 2009–2012 (RES-356-25-0005). She became Research Associate for the follow-on project, ‘Translating research into practice’, and is now Honorary Research Fellow with Keele’s Centre for Ageing Research and academic director of the Arts Council-funded ‘Meet Me at Live Age’ project with the New Vic Theatre. Her research interests in ageing, later life, memory, place and performance draw from both the humanities and the social sciences. Sam Smiles is Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Plymouth, UK. His publications include J. M. W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist (2007); Late Turner: Painting Set Free, with David Blayney Brown and Amy Concannon (2014); and Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music (2016), with Gordon McMullan. Robert Spencer is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Manchester, UK. His research interests lie in postcolonial literature and literary theory, with a particular interest in the work of Theodor Adorno. His publications include Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature (2011) and, with David Alderson, For Humanism: Explorations in Theory and Politics (2017). Hannah Zeilig is a Senior Research Fellow at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London, where she curated ‘Mirror Mirror’ (2013), an international symposium exploring representations of ageing women. In 2014 she was principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Mark Making’, a national review of the role and value of the arts for people living with dementia. She has published widely on the role of the arts in dementia care. Martina Zimmermann trained as a pharmaceutical scientist and specialised in neuropharmacology. She holds an honorary Associate Professor position (Privatdozentin) in Pharmacology at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her scholarly interests have increasingly shifted towards the Health Humanities: she obtained a second PhD in the field, and her first monograph, The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing, was published in 2017. She is currently preparing her second book, based on research funded by the Wellcome Trust at King’s College London on scientific and cultural dementia narratives.

Acknowledgements

The editors are very grateful to the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding us the Networking Grant that funded the series of workshops entitled ‘Late-life creativity and the “new old age”: Arts & Humanities and Gerontology in critical dialogue’ that took place at Keele University and King’s College London between 2011 and 2013 and which led eventually to the assembling of this collection. We are grateful to all the contributors to the workshops, including those who for various reasons are not represented in this collection: these include Ruth Basten, Anne Basting, Felicity Callard, Kélina Gotman, Brian Hurwitz, Linda and Michael Hutcheon, Ben Hutchinson, Simon Lovestone, Charlotte de Mille, Lucy Munro, Mignon Nixon, Anthony Payne, Chris Phillipson, Pam Schweitzer, Nina Taunton, Anthea Tinker, Sandra Torres, Laura Tunbridge, Neil Vickers, Shane Weller and members of Sadler’s Wells’ Company of Elders.

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Introduction Beyond late style David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan

Creativity, humanity, demography, age Creativity lies at the heart of major shifts in the understanding of human culture and the human imaginative capacity. For Philip Sidney, writing during the English Renaissance, ‘[t]here is no art’ – in which category, it is important to note, he includes astronomy, geometry, mathematics, music, philosophy, law, grammar and medicine – ‘delivered unto mankind that has not the works of Nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what Nature will have set forth’ (Sidney 2002, pp. 84–5); but he adds, crucially, that ‘Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done […]. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden’ (p. 85). For Sidney, it is poets – by which he means, in our terms, creative makers in a range of the arts – who best exemplify the human capacity to look beyond the material present and imagine new creative possibilities, in the process imitating ‘the inconceivable excellencies of God’. Two centuries later, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, writing at the height of the Romantic era, pushes this claim a significant stage further: The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. (Coleridge 1985, p. 313) For Coleridge, what lifts the human imagination above the life of animals is its ability subjectively to represent, and thus (or then) to recreate, the world. In other words, mankind’s imaginative capacity has become commensurate with

2

David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan

that of God the Creator – as grand a claim for human creativity as could readily be imagined in the early nineteenth century. Creativity seems again to have moved centre stage in contemporary understandings of human imaginative capacity (though whether this takes us beyond Romanticism or is simply one of its late manifestations remains unclear). Recent scientific research makes far-reaching claims for the centrality of creativity to homo sapiens and for the world-shaping potential of its processes and power. According to Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman (2017) in a representative recent study, creativity is the species-defining character of what they call ‘runaway’ humanity. It is a cognitive facility that enables us both to absorb information about our world and to make new, ‘what-if?’ versions of it. It is an activity that distinguishes human innovativeness from other species- and habitatspecific capabilities: squirrels may excel at climbing trees but they have never conceived, designed and built – that is to say, created – an escalator. For humans, by contrast, creativity appears to know no locational, disciplinary or technological bounds. Brandt and Eagleman begin The Runaway Species with a set of scientific and artistic examples of creativity in action drawn from different moments across twentieth-century history, from the capacity for innovation by the engineers who brought the crew of the stricken Apollo 13 back to Earth in 1970 to Pablo Picasso’s stylistically radical achievement in Les Demoiselles, a consummate work of art that both made people see the world anew and took ways of seeing in new directions. In other words, they define creativity broadly and optimistically, on a spectrum that includes both inspired scientific improvisation in a moment of extraordinary tension and the groundbreaking achievement of an artist early in a long and highly specialised professional creative life. Brandt (a composer, from the field of expression) and Eagleman (a neuroscientist, from the field of discovery) offer a further principle – that creativity is ‘a youthful driver of discovery and expression’ (p. 9) (our italics). Thus the Picasso who painted Les Demoiselles is almost of necessity, in their view, a young man, with the energy, brashness and lack of deference that are often considered the hallmarks of youth. In this way, Brandt and Eagleman’s otherwise inclusive celebration of creativity would seem to fall a little short. Working still, arguably, in a Romantic tradition that privileges youthful energy (and youthful death) over experience, they appear not to conceive a primary role for creativity in maturity or later life. Moreover, seeking a symptom of what they report as a worrying sidelining of creativity in the twenty-first-century classroom, Brandt and Eagleman point to a recent American poll indicating that more people want American youth to have ‘respect for elders than independence’ (p. 9), a result they deplore on the grounds that independence of mind is a key requisite for genuine creativity where respect for life experience is not. Yet must the two criteria be understood oppositionally? Can there be no connection between youthful independence of mind and respect for those with more life experience? Furthermore, is there no relationship between later life and creativity? Few, we hope (least of all the contributors to this volume),

Introduction

3

would see respect for elders as anything other than a baseline of civility, yet as so often in ‘either/or’ formulations, and certainly in the way Brandt and Eagleman present it, later life and overly deferential attitudes to later life appear as limiting factors in the creativity that drives human progress. In fact, Brandt and Eagleman don’t precisely think this. One of them is, after all, a composer, and they remind us that a minority of older geniuses – Beethoven, say, or indeed Picasso in his later years – buck the trend of creative decline in later life and manage to retain an extraordinary degree of ‘experimental’ creativity. In this view, the world of late-life creativity tends to be populated by heroes, but relatively few of them: only a minority of lives, we are told, experience an uplift in creative power towards the end (Brandt and Eagleman 2017, p. 185). This is an understanding of late-life creativity – or the lack thereof, for the vast majority of us – based on the idea of late style, a pervasive account of the creative lifespan that partially rejects the trajectory of ascent and decline intrinsic to the idea of the ‘Ages of Man’, arguing that a small number of consummate artists buck the trend in old age and find a new, transcendent form of expression that manages both to express a lifetime of creative experience and to look forward to forms of creative endeavour that are yet to come. Among these few are many of the key canonical names in literature, art and music, including, e.g., Titian, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven, Turner, Hardy, James, Picasso and Stravinsky. Each of these extraordinary artists created work at the end of their lives that brings to bear a lifetime of creative achievement to produce art of the highest order, complex yet apparently simple, profoundly expressive, even prophetic (it is claimed) of forms of art that were yet to emerge: thus, for instance, the late works of Beethoven are frequently understood as signalling the way to the atonalism of Schoenberg, even though that musical revolution did not take place for nearly two centuries. The problems with ‘late style’ become rapidly apparent, however, if you take a closer look at what may at first sight seem an appealing idea. To take perhaps the most obvious limitation, those to whom a late style has been attributed comprise a tiny handful of particular geniuses who happen overwhelmingly to be white middle-class men: thus questions of gender and race underline the severe limitations of the idea of late style for any broadly applicable understanding of late-life creativity. (Several of the essays in this collection, notably in section two, address these issues directly, seeking a series of new understandings of both materials and methodologies.) Late work of the stature of the canonical artists we have listed is, as we have noted, understood as the exception, not the rule; a late style is viewed as a marker of genius, even if not all geniuses have a late style. But most people will not achieve anything remotely like the appropriate level of artistic expression for the creation of work at this level, and certainly not in old age. Brandt and Eagleman are by no means atypical in their assumptions that genuine creativity is exemplified in the bulk of cases in people of at least relative youth. The physicist David Bohm, writing primarily about creativity in the sciences, phrases it thus:

4

David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan What, then, is the creative state of mind, which so few have been able to be in? [I]t is, first of all, one whose interest in what is being done is wholehearted and total, like that of a young child. With this spirit, it is always open to learning what is new, to perceiving new differences and new similarities, leading to new orders and structures, rather than always tending to impose familiar orders and structures on the field of what is seen. (Bohm 1996, p. 21).

Bohm’s work on creativity can be very inspiring, yet as regards age, his stance appears less democratic still than that of Brandt and Eagleman: it is in fact very akin to the classic understanding of late style as the product of vast experience manifesting itself with childlike clarity and openness to the world; not only does Bohm believe that creativity requires a youthful, even childlike, attitude, he also sees it as the domain of the few. The danger with this understanding of creativity as the prerogative of youthful drive, with only relatively rare instances of mature output, is that a steadily growing volume of human creative capacity risks being overlooked and undervalued. In 2015, the United Nations published its latest estimates of the global demographic trends in respect of ageing. In strictly numerical terms at least, these estimates do not place youth in the global driving seat. The Population Division of the UN’s Department of Social and Economic Affairs estimates that by 2030 older people will outnumber children aged 0–9 years (1.4 billion versus 1.3 billion) and that by 2050 there will be more people aged 60 years or over than adolescents and youth aged 10–24 years (2.1 billion versus 2.0 billion) (UN 2015, p. 3). The UN rightly describes this tangible increase in human longevity as a ‘demographic success story’ (p. 3), albeit one that inevitably also brings with it significant global policy and systems challenges in the fields of health care and social provision. Articulating the nature of this ‘success’, however, can take us in directions that are less than innovative – recognising, for instance, an increase in capacity for wisdom and experience but reflecting on this increase in conventional ways: Longer lives can afford individuals opportunities to prolong their working life, embark on second careers, or pursue varied interests in old age. … Societies benefit from the wisdom and experience of older persons and from their contributions to the labour force, as well as from their volunteerism, philanthropy and civic engagement. (UN 2015, p. 67) Notably, ‘varied interests in old age’ are not assigned any specificity or value in this account, and they are certainly not classified as creative – a term which, as we have seen, looms powerfully in our positive value system. In the AngloAmerican world and other western societies, such interests may well include the production of and participation in forms of artistic and cultural expression in later life which extend substantially beyond the artistic outputs of a few

Introduction

5

geniuses but which acknowledge the force of creativity and experimentation traditionally associated with the received canon of late stylists. This is a major question, inviting us to explore again the possibilities of creativity as it applies to later life. Where do we draw the line? Is late-life creativity limited to the acknowledged high artistic achievement of a handful of professionally creative people in later life? Or can it be extended to non-specialists who may only engage with activities very broadly understood as creative in their post-retirement years? And what is ‘creative activity’? Can it encompass both Turner Prize or Pulitzer Prize winners and members of a late-life knitting circle? What about ‘volunteerism’ and ‘civic engagement’: are these examples of what Darren Henley has called ‘everyday creativity’ (Henley 2018)? The chapters in this collection offer conflicting responses to these questions – severely conflicting, at times – and we have not tried to smooth over the differences. The simple truth is that, for obvious enough professional and experiential reasons, the gerontological contributors assume understandings of creativity that are substantially at odds with those of the arts-and-humanities contributors. This remains perhaps the greatest gulf between the disciplines represented in this collection, but it is hardly a surprise, given the very different intellectual and professional training undergone by exponents of the different disciplines, and it is not something that can or should be glossed over. The creativity of self-fashioning through civic engagement is an issue that one of the contributors to our volume, Angela Glendenning, explores in a narrative that reflects on her own life, a life that she does not see as being conventionally ‘creative’; at the same time, she makes a clear claim for forms of creativity that lie outside the ken of the typical arts-and-humanities scholar. Moreover, that she does so in the form of a personal narrative tells us a good deal about the modes of expression of creativity late in life. In this collection, the centrality of narrative and story to late-life creativity is a fundamental starting point, a hook for both recognising and beginning to investigate such creativity. Originating in conversations – some of which (Glendenning’s narrative is an example) are recorded verbatim here – that took place through a research network, ‘Late-life creativity and the “new old age”’, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council between 2011 and 2013, this interdisciplinary collection brings together a series of contributions expressing a range of expertise from the fields of humanities, social gerontology, policy formation, medical humanities, creative arts and neuroscience to reflect critically on the history, theory, practice and policy implications of the concept of ‘creativity’ as it comes to occupy an increasingly important place in narratives about successful, healthy and active ageing. Narrative emerged early on as a key connecting factor across the disciplines. We began to realise during our conversations that a very great deal – from theory to policy – was dependent on narrative, on the stories we tell about old age and about creativity in old age; each chapter in this collection addresses the shaping power of such narratives – narratives that may themselves arguably qualify as ‘creative’ precisely because of the way in which they ask us to reflect in new ways on some of the challenges

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associated with the experience of ageing, social inclusion and late-life fulfilment that will, directly or indirectly, touch the lives of billions over the next several decades.

Creativity, criticality, gerontology One of the most (deservedly) influential accounts of creativity in recent years is Rob Pope’s Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (2005). Pope’s book is as much at home in the arts (literature, painting, sculpture, music) as it is in science and technology studies. Like Brandt and Eagleman, Pope conceives of creativity as a phenomenon that cuts across a wide range of disciplines and practices, and it is important to note his practice of definition. He defines creativity as ‘the capacity to make, do, or become something fresh and valuable with respect to others as well as ourselves’ (p. xvi). We want in particular to note the provisional condition of this definition. Pope takes terms comprising his definition but then subjects them to further critical interrogation: the series of verbs ‘make, do, or become’ reminds us that creativity is not a ‘thing’; rather, it is a phenomenon that is at play in the objects, networks and relations that form a variety of disciplines and practices and that in some way offers value. Pope reminds us that value can be transactional, that there are rates of exchange between different systems of value (aesthetic, social, ethical) that are mobilised in transactions in ways that mean that value is not fixed and rooted in one domain – it can be exchanged (and translated) across domains – and that creativity is rooted in relations between selves and others. The provisionality of Pope’s practice of definition is in part conditioned by his historical frame of argument: the second section of his book explores the way in which, in tracing a transition from ancient to modern thought and culture, he found that appreciation of creative acts as sources of productivity and value moved from the domain of divinity to the domain of humanity and, as a consequence, there was a shift from ideas about divinely sanctioned creation to secular, multiple notions of creativity – as our literary examples from Sidney and Coleridge suggest. In 1961, the cultural critic Raymond Williams published The Long Revolution, a groundbreaking book that made a distinctive but often underrated contribution to the general understanding of creativity, linking it to culture but also implicitly to insights into ageing demographics and dynamics (Williams 1961). In his chapter on ‘The Creative Mind’, Williams traced a path for ideas about making and about value through a history of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical thought, by way of the development of Renaissance and Enlightenment artistic and literary criticism, then of the revolution in Romantic artistic and literary theory and finally to modern evolutionary biology, psychology and communication theory – which, as we have seen from Brandt and Eagleman, remain key reference points in the theory of creativity in the present moment. Williams’ achievement was to link this long history of thought to the increasingly democratic strand of understanding of culture that

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emerged in the nineteenth century, a strand he had traced in his earlier book Culture and Society, 1750–1950. Williams’ distinctive contribution in The Long Revolution was twofold. Firstly, he theorised culture in relation to emotional and affective activity and to the way in which it was differentially articulated through structured, historically variable social experience expressed through multi-generic formats (Williams 1958, pp. 64–5). Secondly, he linked these structures of feeling to what we might call the intergenerational dynamics that are at the heart of artistic, ideational and material making and creativity. In acknowledging the fact that ‘any period includes at least three generations [of creative producers]’, he brought the dynamics of the life course and of ageing into the analysis of culture and creativity (p. 67). This collection, we hope, extends this tradition by contributing to a dynamic field of research that has seen major transformation in recent years, one marked by the emergence of cultural gerontology – or, in its North American guise, humanistic gerontology – as a direct descendant of the kind of study of popular culture which Williams’ work helped to shape, opening up concepts usually considered elite to a wider, more democratic reach. Where Sam Smiles’ late J. M. W. Turner is clearly a familiar figure in the art historical landscape – a consummate artist producing perception-changing work at the end of a long professional creative life in the highest echelons of art – scholars may be more surprised by Gordon McMullan’s late David Bowie – pop music not being everyone’s idea of serious art – never mind by the activities of the Gorton Visual Arts Group in John Miles’s account of late-life creativity in working-class urban Manchester or the fashion consciousness of the women interviewed by Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almira. But the broader reach of cultural studies – the recognition both that creativity may not be confined to high-level artistic achievement as conventionally understood and that popular culture may be analysed effectively using many of the same theoretical tools as might be deployed in respect of art history, musicology or literary criticism – is, we believe, key to the potential for interaction between gerontologists and artsand-humanities scholars. Over the last decade, cultural gerontology has emerged as one of the most significant and vibrant platforms for writing about age and creativity. Reflecting a wider ‘cultural turn’ in the sciences, it has expanded the field of gerontology beyond all recognition. No longer confined to analyses of frailty or dominated by medical and social-welfare perspectives, gerontology now addresses the nature and experience of later years in the widest sense. Drawing on diverse areas of study that encompass the traditional fields of the arts and humanities – novels, painting, music – but that extend into new, more experientially inclusive areas of life – clothing, travel, consumption, gardening – and that draw on new methodologies – visual, narrative, material – these developments have located the study of later years within a larger and richer context. The new field’s reach is exemplified in books such as Stephen Katz’s Cultural Ageing: Life Course, Ageing and Senior Worlds (2005) and Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin’s Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology (2015), and many of the chapters in our collection seek to respond to the

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directions for the future of the field offered by both of these important contributions. This volume also emerges to a certain extent from a particular UK funding stream other than the Arts and Humanities Research Council networking grant that was the facilitator of the workshops that first brought the contributors together. This was the major programme entitled ‘The New Dynamics of Ageing’ (NDA), to which all UK funding councils contributed, including the AHRC. It was directed by social scientist Alan Walker and described in his subsequent edited collection, The New Science of Ageing (2014). This multi- and interdisciplinary programme (including medical and biological gerontology, design, social sciences and arts and humanities) was organised around two substantial research themes: ‘ageing well across the life course’ (with the policy notion of ‘active ageing’ at its heart) and ‘ageing and its environments’. In a number of ways, the chapters in the present collection explore and extend these research themes, addressing both active ageing and the focus on locality, place-making and participation that emerged from the programme. In the final chapter of The New Science of Ageing, Walker argues for a new policy perspective on ageing in a manner that underlines the many parallels between his project and the larger field of cultural gerontology, particularly in his desire to move policy beyond productivist and welfare models with their tendency to inscribe models of dependency and frailty, even if doing so means being beholden to identity markers such as consumerist individualism and social and historical trends such as postmodernity and global neo-liberalism (Walker 2014, p. 247). As Walker negotiates this changing policy landscape, he recognises both the challenges of these markers and the limits they suggest for policy discourse by acknowledging that in discourses of active ageing, social and political complexities tend often to be omitted and that their absence is in fact ‘critical’. Very much like ‘creativity’, ‘critical’ is both a complex and a crucial term with a very wide range of reference, and it is one that is absolutely central to this collection. When Walker uses the term, he is indicating an orientation in thought and analysis that is of decisive importance to the success, failure or existence of an aspect of ageing policy: critical gerontologists would recognise and practice this usage. Our understanding is a little different from this. For us, the critical factor is humanistic criticism and discourse itself: this collection asserts both the value of the insertion of the critical dimensions of arts-andhumanities discourse into the discourses of gerontology (in the manner outlined by Ruth Ray in her opening exhortation) and of the recognition that (in Robert Spencer’s terms) late-life creativity can be understood not merely as defined by the life span, by narratives of biography, but as critical in the sense of acting as a critique of social, cultural and economic structures – in particular, those of capitalist modernity – expressed consciously or unconsciously through artistic innovation late in life. Thus, in part at least, our research network was designed as a response to the need for a conscious criticality that might be able to address elements of the ageing agenda left outside the frame of the NDA programme. In applying to

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establish our network, we were concerned that the NDA had not sufficiently recognised the generative potential of the critical questions that structure scholarship in the disciplines of literary criticism, musicology and art history, a concern that emerged in part from the experience of one of the editors of this collection, who was fairly abruptly told at an NDA funding workshop that reflections on the theoretical ramifications of late style on understandings of late-life creativity was not the kind of thing the scheme would be funding. This is not to say that the NDA neglected literature, art and music – far from it – but it tended to favour projects that, while often focused on the materials of the arts and humanities, drew primarily on social-science rather than arts-andhumanities methodologies. One such project, for instance, looked at the ways in which ageing figured in contemporary literature and adopted an approach modelled on Mass Observation techniques that recorded the reactions of reading groups made up of older people from the University of the Third Age (U3A) (that of Philip Tew); another investigated the ways in which older people consumed and participated in artistic work and on the implications of these activities for cultural policy (that of Andrew Newman). Welcome though these projects were, there were limits on what they could achieve. Tew’s project, for instance, focused on the ways in which attitudes to ageing are mediated by contemporary literature, which in effect separated the older subjects of the project from the actual creativity; for us, it is the intersection of active creativity and later life, not just older people’s responses to the creativity of others, that requires theorising and exploring. Our own approach is thus consciously eclectic, employing cross-cutting themes from humanistic critical discourse and seeking to articulate the danger implicit in the adoption (not always conscious) of an inadequate conceptual base as the underpinning of work that seeks to lead to therapeutic or policymaking decisions. This danger concerned – concerns – us a very great deal. No science worth its salt would neglect the theoretical basis from which its experiments draw their methodological legitimacy, yet – to our eyes – humanistic gerontology was, and is, in danger of assuming the adequacy of its underpinning methodologies and proceeding as rapidly as possible to therapeutic or policy outcomes without demonstrating awareness that if the underpinning theory is flawed, then the practical outcomes may be too. ‘Late style’ was precisely one of these exemplary critical questions. We soon discovered that a critical discussion of the concept of late style, as well as of narratives about figures who were canonically recognised as ‘late stylists’, as articulated by arts-and-humanities scholars – for whom such theoretical investigations appear far more professionally ‘natural’ than for their peers in gerontology – became a powerful stimulus to debate. Hence we reached out to other gerontologists, social scientists, scientists and medical practitioners to see what might be possible if we opened up conversations with the aim of moving ‘beyond late style’. This volume gathers together some of the contributions to those conversations. Inevitably, though, managing the conversations has been something of a challenge. One of the primary issues in this volume is a

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pervasive, even fundamental, difference in understanding of the object of attention. Where gerontologists tend, it seems, to be interested in the effects of creativity on old age, arts-and-humanities scholars tend to focus on the effects of old age on creativity. This can produce a quite significant degree of mutual incomprehension. For arts-and-humanities scholars, the gerontological approach can at times seem bluntly instrumental; for gerontologists, meanwhile, literarycritical or art-historical theorising can frequently seem self-indulgently esoteric. For several of our gerontological contributors, the arts are principally of interest, for important professional reasons, as a potential source of therapy, which leads necessarily to a broader definition of creativity – one that includes everything from musical composition and the writing of poetry to gardening and knitting – than is natural for an arts-and-humanities scholar, for all of the impact of cultural studies over the last several decades. The focus of the bulk of our arts-and-humanities contributors, by contrast, tends, again for important professional reasons, to be at the upper end of the artistic spectrum, addressing complex art objects that require close theoretical and formal analysis if they are adequately to be understood aesthetically, contextually and ideologically. This can lead at times to a degree of impatience on both sides, impatience that might (somewhat tongue in cheek) be characterised by two questions: ‘Why do these arts people spend all this time theorising and critiquing when what we need is action?’ and ‘Why don’t these gerontologists understand that there’s no point launching into therapeutic solutions when they haven’t thought through the principles underlying those alleged solutions?’ Both, we think, are right. The demographic – exemplified not least by the substantive increase in diagnoses of dementia over the last decade and thus by the emphasis on dementia in this collection – makes it vividly clear that all avenues offering possible therapeutic outcomes need to be explored, and if the arts provide a welcome source of such possibilities, then urgent exploration is clearly needed. Equally, the problems several contributors note with the canonical concept of ‘late style’ – which, at its most reductive, can be deployed in care contexts to imply that everyone in late life can experience a marked artistic upturn – is a suggestion that can in turn be interrogated by, for example, the co-produced work of Liz Postlethwaite and the sustained, collaborative practice of reflection and creativity offered by the project she describes. In other words, it is crucial to assess the theoretical premises on which socio-creative artistic solutions may be based, since to work from a flawed base may give rise to unrealistic expectations. This, for us, is what makes the need for genuine dialogue so urgent.

Gerontology and arts-and-humanities in dialogue This collection comprises five sections, each consisting of between two and five thematically connected chapters. The shared thematic engagements represented in these sections are clear, but the reader is advised not to expect the kind of overall consistency of style and approach that would normally be an expectation for a collection of this kind. The professional and disciplinary engagements

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and experience of the contributors vary a very great deal, and deliberately so. We sought, both in inviting participants to the AHRC-funded workshops and in the subsequent process of assembling this collection, to bring together individuals and teams with disciplinary, economic, political and social perspectives, experiences and orientations that were not obviously matched, who were likely to approach the subject of late-life creativity from very different, even frankly conflicting, viewpoints. This means that the contributors range from PhD students to a professional singer, from North American-based gerontologists to a community volunteer in the English North Midlands, from academic specialists in literary criticism and art history to producers of co-creative work with older people in a range of social contexts. Whilst we have, as editors, very lightly reworked the materials of the chapters so as to achieve a baseline of mutual coherence, formatting and style, we have been careful not to elide the distinctiveness of our contributors, their variations in voice and in approach. It seems to us to matter a very great deal that readers of this collection are struck by some of the disjunctions in understanding of what might be expected to be shared definitions, terms and aims. Because to pretend that the contributors are all singing from the same sheet would be unacceptably (and, we suspect, unethically) to downplay the work that still needs to be done – not to align perspectives, not to harmonise to the point of deflecting crucial differences in outlook, but to make each stakeholder aware of the challenges that have yet to be faced if gerontology and the arts and humanities are going to find a shared path to a better understanding of creativity in late life. Yet, for all the differences of understanding, approach, technique and prose style, the chapters in this collection share a very great deal, perhaps the two most basic shared concerns being the desire to transform the limited current understanding of the nature of, and potential for, late-life creativity, and the urge better to understand the experiences of those who, in late life, seek to be creative. We begin with a set of challenges: of defining the value of arts-and-humanities methodologies for gerontology, of understanding the physical and other effects of later life on the practice of a professional creative artist, and of the social policy changes that will arguably be needed if society is to benefit over the next decades from discoveries made about the intersections of ageing and creativity. The first chapter is by Ruth Ray, who opened our workshop conversations with a powerful plea for the learning she believes will result from genuine dialogue between gerontology and the disciplines of the arts and humanities. We chose to retain her talk as it was given on the day because we wanted the reader to hear her voice in its freshness and enthusiasm for dialogue. She emphasises the criticality of arts-and-humanities methodologies, offering instances of valuable interdisciplinary work between the arts and humanities and gerontology and arguing that the ‘pallid binaries of science and art, quantitative and qualitative, objective and subjective, must be retired’. Ray’s challenge to her discipline is followed by a personal narrative by the multiply-awardwinning singer Jane Manning, regularly described across a long and varied career as ‘the voice of contemporary classical music’ in Britain. Born in 1938,

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she is associated perhaps above all with Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (and has written a book on the subject) and has had work written for her by many of the finest composers of the last few decades, including Richard Rodney Bennett, Harrison Birtwistle, James MacMillan, Colin Matthews and Judith Weir. In a frank and entertaining account of the difference later life makes to a professional singer, especially in relation to technique, Manning offers a very precise analysis of the changes to vocal range that age brings (‘the voice is uniquely subject to the ravages of time, wear and tear’), of the ways in which lifelong professional experience can help an individual make the necessary adjustments, of the necessity for and the methods of retaining wellbeing in later life, and of the value of intergenerational creativity. Our opening section then concludes by shifting gear to the very different, yet connected, challenges that later life presents to those seeking to make social policy. Creativity is increasingly viewed by politicians and policy makers as a key vehicle for improvements in the well-being of people in later life: Susan Hogan and Emily Bradfield outline the main parameters for encouraging arts participation in later life; address the ways in which this can be achieved, taking a UK government initiative known as the Five Ways to Wellbeing as their primary criterion set; and underline the economics underpinning government’s urge to encourage individuals in later life to improve their own well-being. Our second section shifts focus to the dominant underlying narrative of latelife creativity, that of ‘late style’, which we consider to be not what it might at first sight seem, especially to non-arts-and-humanities readers – that is, an esoteric category offering little to the study of contemporary later life. On the contrary, we suggest, the idea of late style is in fact a general, if unrecognised, methodology that, in a severely deracinated form, pervades general thinking about the relationship of creativity and old age, a pervasiveness that needs urgent reflection given its potential to mislead and even to undermine policy and practice. Sam Smiles, in his account of late Turner, notes the extent to which artists and artistic achievements are the product of the narratives we tell about them and reflects on the extent to which an uncritical attribution of the late-style narrative can obscure key aspects of the creativity of individuals in later life, risking not only glossing over the physical challenges of creativity in old age but also ‘turning artworks into (auto)biographical statements and ignoring their connections with wider, more public contexts’. Gordon McMullan offers an instance of the attribution of a ‘late style’ not, as is normally the case, to an acknowledged high-cultural ‘great artist’ but to a figure from popular culture, David Bowie, outlining both the naïve (or complicit) narratives through which he (and others since his death) constructed his final works as instances of ‘late style’ and the elisions, omissions and economies required in order to sustain that construction and also to sustain an understanding of late-life creativity that is arguably of little general value. Finally, Robert Spencer, in a substantive account of Derek Walcott’s poetry collection White Egrets, far from dismissing the idea of late style, seeks to reclaim it, arguing that a thoroughgoing reassessment – one that rethinks the work of

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Theodor Adorno, the key twentieth-century theorist of late style, and asserts the role of lateness as a critique of late capitalism – has the potential to reorientate and thus enhance our understanding of creativity in later life as a phenomenon situated in the social, political and above all economic here and now. The third section of the collection shifts gear to offer a series of reflections on the forms and genres in which late-life creativity manifests itself, from theatre and performance to photography to fashion choices to a reflection on civic engagement as creativity, and in the methodologies we might deploy to understand them – reflections that, taken together, suggest the need for a new and nuanced understanding of the sheer range of forms in which creativity can manifest itself, one that runs beyond traditional boundaries and offers a set of fresh narratives for reflecting on the nature of creativity in later life. Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett first focus on the value of theatre for those in later life by reporting on the outcomes of a collaborative intergenerational research project shared by a university and a local theatre in the English North Midlands which seeks to ‘capture and convey some of the affective and intrinsic dimensions of older people’s creative experiences’ and to demonstrate the value for later life of locally inflected arts engagement across the life-span. Next, Jackie Reynolds addresses the crucial, if underdeveloped, concept of ‘social capital’ by way of an analysis of networks and narratives in an anonymised North Midlands town. The idea of social capital draws on the premise that ‘[b]y making connections with one another, and keeping them going over time, people are able to work together to achieve things they either could not achieve by themselves, or could only achieve with great difficulty’ (Field 2008: 1): thus Reynolds focuses on the value of networks, in particular those that derive from arts engagement, in the lives of older people, and on the role of such networks in relation to identity and selfhood in later life. Next, Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila take older women’s engagement with fashion and their choice of clothing as their case study for assessing the value of ‘quotidian’ creativity, reporting on interviews with older women who express very personal engagements with fashion to argue that we need to understand the kinds of clothing choice made by these women as a valid form of creative activity. Then Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher report on an ESRC-funded project in which participants in later life created photographic diaries of their everyday existences, arguing that many of the practices and behaviours that participants report can usefully be incorporated into a broad understanding of creativity. And finally Angela Glendenning (in another of our chapters reproducing verbatim a striking contribution to our initial workshops) offers a very personal reflection on her later life and on the creativity she expresses not through the expected means (which she lists as to ‘sew, knit, paint, act, make music or do crafts’) but by way of her substantive civic engagement as a volunteer. The challenge this section, taken as a whole, poses is how to establish an understanding of creativity in later life that can encompass the definitions – sometimes shared, sometimes at odds – that emerge from the differing instances of research and testimony presented in these chapters. Following, as it does, immediately after

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the section on late style, this section also underlines the work that has yet to be done on harmonising critical methodologies across the disciplinary divide. Our fourth section focusses on the increasingly pressing issue of dementia and deploys the idea of narrative in a range of differing ways, suggesting that both people living with dementia and their carers can find real benefit from creativity in general and forms of narrative in particular. In the opening chapter of this section, Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich challenge conventional narratives of late-life creativity by foregrounding the creativity that continues in those living with dementia and make a powerful plea both for a turn to the arts in dementia care and for an extended understanding of the reach of creativity as ‘a relational process of aesthetic self-expression’ that can include ‘mundane aesthetic expression’ just as much as professional high-skill art. They argue ‘that creativity in the face of neurological impairment is a testimony to the body’s potentiality for innovation and creative action’ and thus to the continuation of agency in a person with dementia, and they seek a new ethic of care that results from this recognition. Liz Postlethwaite’s chapter follows directly from this, offering an account of a creative project she led in an extra-care home for people living with dementia in Manchester: she describes the processes and the challenges of co-creating a performance piece that explored and shared the residents’ life experiences, suggesting a methodology for engaging people with dementia in creative processes typically thought to be unavailable to them. Martina Zimmermann, imaginatively reinventing the seven-year duration of the traditional ‘late phase’ as the expected life-span of a dementia patient from diagnosis, takes the fantasy writer Terry Pratchett’s account of his experience of the onset of dementia to argue not only that dementia patients do not lose their creativity but that creative activities can help in the negotiation of cognitive decline. In the process she reflects on the definitions of creativity suggested by Pratchett and the other case studies she examines – as the creation of ‘continuity in biographical disruption, [as] narrative strategies that acknowledge cognitive challenge while ascertaining continued agency [… and] as a therapeutic process’. In the final chapter of this section, Karan Jutlla sharply reverses the perspective by focussing on narratives not by those with dementia but by their carers, specifically by the unacknowledged and largely unsupported familial carers of people living with dementia in a given social group, that of Sikh immigrants to Wolverhampton in the English West Midlands, and by reflecting on the value of narrative therapy for the carer participants – and also, in another reversal of expectation, for the dementia researcher herself. Our fifth and final section consists of two chapters, both of which directly address a key underlying principle of the collection, which is the issue of the locale of late-life creativity – the extent to which creativity in later life is inflected, indeed determined, by local geographical contexts, which are themselves, inevitably, at base economic contexts. There may be only two chapters in this section, but in truth several of the other contributions to this collection – from Karan Jutlla’s account of immigrant communities in Wolverhampton to Jackie Reynolds’ discussion of social capital in ‘Greentown’ – could just as easily have

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appeared in this section, concerned as they are with the impact of local social, cultural and economic conditions on the experience of later life. But there is a local specificity to both John Miles’s account of a public art project in Manchester and David Amigoni’s analysis of the relationship between a late work and the late city that inspired it, an awareness above all of the conjunction of economics and place that determines to such a great extent how later life is experienced, that leads to our situating them as the culminating chapters in the collection. John Miles writes about the ‘bonding capital’ – a more specific version of the ‘social capital’ discussed by Reynolds in Chapter 8 – that has been achieved by the members of the Gorton Visual Arts Group in urban Manchester and the value this radical cooperative creative project has offered to its members, primarily people in later life, and to the community as a whole, which has experienced severe social deprivation and a very rapidly changing demographic over the last decade. Miles provides a sensitive, socially and economically nuanced account of the place- and class-conscious work of the group, which emerged from the refurbishment of a significant local arts building and the determination of its lead artist both to use the space as a community base and to facilitate the production of high-quality, large-scale artistic work from a volunteer group – work that continued after the connection with the original building ceased and that has provided meaningful and socially transformative involvement in the arts for older residents. In the final chapter, David Amigoni shifts focus markedly while at the same time bringing together this collection’s engagements with, on the one hand, the late style of significant creative artists and, on the other, a broader understanding of late-life creativity understood as functioning in specific local social and economic conditions. Addressing the late work of theatre designer and artist Peter Rice, and in particular Rice’s substantive, striking late work ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’, he ‘interrogat[es] diverse narratives of lateness and their implications for understanding the dynamics of later-life creativity’, and he reflects on the broader implications of ideas of ‘lateness’ and ‘old age’ when they are transferred from people to places – specifically to Stoke-on-Trent, a decayed industrial city in the North Midlands of England that has served as a local touchstone for this collection. Through a precise awareness of the nuances of space and of narrative, Amigoni addresses the inseparability of ideas of age and decline from both economics and culture, underlining that the need for the acquisition of social and cultural capital by individuals that has been clear in several of the chapters in this collection applies also to the entire populations of our ‘ageing’ cities. This, then, is our collection. We hope it informs, but we hope above all that it inspires further interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars and practitioners in gerontology and in the arts and humanities so that the potential apparent in the case studies and approaches we present here can be fulfilled and the disciplinary divide between the fields can be narrowed. We set out to create dialogue between the differing groups in genuine ignorance of the issues that would arise and the differences of approach and expectation that would be

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articulated. We hope now that others will take these dialogues further by reflecting anew on what we share and how we differ, by creating new narratives of the intersections of later life and creativity, and by continuing to build an understanding of late-life creativity that goes far beyond ‘late style’.

References Bohm, D. (1996) On Creativity. London: Routledge. Brandt, A. and D. Eagleman (2017) The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World. New York: Catapult Publishing. Coleridge, S. T. (1985) The Major Works. Ed. H. J. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Field, J. (2008) Social Capital (2nd edition). London: Routledge. Henley, D. (2018) Creativity: Why it Matters. London: Elliot and Thompson. Katz, S. (2005) Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Pope, R. (2005) Creativity: Theory, History, Practice. London: Routledge. Sidney, P. (2002) An Apology for Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy. Ed. G. Shepherd. Revised R. W. Maslen. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Twigg, J. and W. Martin (Eds) (2015) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. London: Routledge. United Nations (2015) World Population Ageing Report. New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division. Walker, A. (2014) The New Science of Ageing. Bristol: Policy Press. Williams, R. (1958) Culture and Society, 1780–1950. London: Chatto & Windus. Williams, R. (1961). The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.

Part I

The challenges of late-life creativity

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Imagining otherwise The disciplinary identity of gerontology Ruth Ray Karpen

Today I assume the role of advocate for the humanities. In terms of our conference agenda, I will be addressing this question: how can or should our primary subjects – the study of ageing and old age – affect the disciplinary identity of gerontology? This issue of disciplinarity and identity – what is gerontology, and what is a gerontologist – has been a defining issue of my career. Because I was formally trained in rhetoric and linguistics and informally trained myself in gerontology, I have always felt the need to carve out a place for my work in this field, which has been so much identified with medicine and the social sciences. I take as my point of departure a recent quote from Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors and Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois. In an article entitled, ‘Fighting for the Humanities’, Nelson responds to the critique that the humanities are not self-sustaining in a market economy and are not crucial to the mission of higher education in America. Funders and the general public readily accept the need for scientific research but they ‘often – unreflectively, uncritically, and in a learned form of self-deception – assume that we largely know ourselves and our history’ (Nelson 2012). The same might be said of the general attitude toward age research: people support the scientific study of ageing, particularly if it will tell them how not to get old, but they do not as readily accept the need for artistic or humanistic studies of ageing, nor do they understand the importance of questioning common beliefs and attitudes about old age, even when these beliefs are negative and limiting of human potential. This is why the world needs the humanities – to penetrate illusions and challenge what we think we know and need to know. As Nelson reminds us, ‘[t]he humanities are a project of both learning and unlearning, of celebrating old and new achievements while working to divest ourselves of error and blindness’. Scholars in the humanities are engaged in the ongoing project of rethinking, questioning and reassessing, recovering knowledge lost and forgotten, and reminding us that there are many ways of knowing. Unlike scientists, who try to control as many variables as possible, humanists embrace the unknown. They deal in complexity, ambiguity, instability and contradiction. Curious, doubtful, skeptical, contemplative, reflective, probing, speculating, critical – this is the humanistic turn

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of mind. The humanistic disciplines – languages and linguistics, philosophy and rhetoric, history, literature and literary criticism, theology, film and cultural studies – have much to offer in times of rapid change and uncertainty. Trained to compare, interpret and synthesise, humanists offer essential skills to an Information Age in which data proliferate. Why does gerontology, in particular, need the humanities and humanistic scholars? Here is a brief summary, in list form, of what cultural historian Thomas Cole and I said in the Introduction to our Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging (Cole and Ray 2010). We rather grandly titled this chapter, ‘The Humanistic Study of Aging, Past and Present, or Why Gerontology Still Needs Interpretive Inquiry’. We said that humanistic study is needed     

to remind age researchers that moral and spiritual issues are just as important as medical and social ones; to hold researchers to a higher standard by showing the limitations of highly specialised, fragmented studies that oversimplify the complex phenomenon that is ageing; to validate research that is deeply thoughtful, creative and reflective, and to reinforce the importance of language, image, metaphor, emotion, imagination, the body and lived experience; to explore the limits and conditions of the field of gerontology itself; and to keep raising the most basic human questions: Why do we grow old, not just biologically but existentially? How does growing old affect cultures, families and individuals? How is the ageing process changing? How is the experience of old age similar to and different from experiences in the past? How will it be different in the future? Why should we care about old people, especially when we are not old ourselves?

These questions are highly interdisciplinary or, more precisely, transdisciplinary. Answering them necessitates research that cuts across academic specialities and integrates methods and findings from many disciplines. Gerontology is typically characterised as already multidisciplinary, but in practice, these disciplines function alongside each other with little interaction or reciprocity. Rather than expressing an integrated field, ‘multi-disciplinarity’ means that we have many gerontologies – geriatric research for those in medicine, social gerontology for social scientists, critical gerontology for theorists, cultural gerontology for anthropologists, humanistic gerontology for humanists. The fact that we rarely speak to each other, and in fact sometimes speak at cross purposes, is a point Stephen Katz made 15 years ago in his Foucault-inspired critique of the field, Disciplining Old Age (Katz 1996). Such fragmentation is now simply untenable. The pallid binaries of science and art, quantitative and qualitative, objective and subjective, must be retired. Cathy Davidson, Chair of English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, puts a finer point on the interrelationship of science and the humanities in our technology-driven twenty-first century: ‘Numbers matter to humanists’, she says. ‘Humanistic

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interpretive skills matter to a data-rich world. [We need] skillful, critical, creative interpreters of data … . [of] reading, writing and arithmetic. Together again, at last’ (p. 17). Much of the best scholarship today in areas such as ecological studies, cultural and new media studies, and the medical humanities, is deliberately and self-consciously interdisciplinary. These scholars ask questions and tackle problems that cannot possibly be addressed from the narrow confines of a single discipline or a single research method. What distinguishes this work as ‘humanistic’ is its intent – greater understanding of the human condition in all its complexity – and its perspective on knowledge-making as contextual, flexible, synthetic and creative. There are some gerontologists doing interdisciplinary work of this kind, and their work can help us imagine a bigger place for gerontologists in the world. One example is Helen Small, whose trenchant book, The Long Life, though primarily a work of philosophy and literary criticism, also reflects extensive reading in the biology of ageing. Small draws on a long history in Western philosophy, starting with Plato and Aristotle, a range of literary texts to help her explain basic philosophical principles and evolutionary theory to explain why, how and to what effect the human ages. She concludes that we need to take a long view so as to contextualize ageing. In her words, ‘we understand age best when we view it, not as a problem apart, but always connected into larger philosophical considerations’ (Small 2007, p. 266). These considerations involve perennial questions that apply across time and place and across the life course: What is a person? What is a good life? What does it mean to be happy? What can we know by thinking? What else can we know, beyond thinking? In academic terms, old age focuses our attention on issues of ‘epistemology, virtue, justice, selfinterest, metaphysics’ and, not the least, what it means to be human (p. 272). A second example of an interdisciplinary scholar in gerontology is Simon Biggs, whose humanistic impulse is reflected in the title of his book, The Mature Imagination (1999). Biggs builds on Freudian and Jungian psychology, theories of postmodern ageing, community care and policy studies to argue the need for legitimating spaces in society that ‘contain’ ageing in all its variety. Such spaces, be they located in communities, institutions or the collective imagination, help mature adults to nurture emerging age identities and negotiate a meaningful place for themselves in a world that so often dismisses old people. The ‘mature imagination’, in Biggs’s formulation, is a coping strategy, a means to continue developing as human beings from midlife through deep old age, despite what society says about the limitations of age. The mature imagination is also a paradox, a juxtaposition of the known and the unknown. ‘Maturity’, scientifically studied by cognitive psychologists, traditionally connotes completion. ‘Imagination’, on the other hand, connotes a moving beyond the known into the realm of possibility – areas more often explored by artists, musicians and writers. All of us in midlife and beyond, including researchers in gerontology, need a mature imagination to make sense of, in Biggs’s words, the ‘contradiction between the apprehension of completion and the promise of further and deeper … development’ (Biggs 1999, p. 2).

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This brings me to the purpose of scholarship on ageing and old age. If twenty-first century gerontologists, as I have argued, should be conversant in multiple fields and interdisciplinary in purpose and scope, we must also be able to speak to scholars in other disciplines and to the larger public outside the university. Otherwise, we are spinning our wheels in obscurity. I have two suggestions for making our research more relevant to a wider audience: 1

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We must take up issues that matter to most people in and out of the academy, keeping in mind that, as the great sociologist C. Wright Mills told us over 50 years ago, personal troubles often reflect larger social problems. My 60-year-old friend’s inability to pay for the knee-replacement surgery that would get her out of a wheelchair, for example, is the result of long-term unemployment and lack of a national health care plan. This sociological fact calls for researchers to develop what Mills called a ‘sociological imagination’ – a quality of mind that leads to deeper ‘understanding of the intimate realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities’ (Mills 1959, p. 15, original emphasis). Developing and exercising this imagination requires that we scholars use both narrow and wide-angle lenses, engaging in micro and macro analyses to respond to the most pressing concerns of our time. In our forum today, then, we might discuss what makes ‘creative ageing’ a pressing issue of our time? We want to make sure this is a people’s issue, not just one for the gerontologists, and that our definitions of ‘creative’ are inclusive of everyday life and the attitudes, values, dreams and abilities of ordinary people. I suggest that we begin this conversation by converting the static noun phrase – ‘late-life creativity’ – into active verb phrases, such as ‘creating in later life’, ‘living and ageing creatively’ and ‘becoming more creative in our research and writing about creativity’. Related to this issue of inclusivity, the writing we do about our research should be rigorous according to the standards of gerontology, but accessible to a broader range of readers. This kind of writing starts with the selection of subject matter and includes our orientation toward that subject. I think we would do well to adopt Mills’s process of inquiry: 1. Take up a big, important question that concerns many people; 2. Approach it with all the intellectual curiosity, creativity imagination and discipline you can muster; and 3. Write about it as if you were on a mission to bring great clarity to as many people as possible. Mills claimed that all really good scholars write in what he called ‘the context of presentation’, first presenting the material to themselves in a way that makes the most sense, and when they have it straight in their own minds, presenting it in a variety of venues, private, public and academic. These venues become ‘contexts of discovery’, where the scholar finds out that what seemed crystal clear to him or her is not nearly as obvious to other people (p. 222). This orientation to research would challenge the gerontologist to learn and explain why her or his work matters. Held to this standard, we would more likely assume the role

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of social change agent, extending the field of gerontology while also creating what feminist theorist Catriona Mackenzie (2000) calls ‘imaginative repertoires’ that assist us in thinking ‘otherwise’ about ageing and old age. We would create a more innovative cultural imaginary by resisting the ‘dominant cultural metaphors, symbols, images and representations’ (p. 125) that circulate in society. By introducing alternative images and counter narratives, gerontologists would help liberate the general public’s individual and collective imaginaries. Since the imagination has, as Mackenzie notes, both ‘affective force and cognitive power’, it can dislodge our habitual understandings and provide strong incentive for resistance and change (pp. 143–44). Without this creative force, we gerontologists will not likely move beyond our familiar disciplinary boundaries to envision a better life for any of us in old age.

References Biggs, S. (1999) The Mature Imagination: Dynamics of Identity in Midlife and Beyond. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Cole, T. and R. Ray (2010) Introduction: The Humanistic Study of Aging Past and Present, or Why Gerontology Still Needs Interpretative Inquiry. In A Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging, Eds T. Cole, R. Ray and R. Kastenbaum. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1–29. Katz, S. (1996) Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge. Charlottesville, VI: University of Virginia Press. Mackenzie, C. (2000) Imagining Oneself Otherwise. In Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and The Social Self, Eds C. Mackenzie and N. Stoljar. New York: Oxford University Press. 124–150. Mills, C. W. (1959) The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nelson, Cary (2012) Fighting for the Humanities. Academe (American Association of University Professors). Jan–Feb. Small, H. (2007) The Long Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2

The singing voice in late life Jane Manning

After 47 busy years travelling internationally as a singer specialising in contemporary music, I’m still enjoying a varied professional career, which includes a fair amount of singing as well as lecturing, coaching and writing. I have remained self-employed virtually throughout and am quite proud to have managed to sustain a freelance career well into my seventies. There were just two exceptions to the gypsy life. After leaving the Royal Academy of Music in 1960, I taught in a Norfolk school for 3 years before making my break for freedom, living as a student once more, for one blissful and crucially important year of intensive voice training in Switzerland. More recently, I enjoyed a Research Fellowship salary for 3 years, attached to Kingston University, which was an unexpected and welcome injection of regular earnings at a time when well-paid engagements were becoming less frequent. When you reach a certain age, people assume that you’ve given up singing in order to teach: ‘Where do you teach?’ is often their first question. Now approaching 74, I’ve found it a huge advantage to be a late developer. I was always immature physically – the last to reach puberty in my class at school and the subject of sneering ridicule by classmates. I am still considered young for my age. At 17, my light schoolgirl soprano was not thought adequate for a singing career. At the Academy I went largely unnoticed, except for prowess in aural training and generally decent results on paper. Heavily-made-up Welsh ladies in their twenties tended to win all the singing prizes. My voice needed time to develop, and I now realise what a boon it was to be allowed to discover its possibilities gradually, away from the spotlight. I can now perceive slight signs of ageing. Very few female singers seem to have continued well past the menopause, so one is somewhat alone in navigating the potential hurdles. As an organic instrument, and part of oneself, the voice is uniquely subject to the ravages of time, wear and tear. I’ve always been pre-occupied with technique and the need to acquire good habits of vocal production that will serve for all situations and repertoire. I put my voice under the microscope continually, looking for signs of deterioration. It is often the singer’s lot to be judged subjectively by others, according to highly personal tastes and prejudices. I am especially wary now when having to sing with a cold, as it can be hard to distinguish between the symptoms of ageing and

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temporary difficulties caused by the infection, and people are all too ready to jump to conclusions and claim evidence of decline. I have to admit that my middle notes (the first fifth on the treble stave) are a little less reliable these days. There appears to have been a slight shift in the placing of this range, and the adjustment to the higher register needs care. (I once reviewed a book by the distinguished American composer and critic Virgil Thomson, who remarked upon this as a specifically female problem, long before I began to experience it myself.) I now have to work harder to tune my medium range accurately, depending on context and dynamic. Open vowels can droop in pitch if allowed to lose focus. An analytical approach is helpful, comparing results on different syllables, especially vowels. Unexpectedly, my high notes have become lighter and more comfortably placed than before. This has been a gradual process. Other singers have reported a ‘thickening’ of their voices with age and an inclination towards mezzo roles since feeling less secure in the upper reaches, but that is not my experience. Muscles are inevitably less strong and supple as the years go by. A fitness and exercise regime can help to maintain the necessary strength to support the voice. Sustaining very long phrases in one breath becomes a little more problematic. Lung capacity is not quite what it was. When young, I was always able to carry heavy luggage, and my right knee now suffers from the effect of those years of humping weighty scores around the world long before suitcases had wheels. As I habitually gave illustrated lectures as well as concerts, I always carried a large number of extra pieces to use as examples. This was well before the era of the computer and of today’s conveniently uniform A4 spiral-bound scores produced with programmes such as ‘Sibelius’. Earlier contemporary scores, in composers’ own manuscripts, were often bulky and in varying shapes and sizes that required a large ‘architect’s plan case’ to hold them. When one is older, one strives to retain energy, balance, flexibility and mobility. I am finding my personal trainer invaluable, but I do perhaps have less stamina or appetite for the arduous action-packed schedules and constant travel of my youth. Thankfully I have never smoked. Light allergic asthma has never affected my singing: it makes me more aware of how a little air can go a long way and my trained breathing technique is an advantage here. Obviously it is sensible to have healthy eating habits. I avoid dairy products and try to keep my weight down. Hydration is of crucial importance to the voice. I have discovered this only relatively recently. Dehydration is a problem experienced by all post-menopausal women, and I sometimes wonder if some colleagues gave up singing too early because of this. My voice dries out very quickly when practising for too long, and notes, especially high ones, may begin to stick, or even stop altogether. When water is taken on board, they spring back immediately. I’ve had perfect pitch all my life and was considered to have a particularly acute version. Since the age of about 60, I find it has slipped one semitone. Many other colleagues of similar age report the same. Benjamin Britten, in an interview aged 50 (it seems he aged more quickly than some of us!), is quoted

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as saying that he now heard Die Meistersinger in C sharp major! This brings with it the risk of singing continually flat. One hears things higher than they are: orchestras on the radio appear to be playing in a higher key. I find myself sneaking a look at the keyboard in piano recitals, just to see if black or white notes are being played. It is all quite disconcerting but I’ve found that I can adapt if I put my mind to it – as with the voice in general, the problem is worst around mid-range. There can be tendency to lose quality on those weaker middle notes. ‘Muscle memory’ is, however, a helpful resource: when pitching notes unaccompanied one knows their ‘feel’ and resonance from long practice. My memory is not quite as good as hitherto. I now avoid singing without the score unless compelled to do so by staged works, which of course usually involve a reassuringly lengthy rehearsal schedule. However, works from my early repertoire still sit safely in the memory. It takes a little longer to get to grips with a new work and, in common with countless others, I find my shortterm memory has deteriorated. There is sometimes a feeling of being overloaded with all the information accumulated over so many years. Concentration is apt to wander, so to refresh my mind I like to relax by doing word puzzles – especially code-breakers. Puzzles involving numbers such as Sudoku do not appeal to me. Ageing in the public eye makes one especially vulnerable – one’s insecurities are on show and there is nowhere to hide. The ever-present media attention adds to the strain. I do find that I’m somewhat less able to cope with pressure than I was when younger, and I tend to worry needlessly about small things. I never suffered badly from stage nerves, but at this point in my career I do find that I’m a little more tense and apprehensive before a performance. It is difficult to recapture the heedless confidence of the complete novice. My standards have become even higher and I’m intensely self-critical, all too aware of how far there is to fall. Each performance, however seemingly insignificant, has to be approached as if it were one’s last. There is only one way of doing things. Having fulfilled so many of my ambitions I do not feel quite as strongly motivated as before. The incentive to work at fever pitch has lessened, but I’m aware of the need to establish new goals and purposes. A sense of mission and self-belief is essential to one’s wellbeing throughout life. Of course, one needs to be lucky in both health and personal relationships – problems in these areas can be seriously distracting. I do not regret jettisoning the things of youth, and I aim to adapt cheerfully to getting older, recognising the need to slow down. One should beware of dwelling on earlier successes, but recollections of past highlights can always be invoked to lift the spirits if needed. I suppose I was something of a ‘maverick’ and never felt I fitted in into my conventional Norfolk background. I was often thought eccentric and so gravitated naturally to a profession where eccentricity is the norm, one in which I’ve always felt joyously at home. I hope I’ve managed to retain an appetite for new experiences and adventures and the ability to think independently. I’m glad to have avoided cliques and cults, especially of singing techniques. I studied with an iconic teacher but would never say that I

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represent a particular ‘method’ – I’m non-dogmatic by inclination and this trait also seems to increase with age. Some people may welcome a formula to help with their work – I definitely do not. Indulging in obsessive hero worship is also outside my experience. I have always believed that one’s individuality is one’s most precious asset and that one should not imitate others or worry about fitting a fashionable mould, however appealing. It is in fact the retention of individuality that preserves one’s creative urges and prevents one from becoming jaded. Zest and enthusiasm have to be nurtured so that they remain undiminished. A measure of confidence does indeed come with experience. (How infuriating it was to be told that when young and arrogant!) To keep contact with the young and exuberant is essential, and one should be wary of the temptation to put them down and dampen their optimism and joy in performing. Feeling one still has something special to contribute and is needed in the profession is fundamental to one’s wellbeing. For this, contemporary music has provided an ideal outlet. Such a small specialised world affords reasonable privacy, well away from the worst aspects of being in the public eye. Composers will always need sympathetic performers. Direct involvement in the creative process through collaboration continues to be stimulating and challenging, and it is heartening to feel one has an influence in the survival of the art form. Now that the art we practise seems to be downgraded so shamefully and ‘modernism’ is increasingly rejected by those wishing to be popular and successful, it’s important to remain convinced of the worth of what one is doing. ‘Accessibility’ is a word that is bandied around, but it too often means lack of lasting quality. I am glad that I never became too closely embroiled in the opera world. This means that I managed to escape one minefield of competitive neuroses and insecurities. For today’s young singers, an opera contract may afford the only chance of making a regular living, but this can come at the price of the loss of independence. In general I’ve had less contact with other singers than most people and have ploughed my own furrow. My contacts are my own and not those supplied by an agent. Presenting one’s original creative work to critical scrutiny at any age requires courage. One has to be sensitive to the feelings of composers of all generations. It is not just the young ones; working with older composers has made me realise their vulnerability. Elisabeth Lutyens wrote several pieces for me in the sixties and seventies. She thought of herself as an ‘old lady’ at 60 and regularly played the ‘elderly’ card. Now well past 70, I find it hard to imagine myself as anything but ‘young’ – how times have changed! Elliott Carter, writing some of his freshest music at a hundred and three, is an inspiring example to us all. Another 85-year-old friend continues to pour out beautiful songs and has even found time to have a children’s book published. Youthful attitudes are to be cherished, whatever the calendar says. I’m always astonished at the portrayals of middle-aged folk in old films – women in particular seem to be viewed as ‘over the hill’ at 40-plus. Dignity in advancing years was a conventional expectation, especially of wives and mothers, before women had equality of professional opportunities.

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I am by nature a second-hand creator and lack the ability to be a composer – I would only have been able to produce pastiche. The creative impulse of my in-house composer, Anthony Payne, my husband of 46 years, is a complete mystery to me. We have entirely complementary temperaments: Tony is not a performer by instinct, although he is much sought after for talks about music. To be happy in one’s personal life is crucial. It was a mutual decision not to have children – a clear choice between career and family – and I do not regret choosing the former. I was the main breadwinner in my busiest career years and felt I needed to escape from the weight of family tradition and convention. Perhaps this has caused us to be drawn to other people’s children. We started our young ensemble ‘Jane’s Minstrels’ in 1988, and they have been like an extended family – the relationship is inevitably subtly different from the one they have with their real parents. This has proved greatly rewarding, and we have all learned from one another. I’ve always appeared alongside them in concerts, respecting them as fellow-professionals and colleagues. It has been a highly successful inter-generational experiment, one that I embarked upon impulsively on discovering a nucleus of student soulmates during a project at York University. We have never stayed within our own generation socially – one of the prime advantages of professional music-making in a metropolis. Our close friends range from nonagenarians to teenagers, and we now enjoy some of the Minstrels’ own children. For a great many people, of course, having a family is their main creative achievement, and those without this focus have perhaps to spread their net more widely and find other ways of fulfilling familial and nurturing urges. The freelance life makes one resourceful of necessity – there can be no thought of retirement. Having opted to live on one’s nerves, without the cushion of a tenured position or secured pension, one has to remain permanently fit and alert. A creative approach is needed to organise a non-structured existence, working from home and travelling sporadically. Coping without any discernible routine requires flexibility and imagination. Perhaps this keeps premature ageing at bay, since there is always an incentive to work simply in order to live. One recent project is an especially absorbing one. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire is the work that has punctuated my career at regular intervals for fortyseven years and taught me everything about the voice in all its manifestations. 2012 marked the work’s centenary, and – thanks to the performance-related Research Fellowship I held at Kingston – I had the chance to examine my evolving interpretation in detail. The result of all this is my book Voicing Pierrot (2012). I have always been drawn towards academe, since deciding in favour of a music conservatoire rather than a university – something I regret. I suppose it was inevitable that I would gravitate to music that exercises the brain and provides endless variety. Coming from an uncultured background, I was late in developing a love of learning and an appreciation of art for art’s sake that is now central to my wellbeing. Occasionally the pressures and priorities in the

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field of research have proved a little surprising, even disillusioning. There is surely something wrong when getting the exact page number in a footnote reference counts for more than launching an original thought! The ability to think creatively is surely a basic requisite for intellectual advancement. Writing has been a regular part of my career ever since I wrote a detailed article for Composer magazine in the seventies, giving hints on writing for the voice, with examples of good and bad text setting. This led to many invitations to talk and demonstrate on the subject. I’ve always had an analytical approach to my work and am apt to reflect on my experiences over the years, perhaps with a view to writing memoirs at some point in the future. I have many wonderful memories of working with composers and other artists now no longer with us but would wish to avoid embarrassing or upsetting those still alive. I’m conscious of how far I’ve travelled from my background. At almost 74, I cannot avoid wondering how much longer I may have to enjoy good mobility and physical and mental health, before natural decline sets in. I do not fear being confined indoors, since I love reading and watching films. (The latter represent an ongoing passion. What a joy it was to discover that my guilty teenage pleasure is in fact an accredited art form!) Of course modern technology has forced one to acquire new skills, however reluctantly. Elements of today’s bureaucracy are somewhat alienating to those of us from an older age group. In former times one was not expected to demonstrate efficiency in business administration, and this was certainly not our purpose in joining this particular profession. It is difficult to find creativity in office work! I feel it’s vital to keep in the arena and not to ‘retire to the country’, actually or metaphorically. It’s important always to have something to look forward to, in work as well as play. Practical decisions do however have to be made – ‘downsizing’ will have to be timed sensibly. I’ve had to adapt to periods of inactivity – a new experience after the manically driven middle years of my international career. At first this was disconcerting, and it was a struggle to change gear. Overdrive was my most familiar mode of propulsion. I do try always to have a project in hand to avoid losing momentum – cataloguing my archive is proving a useful way of filling the gaps. Power and politics have never held the slightest attraction for me, and I find, happily, that my views have become more liberal with age. Now that virtually all of my contemporaries who held influential positions have retired from them, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am unlikely to be targeted by ambitious artists seeking quick financial rewards. I can offer only advice, encouragement and musical and technical guidance based on long experience. As colleagues will testify, the best-paid engagements are rarely the most enjoyable and vice versa. The bonus of working in a specialised field is that one is perhaps less likely to be appreciated for the wrong reasons. For a young female singer it can be depressing and disillusioning to discover that motives for engaging one have sometimes been more to do with outward appearance than quality of work. In today’s image-conscious world, ageing male artists still seem

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to be socially acceptable to a wide public (think The Rolling Stones! Where are their female equivalents?). The administrators who now control our profession often fall into three categories: middle-aged men who wish to have younger women around them, female administrators who like to work with famous men, and gay men who prefer others of the same persuasion. It’s a dismal picture for the older woman unless she wishes to be some kind of ‘camp icon’ or caricature ‘diva’. One must be wary of stereotypes. I sometimes muse of other careers I might have embraced. I was never bored as a child and had many interests, especially those concerning the written and spoken word. I should have loved to study philosophy, learn a new language, take a course in film studies or even try some straight acting! Actors have always inspired me with their courage, integrity and idealism. Several actor friends have aspired to their greatest heights in later life, taking on the major Shakespearean roles such as Prospero and Lear and exercising their creative powers in directing. All of them genuinely prefer the nightly toll of a stage run to more lucrative film and television work. They set a fine example of late-life creativity that one might hope to be able to emulate in some measure.

References Manning, J. (2012) Voicing Pierrot: A Practical, Analytical and Personal Guide to the Vocal Part of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Amaroo, ACT (Australia): Southern Voices.

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Creative ageing The social policy challenge Susan Hogan and Emily Bradfield

Five Ways to Wellbeing By 2071, the number of people over 65 could double to nearly 21.3 million, while the number of people aged 80 and over could more than treble to 9.5 million. Over the next 30 years, the number of people with dementia in the UK could double to 1.4 million. The current policy landscape marks a shift in thinking, away from ‘deficit’ models of later life towards a paradigm shift which ‘allows people to realise their potential for physical, social, and mental wellbeing throughout the life-course and to participate in society’ (World Health Organisation 2002, p. 3). Where previous models of later-life care have focused on supporting acute illness in older age, health-care systems are now forced to find ways to support individuals to take responsibility for their own health within their own communities. In 2008, the New Economics Foundation (NEF) was commissioned by the UK Government’s Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing to review the interdisciplinary work of more than 400 researchers from across the world. The aim was to identify a set of evidencebased actions to improve wellbeing which individuals could be encouraged to build into their daily lives. This was distilled down to the Five Ways to Wellbeing, which is now a major driver of health policy in the UK. They are:     

connect be active take notice keep learning give

This chapter will look at how different types of creativity in older age can meet the social policy recommendations embodied within the Five Ways to Wellbeing with specific detailed examples. The chapter will also relate this to the ongoing work on wellbeing, post-2008. Though some commentators have suggested this formulation is absurdly reductive, Five Ways to Wellbeing has had considerable success in being accessible to a wide-range of audiences and easy to embed in policy statements and to communicate to community-based

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organisational teams. Following a brief introduction to the British policy context, this chapter looks at ways in which Five Ways to Wellbeing can be realised through arts engagement providing detailed examples of arts practices that help sustain a creative older age.

What does creative ageing look like? The British social policy context Before discussing Five Ways to Wellbeing in further detail, we will consider the broader social policy context for older people in the UK over the past decade. (Readers specifically interested in the Five Ways may prefer to move to the next section.) The Foresight Report (2008) emphasised the need for social change in order to optimise the mental capital and wellbeing of older adults and the creation of environments that would encourage this. In the same year, the Minister for Pensions Reform asked John Elbourne to review the existing political engagement of older people. His report, Review of Older People’s Engagement with Government, was published a month after the Foresight Report and emphasised the government’s policy focus on local solutions for local problems. The report complained that, in spite of this policy objective, local authorities were still not making older people’s voices a sufficient priority, with only a third of local authorities having ‘meaningful engagement with the older community’ (p. 43). Elbourne’s report included recommendations that a UK Advisory Forum for older people be established and that there should be an increased focus on ‘developing engagement with older people’ (p. 46) to ensure that older people were listened to and their independence and wellbeing supported. While the report referred to wellbeing, no direct links with creative ageing were made. Government responded to Elbourne’s report the following year in Empowering Engagement: A Stronger Voice for Older People, which articulated a commitment to develop a UK Advisory Forum on Ageing as part of the updating of the Government’s Ageing Strategy (Department for Work and Pensions 2009, p. 25). The Forum then engaged in the development of the strategy, Building a Society for All Ages, designed to ‘promote everyone’s well-being, help keep people healthy, create a stronger, richer sense of community and boost our economy’ (HM Government 2009, p. 4). There is evidence throughout the strategy of the Five Ways to Wellbeing concepts seeping into the policy recommendations, from references to staying active, including free access to museums and galleries to everyone over 60 (pp. 13, 21), participation in later-life learning (p. 22) and the strengthening of bonds in communities through intergenerational activities which enable people to ‘connect’, as the Five Ways proposes (p. 49). The following year, the government’s white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, detailed its ambition to encourage healthy ageing, which included ‘creating opportunities to become active, remain socially connected, and play an active part in communities’ (HM Government 2010, p. 50). Both papers promote support of ‘Older People’s Day’, which coincides with the ‘United

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Nations International Day of Older Persons’, as a way of celebrating the contribution of older people to society and a means through which to change negative attitudes towards ageing. Celebrations take place across the UK each year in October to celebrate ageing through creative means. In 2016, for example, a broad programme of creative activities took place in Hull, shortly to become UK City of Culture 2017, ranging from theatre performances to tea dances to intergenerational choirs (Churchill 2016). In 2010, Fairer Society, Healthy Lives (the Marmot Report), presented a strategic review of health inequalities in England. The report emphasised the need to remove barriers to community participation and thus reduce social isolation and develop social capital, noting that ‘[s]ocial isolation impacts on health’ and that ‘social networks and social participation act as protective factors against dementia or cognitive decline over the age of 65’ (Marmot 2010, pp. 137– 138). Well-designed green spaces were identified as a means of increasing levels of ‘social contact and social integration’ and encouraging older people to be more physically active in their communities (p. 131). The report identified six policy recommendations drawn from a life-course perspective which aimed to reduce health inequalities and highlighted the significant contribution made by services which ‘promote the health, well being and independence of older people’ (p. 20). One of the pathways recommended for reducing social isolation is the enhancement of community empowerment, a proposal that draws on recommendations in the Elbourne review two years earlier. This advice clearly derives from Five Ways to Wellbeing, particularly in terms of the slogans ‘connect’ and ‘be active’, and brief reference is made to the importance of providing access to cultural facilities and green spaces as a means of reducing inequalities and developing sustainable communities (p. 126). The coalition government’s policy paper on older people, 2010–2015 Government Policy: Older People, first published in 2013 and updated in 2015, provides a list of actions taken to address the issues raised by an ageing society. The policy states that as retirement becomes an increasingly ‘active phase of life’, older people should have opportunities to ‘keep learning’ and to ‘connect’ and ‘be active’ within their communities whilst taking responsibility for their own wellbeing. It celebrates the success of LinkAge Plus, a series of pilot projects which explored ways to improve local services for older people, and the announcement in 2010 of a £1 million government fund, Active@60, to help older people ‘remain active, independent and positively engaged with society’ (gov.uk 2015). The fund was in addition to the Ageing Well programme, which ran until 2012 to support councils to ‘provide a better quality of life for older people’ (gov.uk 2015). Active@60 ran from March to December 2011, with the central aim of helping older people ‘stay or become more active’ in their communities, by engaging ‘Community Agents’ (community groups and volunteers, typically retired women aged between 55 and 69) to organise and promote activities which older people would find interesting (Department for Work and Pensions 2012, p. 2). The programme offered a range of creative opportunities through

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physical activities (including dance), social activities (including knitting circles and choirs) and those to develop skills (such as arts and crafts). Moreover, community groups were enabled through the programme to develop a more diverse range of activities for their members, such as one allotment group which introduced free art lessons, using a new creative activity as an incentive for people to join (p. 37). The programme’s evaluation report on ‘what worked well’, Outcomes of the Active at 60 Community Agent Programme (2012), found that the opportunity to make friends and socialise (connect), get out of the house (be active) and learn new skills (keep learning) were in the top six reported benefits of the programme for older people. The report noted the value of engaging with community groups in delivering this support, through providing a familiar meeting place for older people to participate in creative activities which facilitated opportunity for improved self-esteem and confidence, improved mental wellbeing and improved physical health (Hatamian et al. 2012, p. 17). Similarly, evaluation of Ageing Well, a sector-led initiative to provide support for local authorities in England, delivered by the Local Government Association (LGA) and funded by the Department for Work and Pensions, addressed some of the issues and challenges presented by an ageing society (Harkness et al. 2012, p. 2). Key outcomes of the programme encouraged direct involvement of older people and included local authorities acquiring an ‘increased awareness of the needs and challenges of an ageing society’, putting structures in place to ‘promote the wellbeing and quality of life of older people’ and ensuring that ‘council strategies are informed by the needs and aspirations of older people’ (p. 8). It provided knowledge and resources, such as strategies, action plans and engagement workshops, for promoting ways in which councils can create a ‘good place to grow old’. The programme was to function as a ‘catalyst and impetus for helping to change attitudes and improve approaches to tackling ageing issues’ (p. 49) while noting that such a ‘cultural shift’ does not come without challenges (p. 43). Significantly, it advocated creative ageing in, for example, Bristol, where Linkage (an initiative developed by the Bristol Older People’s Partnership Board) worked with a local community arts organisation, acta (access creativity theatre arts), to set up an arts group enabling older people to learn new creative skills through puppet making, creative writing and performance (LGA n/d). The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), in their report Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport (2014), found that arts engagement is associated with a higher level of wellbeing ‘valued at £1,084 per person per year’ (Fujiwara, Kudrna and Dolan 2014, p. 9) when assessed through the Wellbeing Valuation Approach (a method which uses selfreported levels of wellbeing). Two years later, DCMS published The Culture White Paper, the first of its kind in over 50 years, which stated that ‘we are now beginning to understand better the profound relationship between culture, health and wellbeing’ (2016 p. 13). The white paper states that ‘engaging with culture (visiting, attending and participation) significantly increases overall life

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satisfaction’ (p. 15), and acknowledges that there is an increasing number of case studies and research projects addressing ‘the benefit of cultural activities for older people’ (p. 33). However, the white paper stated that more evidence of the wellbeing benefits of cultural engagement is required and called for more collaborative working between commissioners and the cultural sector. More positively, the white paper declared that the government would work with Arts Council England ‘to ensure that publicly-funded cultural events […] have a cumulative positive effect on health’ (p. 33), would respond to recommendations made in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing inquiry report (published in 2017, see below), and would work with initiatives including the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and the Centre for Ageing Better to explore how to measure the impact that culture can have on older people’s wellbeing. Arts Council England and the Baring Foundation’s Celebrating Age Fund has been providing financial support since 2016 to enable cultural spaces to empower older people through programme development, to commission older artists to inspire creativity in later life and to enable older people to access creative activities throughout the community. Evaluation of these funded programmes may contribute to the evidence-base for creative ageing. Agenda for Later Life 2015: A Great Place to Grow Older set out Age UK’s policy priorities for ageing, the principal one being to create ‘communities where older people can have the opportunity to stay active and be recognised as valued members of society’ (Age UK 2015, p. 5). In 2017, Age UK published an Index of Wellbeing in Later Life in response to the lack of coherent means to measure wellbeing for older people and to support ‘evidenceinformed advocacy and policymaking’ (Age UK 2017, p. 3). The index includes 40 indicators of wellbeing across five domains: personal, social, health, resources and local. Links with creative ageing can be seen in indicators under the domains of personal, social and health: thinking skills and intergenerational connections (personal); creative and cultural participation and social participation (social); physical activities and mental wellbeing (health). Furthermore, these indicators can be related directly to Five Ways to Wellbeing – creative and cultural participation (‘take notice’), physical activities (‘be active’), thinking skills (‘keep learning’), social participation (‘connect’) and civic participation (‘give’) (p. 6). Significantly, the report claims that engagement in creative and cultural activities, ranging from playing a musical instrument to taking part in a carnival, ‘makes the highest contribution of 5.75 per cent to one’s overall wellbeing’ (p. 5).1 Reports such as the Index of Wellbeing in Later Life are welcome additions to the development of a creative ageing policy landscape; however, more evidence on the efficacy of arts interventions in later life is required to support the assertion that engagement in creative and cultural activities is of particular benefit to older people. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW) Inquiry Report Creative Health (2017) provides some examples of the contribution the arts can make to ‘healthy ageing’ in older adulthood and end-of-life care. However, there are gaps in the evidence

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base in areas relevant to later life, including prevention and management of long-term conditions and delaying admission into residential care (p. 156). The final recommendation in Creative Health is for evidence to be reviewed regularly by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, so that it might be included in its guidance, leading to more clearly evidence-based policymaking. The challenge in consolidating the evidence stems from the diversity of creative activities which benefit people in later life and the heterogeneous methodologies and reporting styles adopted to provide evidence. Creative Health calls for mixed-methods research to demonstrate the financial savings – such as reduction of GP visits and hospital admissions – made possible through arts engagement in later life, combined with creative research methods such as film making, to enhance the relevance and impact of the evidence in persuading policy-makers and commissioners of the benefits of arts engagement in older age (Creative Health 2017; Pluye and Nha Hong 2014). Further research is essential, but for Alice Wiseman, Director of Public Health, Gateshead, the benefits are already clear: ‘The arts play a vital role in creative and supporting feelings of wellbeing. Exploring our creativity offers myriad ways to connect, move, give, learn and notice – the five ways to wellbeing’ (Creative Health 2017).

The Five Ways to Wellbeing in action The concept of wellbeing comprises two main elements: feeling good and functioning well. Feelings of happiness, contentment, enjoyment, curiosity and engagement are characteristic of someone who has a positive experience of their life. Equally important for wellbeing is our functioning in the world. Experiencing positive relationships, having some control over one’s life and having a sense of purpose are all important attributes of wellbeing.2 In the NEF Report, wellbeing is defined as ‘feeling good and functioning well’ (Five Ways to Wellbeing NEF Report, Aked et al. 2008, p. 1).3 ‘Functioning well’ requires an element of personal volition and control (NEF Report, p. 2); in the report, emphasis is laid on actions the individual can take rather than on instrumental or structural change requiring government intervention (NEF Report p. 4). The report suggests that, when combined, these elements may generate ‘mental capital’, comprising resilience, self-esteem, cognitive capacity and emotional intelligence (p. 13). Unlocking the ‘mental capital’ in older people in order to release their potential and promote their wellbeing are identified as priorities (Foresight Report – Executive Summary: p. 34 and Full Report, p. 206), and ‘social networking’ is seen as an important part of the solution. The Foresight Report highlights depression and anxiety as significant issues confronting older people and demands a ‘step change’ in governance (Foresight Report – Executive Summary Report, p. 33). Reductive images of ageing abound (Hogan 2016a), and the need to combat negative stereotyping and the under-use of older people by society is highlighted in the hope that the mental resources of older people may become more fully

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available for themselves and society. This can be realised by the co-production model that is a key principle for many of the participatory arts. Indeed, it is clear that community arts activity offers much of what is being advocated for older people, especially with regard to the importance of social networks and social activity which combat isolation and promote the development of social relationships and community engagement (NEF Report, pp. 34–35). Furthermore, as Aked et al. point out, such activity protects individuals against cognitive decline in later life and wards off depressive symptoms and anxiety (NEF Report, p. 7). Some health authorities are making bold statements about the value of the Five Ways: North West NHS states baldly that ‘[b]y adopting the five ways to wellbeing, you can increase your life expectancy by 7.5 years’. Links between the Five Ways to Wellbeing and the arts for health have been made by Hogan and Warren (2013), Cameron et al. (2013) and Hogan (2017), who have noted that these five actions link to behaviours which can develop in participatory arts projects. Hogan and Warren (2013) explored how this can be particularly beneficial for older women, who are often disempowered through gender discrimination and disenfranchising cultural factors. This chapter will further examine the value of the Five Ways to Wellbeing in relation to arts engagement by way of the scheme’s five headings:

Connect Social participation has been shown as crucial for good mental-health (NEF Report p. 5). The report identifies social relationships as critical for promoting wellbeing and for acting as a ‘buffer’ against mental ill health among people of all ages (NEF Report p. 5). The research synthesis concludes that sustained social relationships, when positively experienced, are ‘supportive, encouraging, and meaningful’. An important finding is that wider, more ‘superficial’ relationships are also important for people’s feelings of connectedness and sense of self-worth in relation to belonging to communities (p. 6). Thus membership of cultural groups as a participant, or even as an audience member, can engender important aspects of wellbeing. Choir master Gareth Malone represents an example of the popularisation of the health benefits of community singing through his television programmes (Hogan and Warren 2013; Hogan 2017). His musical endeavours with ‘military wives’, most of whom had never sung before, and his subsequent projects with hospital staff, mail and water company employees and airport employees show the benefits of participation, offering stories of the boosting of individuals’ selfconfidence. Moreover, an important aspect of work-based choirs has been in bringing together people who would never normally meet: Thus a hospital porter sings alongside a consultant surgeon, for example. In the case of the Royal Mail, tensions between the workforce and management were palpable, and participation in the choir gave improved opportunities for interchange and shared understanding. Furthermore, the programmes illustrate how workplace morale was generally boosted through participation.4 The military wives ended

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up singing to the royal family at the Royal Albert Hall. Notwithstanding these prestigious performances, the primary enduring legacy noted by the women when interviewed was enhanced social support and camaraderie. For older populations, who typically experience loneliness, this sense of social support and fellowship is important. Choirs are, obviously enough, a type of community, and it is evident that such community arts activities encompass the essential aspects of the Five Ways by way of the intense group bonding achieved through rehearsal and performance. Hence, engagement of this kind very visibly meets the ‘connect’ criterion of the Five Ways to Wellbeing. In visual-arts practice, connection can take place on many different levels, from the installation of an art work in a hospital, and the debates about it, to the production of art works in community settings. User and staff engagement and a sense of control over developments have been found to be crucial to the success of arts in hospital projects and in palliative-care settings (Daykin et al. 2010, p. 43). Many community-based art projects give participants opportunities to make their own art. Studio-based approaches offer a range of social interactions and self-expression via the making process. Various ways of structuring studio experiences exist. These might include informal, round-table, spontaneous sharing or facilitated turn-taking. Alternatively, more formal presentations by individuals to the group might be undertaken with or without group critique. Group art projects may enable communication by necessitating negotiation (Hogan and Coulter 2014): These can range from individuals producing a segment of a larger work (for example, a small piece of stained glass for a window or a fabric segment for a collage or banner) to works conceived and executed through processes of group discussion and ongoing co-operation. What might seem like small differences can have large effects on how interactions with others are shaped. The latter example might give rise to feelings of insecurity about negotiating or being sufficiently assertive or being heard and valued. The Gorton Visual Arts Group’s ‘Rolling Programme’, which ran from 2014 to 2015 in Manchester, empowered older artists to take collective control of their own visual arts’ project through their involvement in the co-productive design of the project, which led to the creation of a collective piece of work (People’s Health Trust 2017) (see John Miles’s account of Gorton Visual Arts Group’s activities in Chapter 16). If an intensive group model is in action, a skilled group facilitator can help feelings to be articulated and can steer the experience in a positive direction; similarly, art therapists work purposefully with group processes (Hogan 2016a). However, even if the interaction is just a conversation with another participant during the tea break, there are opportunities to connect with others, improving social links and relationships: As older artists who participated in the Rolling Programme noted, ‘It’s a very friendly community’, typically adding, ‘I’ve made lots of friends’ (People’s Health Trust 2017, p. 4). Crucially, the social interaction involved in arts engagement can help to overcome loneliness, which in turn can act as a protective factor against dementia (APPG 2017, pp. 126–127).

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Be active The NEF research synthesis concluded that regular physical activity is associated with a greater sense of wellbeing and lower rates of depression and anxiety in all age groups (NEF Report, p. 6). Aside from the biophysical aspects of activity, physical activity is thought to have important consequences for feelings of self-efficacy, as well as distracting negative thoughts (NEF Report, p. 7). Longitudinal studies provide some evidence to indicate that physical activity guards against mental decline in later life and against the onset of depression and anxiety (Kirkwood et al. 2008; NEF Report, p. 7). Furthermore, the report concludes that even small changes in the activity levels of elderly people enhance wellbeing (NEF Report, p. 6). Many cultural activities have physical aspects, aside from getting to and from the activities themselves. A good instance of this is community singing: Sessions often include vigorous physical ‘warm-up’ exercises, such as bending and stretching, mouth stretching movements and body shaking to limber up and relax muscles, and the deep breathing required for singing has recognised physiological benefits. Also, in this example, being ‘active’ extends beyond the actual art activity, as choirs often also have social activities associated with them, and there is often interim practice: Thus, being in a choir often involves more than just the engagement in the class. There is also arguably a sense of responsibility which is positive, because a certain core number of participants is necessary for a good sound in each music part (bass, tenor, alto, soprano); if there are too few altos, then that part will sound weak and have an impact on the overall sound, or if one is responsible for bringing the sheet music that day one must turn up, and so there is a positive sense of obligation. Often community choirs are short of men for the bass section, so there is extra pressure for basses to attend regularly. There is an opportunity for affirmation, which elderly men may be lacking. The benefits of singing for older people have been recognised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which has endorsed ‘A Choir in Every Care Home’, a project recommended in a study on singing in later life (Clift et al. 2016). Though we are using the example of music, it is obvious enough how a visual art-making activity might contain similar components, e.g. bending and stretching over a large art work, walking to the venue, helping to set up a room or serving refreshments. Both types of engagement are psychologically and emotionally stimulating in different ways, involving concentration and decision-making. Though dance is a more obvious example involving physical exertion, the above examples illustrate how different types of arts engagement meet the ‘be active’ criterion of the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Take notice The NEF research synthesis suggests that heightened awareness and ‘mindfulness’ are associated with positive mental states, as well as ‘self-regulated behaviour and heightened self-knowledge’ (NEF Report, p. 8). Taking notice

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is about being aware and being attentive. Opportunities for self-reflection and emotional engagement are inherent in the art process; when we sing well, we need to think about the meaning of the words and allow ourselves to feel emotion and consequently there is great satisfaction to be gained from selfexpression through artistic engagement. Singing can be surprisingly cathartic and the performance exhilarating. In the creation of physical art works, concentration and attention to detail may be an important aspect of the making process. There are instants of just being in the moment. Absorption and rapt attention can be satisfying and mood altering. There are also aspects of perspective and composition that require analytic reflection. There is consideration of the use of materials as surface results are sought. The NEF Report, synthesising a large body of research (p. 5), notes that repetition can remove the potency of activities and one of the strengths of participatory arts engagement that it is varied and challenging. The transformative and revitalising nature of art making is hard to capture. As one of the authors of the current chapter has noted elsewhere: metaphors, symbols and the expressive use of art materials combine to create a rich language for self-expression and the opportunity for the translation of strong emotions into pictorial expression which can be visceral in its intensity. Differences in scale or perspective, tone and colour … allow for a potentially sophisticated articulation of thoughts and feelings …. The use of symbols enables the expression of moods and immaterial ideas or qualities, which would otherwise by hard to articulate. Tacit embodied feelings can be sensed and explored thorough the manipulation of materials. The process of making art works is in itself potentially revelatory, triggering strong feelings and revealing previously unexpressed issues. The materials themselves, their very substance, can be evocative. It is a sensory process in which the movements of the body and the tactile sensation of the materials are evocative. (Hogan 2016b, p. 1) In musical activity, musical arrangements and repertoire changes, and with art making there are endless opportunities to make unique works of art. For those working figuratively, there is also a practice of observation of nature; this practice can lead to a more acute consciousness of objects and landscapes and can heighten awareness. Hence, such engagement meets the ‘take notice’ part of the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Keep learning Learning in adulthood has long been linked with positive effects on wellbeing, in terms of life-fulfilment, cheerfulness and a sense of worth and resilience. Self-esteem, self-efficacy, a sense of purpose and competence and enhanced social integration are all linked with such engagement, as well as feelings of

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hope (NEF Report, p. 9). The learning of new musical repertoires and the development of new skills are essential elements of community singing, providing an ongoing challenge and a continual source of stimulation. Often, as part of the warm-up activity or after it, percussive rhythmic clicking and clapping is practiced to improve co-ordination and timing so as to improve overall performance. Participation in a community choir might also lead to the positive decision to learn to play an instrument or to learn to sight-read sheet music. Furthermore, ‘Silver Song Clubs’ have been shown to promote learning ‘as an antidote to cognitive decline’ in addition to improving quality of life and providing social support (APPG 2017, p. 123). In community arts, there are multiple opportunities to learn new skills, from gaining expertise in the mixing of paints to create particular hues and knowing what effects different brushes or grades of pencil can create to acquiring technical skills required for representing three-dimensions or convincing perspective. Looking at the work of other artists may become part of the practice for inspiration and cultural reference and can include trips to galleries and libraries, which can ‘contribute to increased psychological wellbeing and have a part to play in age and dementia-friendly communities’ (APPG 2017, p. 128). A member of the group who has more knowledge and confidence about art and art practices may facilitate this. Often simple visual prompts such as a pile of postcards of art works may act as a stimulus. Art works can be responded to in very personal ways, triggering personal memories and reflections (Newman, Goulding and Whitehead 2013). There is also emotional learning to be had, as the image reveals unexpected aspects of self, which are then attended to. Images can surprise us, engagement with artworks can be ‘personally and collectively beneficial for older people’ and can ‘create meanings that help maintain a positive sense of self’ (Newman, Goulding and Whitehead 2014, p. 447). Thus, such engagement meets the ‘keep learning’ element of the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Give The NEF research synthesis notes that feelings of pleasure and contentment are strongly associated with participation in community and social life; furthermore, that ‘helping, sharing, giving and team-oriented behaviours are likely to be associated with an increased sense of self-worth and positive feelings’ (NEF Report, p. 10). For older people, volunteering is associated with a sense of purpose and importantly offering help to others has been shown to be associated with reduced mortality rates (p. 10). Engagement in community arts creates many opportunities for altruism, from giving a fellow choir, theatre or art-group member a lift home to more technical engagement such as researching venues, translating a song into English, writing a musical arrangement or setting up equipment. Moreover, performance to assist fundraising and to support local social and community events is often a significant role for community choirs. Giving can also include nurturing others who are beginners

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and need more support. The altos might meet at a member’s home, under the wing of an experienced singer, to practice a particularly complex section, for example. Likewise, a more experienced artist might teach a technique to another group member, instructing them in how to use materials or to achieve a particular effect or, more pragmatically, simply to show them where materials are kept. An image might become a gift. Exhibitions can support good causes or raise awareness of particular cultural or political issues. Thus, such engagement yields opportunities which meet the ‘give’ element of the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Discussion and conclusion There is a strong case to be made that community-based arts in health and participatory arts initiatives encompass all aspects of the Five Ways to Wellbeing and that they are significant in aiding recovery from mental ill health (Hogan 2017). Indeed, ‘social participation’ is a crucial factor in mental health resilience (Boyle and Harris 2009). Social networks have been characterised as ‘the very immune system of society’ (NEF Co-production Manifesto, p. 8). It is clear that much participatory arts activity meets the ideals of co-production, which seeks to encourage people ‘to use the human skills and experience they have to help deliver public or voluntary services’. Since participatory arts are often created in and by communities and sustained by those who engage in them, they produce resources that are ‘no longer the preserve of professionals or commissioners, but a shared responsibility, both building and using a multifaceted network of mutual support’ (NEF Co-production Manifesto, pp. 10– 11). As Nick Clegg (future Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister) phrased it in 2009, ‘[w]e should not all be supplicants at the state machine, but enabled to take charge of our health’. Or as David Cameron (2007) (future Conservative prime minister) put it: ‘The public become not the passive recipients of state services but … doers, not the done-for’ (cited NESTA discussion paper 2009, p. 2). The philosophical basis of co-production acknowledges that public services and technocratic management systems have become blind to the most valuable resources they process. The fact that social needs continue to rise is not due to a failure to consult or conduct opinion research. It is due to a failure to ask people for their help and to use their skills they have. Instead, people are defined entirely by their needs and so those needs become the only asset they have. No one should be surprised when people then behave in ways that perpetuate such needs. (NEF Co-production Manifesto, p. 11) Unlocking the ‘capital’ of an ageing population can be an important facet of a significant cultural shift. Certainly, key aspects of co-production are evident within participatory arts and correspond with the call to unlock the mental capital of older people. A potential critique of co-production per se is that it is a

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bourgeois notion that will tend to use those who already have high levels of assets and sideline those with less well-developed skills, creating pockets of profound deprivation and disenfranchisement. There is a risk of women in particular being sidelined because of deference norms in certain communities and more generalised inequality in contexts in which men tend to be put forward as leaders. It is a model that is also perhaps potentially undervalues professional competences, which are so important to arts production and facilitation, because it advocates that experts are not necessary. Facer and Enright (2016) provide a more complex model of co-production, which will in turn can help analysis of wellbeing interventions, as they emphasise the multidimensional nature of projects and the complexity of roles within them. The arts cannot be viewed as a simple palliative, since they can be employed in a variety of ways with very different models of what participation and co-production means. Nevertheless, this chapter has illustrated precisely how arts engagement can meet the criteria of Five Ways to Wellbeing. If elements of co-production do reduce the distinction between producers and consumers, for example, or devolve leadership, then activities such as that of choir master Gareth Malone might resist the criticism that the arts are being used as a palliative to sustain a capitalist model of employment relations. On the other hand, as the New Economics Foundation emphasises, if co-production is used primarily as a means of using human skills and experience to help deliver public or voluntary services, then it can be characterised as a means of underpinning government cuts, possibly in a cynical manner. Increasingly framed within a neoliberal political agenda, these discourses about successful ageing expediently place the responsibility for the maintenance of wellbeing on the ageing individual. Additionally, successful ageing now includes them also serving as crucial ‘assets’ in maintaining and developing services (Bülow and Söderqvist 2014). Nevertheless, further research (NEF: Happy Planet Index) would seem to confirm that creativity and connections with others correlate with happiness across cultures: ‘those who consider certain values such as loyalty and creativity to be most important are more satisfied with their lives than those who value things such as wealth and strong government more highly’ (p. 31). Therefore, despite our wariness about neo-liberal principles endorsing ‘active self-entrepreneurship’ as a means of overcoming welfare dependency (Bülow and Söderqvist 2014) and thus of reducing state spending on older people, we nonetheless argue for creative ageing as providing the foundations for older-age wellbeing.

Notes 1 Data collected from the Understanding Society (USoc.) annual household survey in the UK. 2 Definition on Five Ways to Wellbeing website page: http://neweconomics.org/ five-ways-to-wellbeing-the-evidence/?_sft_project=five-ways-to-wellbeing. 3 NEF Report refers to the Executive Summary unless the full report is referred to explicitly.

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4 However, in the later programmes, the choirs competed against each other, which may have annulled some of the original benefits of participation for the losers, though it did make for interesting television. The competition was justified in terms of improving artistic standards, which is an ongoing tension in community arts discourses.

References All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (2017) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing. London: APPG. 1–189. Age UK (2015) Agenda for Later Life 2015: A Great Place to Grow Older. London: Age UK. 1–83. Age UK (2017) A Summary of Age UK’s Index of Wellbeing in Later Life. London: Age UK. 1–15. Boyle, D. and M. Harris (2009) The challenge of co-production. How equal partnerships between professionals and the public are crucial to improving public services. Discussion Paper. NEF, The Lab & NESTA. December. 1–14. Bülow, M. H., and T. Söderqvist (2014) Successful ageing: A historical overview and critical analysis of a successful concept. Journal of Aging Studies 31: 139–149. Cameron, M., N. Crane, R. Ings and K. Taylor (2013) Promoting wellbeing through creativity: How arts and public health learn from each other. Perspectives in Public Health 133: 52–59. Churchill, E. (2016) Older people get creative this September [online]. Hull 2017 UK City of Culture. Available at: https://www.hull2017.co.uk/discover/article/older-p eople-get-creative-september/ [Accessed 28 April 2017]. Clegg, N. (2009) The Liberal Moment. London: Demos. Clift, S., R. Gilbert and T. Vella-Burrows (2016) A Choir in Every Care Home: A Review of Research on the Value of Singing for Older People. London: The Baring Foundation. 1–71. Cooper, C., J. Field, U. Goswami, R. Jenkins and B. Sahakin (2008) Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project Final Report. London: The Government Office for Science. Daykin, N., E. Byrne, T. Soteriou and S. O’Connor (2010) Using art to enhance mental healthcare environments: Findings from qualitative research. Arts & Health 2 (1): 33–46. Department for Culture, Media & Sport (2016) The Culture White Paper. London: DCMS. Cm 9218. Department for Work and Pensions (2009) Empowering Engagement: A Stronger Voice for Older People: The Government Response to John Elbourne’s Review. London: Department for Work and Pensions. 1–48. Elbourne, E. (2008) Review of Older People’s Engagement with Government. London: Department for Work and Pensions. 1–83. Facer, K. and B. Enright (2016) Creating Living Knowledge: The Connected Communities Programme: Community University Relationships and the Participatory Turn in the Production of Knowledge. Bristol, UK: University of Bristol/AHRC Connected Communities. Report. 1–168. Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project Final Project Report (2008). London: The Government Office for Science. 1–317. Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project Final Project Report – Executive Summary (2008). London: The Government Office for Science. 1–52.

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Fujiwara, D., L. Kudrna and P. Dolan (2014) Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport. London: Department for Culture, Media & Sport. 1–45. gov.uk (2015) Policy Paper: 2010 to 2015 Government Policy: Older People [online]. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-governm ent-policy-older-people/2010-to-2015-government-policy-older-people [Accessed 4 February 2017]. Hatamian, A., D. Perarmain and S. Golden (2012) Outcomes of the Active at 60 Community Agent Programme. Sheffield, UK: Department for Work and Pensions. 1–26. Harkness, V., D. Cameron, J. Latter, M. Ravat and L. Bridges (2012) Preparing for an Ageing Society: Evaluating the Ageing Well Programme Parts 1 and 2. Sheffield, UK: Department for Work and Pensions. 1–80. Hogan, S. (2016a) “Age is just a number init?”. Interrogating perceptions of ageing women within social gerontology. Women’s Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal 45(1): 57–77. Hogan, S. (2016b) Art Therapy Theories: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge. Hogan, S. (2017) Community-based arts, health and wellbeing in Britain. In S. Clift and T. Stickley (Eds), Arts, Health & Wellbeing: A Theoretical Enquiry. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hogan, S. and A. Coulter (2014) The Introductory Guide to Art Therapy. Experiential Teaching and Learning for Students and Practitioners. London and New York: Routledge. Hogan, S. and L. Warren (2013) Women’s inequality: A global problem explored in participatory arts. International Perspectives on Research-Guided Practice in Community-Based Arts in Health. Special Issue of UNESCO Observatory 3(3): 1–27. HM Government (2009) Building a Society for All Ages. London: Department for Work and Pensions. 1–59. HM Government (2010) Healthy Lives, Healthy People: Our Strategy for Public Health in England. London: The Stationery Office. 1–96. Kirkwood, T., J. Bond, C. May, I. McKeith and M. Teh (2008) Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project. Mental Capital Through Life: Future Challenges. Report. London: The Government Office for Science. 1–95. 20–21. LGA (Local Government Association) (n/d) LinkAge Bristol [online]. www.local.gov. uk/linkage-bristol [Accessed 28 April 2017]. Marmot, M. (2010) Fair Society, Healthy Lives: The Marmot Review. London: The Marmot Review. NEF (Aked, J., N. Marks, C. Cordon and S. Thompson) (2008) Five Ways to Wellbeing: A Report Presented to the Foresight Project on Communicating the Evidence Base for Improving People’s Well-being. London: Centre for Well-being, NEF (The New Economics Foundation). 1–23. NEF (2008) Co-production. A Manifesto for Growing the Core Economy. London: New Economics Foundation. 1–15. NEF (2006) The Happy Planet Index. An Index of Human Well-being & Environmental Impact. London: New Economics Foundation (in association with Friends of the Earth). 1–58. NESTA (Boyle, D and M. Harris) (2009) The Challenge of Co-Production. Discussion Paper. London: NESTA. 1–26. Newman, A., A. Goulding and C. Whitehead (2013) How cultural capital, habitus and class influence the responses of older adults to the field of contemporary visual art. Poetics 41(5): 456–480.

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Newman, A., A. Goulding and C. Whitehead (2014) Contemporary visual art and the construction of identity: Maintenance and revision processes in older adults. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20(4): 432–453. People’s Health Trust (2017) Gorton Visual Arts Group – Rolling Programme: Active Communities Case Study [PDF]. Available at: https://www.peopleshealthtrust.org.uk/sites/ default/files/Gorton%20Visual%20Arts%20Group%20-%20Rolling%20Programme.pdf [Accessed 4 April 2018]. Pluye, P. and Q. Nha Hong (2014) Combining the power of stories and the power of numbers: Mixed methods research and mixed studies reviews. Annual Review Public Health 35: 29–45. World Health Organisation (2002) Active Ageing Report. Geneva: WHO. 1–60.

Part II

Rethinking late style

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Turner’s last works and his critics Sam Smiles

J. M. W. Turner’s later oils and watercolours have attracted attention for over a century as a distinctive and spectacular phase in his development as a painter. Produced between the later 1830s and his death in 1851 aged 76, these last works are regularly promoted as the moment when the essential nature of Turner’s contribution to the history of art is revealed most clearly. Independent of their intrinsic qualities, they have been used particularly to support arguments for the modernity of Turner’s practice, their style being deemed to anticipate Impressionism or even abstract art. Turner’s old age is therefore regarded as proof positive that creative decline is not inevitable; indeed, the works he painted in his sixties and seventies are seen as testaments to his ceaseless invention and artistic intransigence, which resulted in an audacious formal experimentation that baffled his contemporary critics and was only properly understood under the aegis of Modernism. In this reading his final paintings join that select group of achievements by exalted artists who are agreed to have developed a distinctive late style and they are used to buttress claims for late-life creativity as a culminating episode in a gifted artist’s career. Insofar as this positive valorization has implications for thinking about latelife activity more widely it is to be welcomed. That welcome, however, should be a judicious one. As Stephen Katz and Erin Campbell have noted, in our desire to overcome gerontophobia we must not fall into the trap of an uncritical gerontophilia (Katz and Campbell 2005). Moreover, paying attention to Turner’s final years with only the late-life paradigm as a guide has serious consequences for any adequate historical account of what he accomplished in the last 15 years of his career. An elderly artist’s final works may indeed be conditioned by age-related circumstances, especially those pertaining to mental and bodily health; sometimes they may be dominated by them. But reducing an understanding of that output to those circumstances runs the risk of turning artworks into (auto)biographical statements and ignoring their connections with wider, more public contexts. Nevertheless, the fact that Turner was an elderly artist in his ‘late’ period cannot be ignored, either. He certainly didn’t ignore it. A year before he died, he spoke of the physical deterioration associated with ageing: ‘I always dreaded it with horror’ (Turner 1850). And although he had remained as active as ever in his sixties it is undeniably true that Turner’s health became increasingly fragile

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in his final years. The fragmentary evidence that survives shows that he was affected by age-related physical changes and that he experienced some acute bouts of ill health as well as some chronic conditions: he needed reading glasses, found walking increasingly difficult, suffered with digestive problems and eventually lost his teeth. After 1846 his exhibition record at the Royal Academy began to falter and ill health probably explains it. In 1847 he showed only a reworked canvas, in 1848 nothing, and in 1849 he exhibited an early painting and another reworked canvas. Only in his final exhibiting year, 1850, did Turner show four new works. He died on 19 December 1851; his physician gave the cause of death as heart failure. If we review age-related aspects of the criticism that Turner’s works received in his lifetime, immediately after his death and more recently, we can see how assumptions about creativity across the lifespan have changed over the last 250 years. Critics at the time and across the second half of the nineteenth century tended to agree that these final years showed a falling off in Turner’s abilities. In its obituary, The Athenaeum described his last works as ‘those eccentricities of a great genius in which he of late years indulged … those were his dotages and lees’ (Athenaeum 1851). For some, that decline was explicable in terms of physical or even mental collapse, as we shall see. In the modern era, that verdict has been overturned and an entirely new assessment has emerged that promotes Turner’s final works as exceptional, not merely in terms of their achievement but also for their articulation of new possibilities for painting itself. Turner’s last years did indeed see him produce remarkable paintings, especially when compared with his artistic contemporaries in the early Victorian art world, and it is just as understandable that his critics were disdainful of them as it is that his modern supporters regard them as the epitome of untrammelled genius. If we are to assess this oeuvre adequately, especially in terms of what it may say about late-life creativity, we need to be aware of the several narratives that contain it. In an important sense what was and is said about Turner’s art has become part of its meaning, orchestrating the spectator’s response. What is at issue here is ultimately, therefore, a question of historical narrative. Are Turner’s last works best understood as the final chapter in an account of his creative life? As indices of an artist’s struggles with late-life concerns? As a stage in the evolution of painting from conventions of realism towards abstraction? Or as interventions in the early Victorian art world? While it might be tempting to respond that a comprehensive answer would include all of the above, these questions are not so easily reconciled. Their centres of attention focus variously on the biographical, the formal and, implicitly, the political. Correspondingly, each of these distinct narrative emphases tends to produce a different artist and a different estimation of his achievement. Age and the ageing process were deployed tactically in hostile criticism of Turner’s work both during his life and posthumously. Before examining it, however, it is important to note two key considerations. First, the criticism he endured in the late 1830s and 1840s was responding to his publicly exhibited oil paintings, not his watercolours, which were commissioned and sold

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privately to a select group of enthusiasts. Second, throughout his career Turner had supporters as well as detractors, even in the 1840s when his art was at its most challenging. Moreover, given the variety of his production in any given year, critics of his works in the Royal Academy exhibitions might praise one painting while deprecating the next. In short, Turner’s oil paintings were not universally reviled by the critics: John Ruskin’s portrayal of him as an artistic martyr is a caricature of the situation.1 That said, the hostile criticism Turner endured became more routine in his closing years, and it was often extremely vicious. His art was attacked on a number of fronts, concentrating especially on its compositional recklessness, atmospheric excess, lack of detail, unnatural and glaring colour, ungainly figures, poor drawing, obscure subjects and meaningless titles. Adding age-related epithets to the charge-sheet was, to some extent, merely twisting the knife. Singling out these comments is valuable, however, insofar as it demonstrates clearly how critics were prepared to ground their discomfort in an accepted view of the physical and mental impediments of ageing and the consequent slide from creative control, however provocative, to simple incompetence. The first attempt to dismiss Turner on age-related terms occurred when he was only 40. It was occasioned by the spectacular critical and popular success of his oil painting Crossing the Brook (now in the Tate collection), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815. His adversary on that occasion was the influential connoisseur, collector and patron Sir George Beaumont who was opposed to the novelty of Turner’s approach to landscape painting and had been persistently hostile to him over a number of years. Beaumont described Crossing the Brook as ‘weak and like the work of an Old man, one who no longer saw or felt colour properly; it was all of peagreen insipidity’ (Cave 1984, p. 4638). This was a remark made in conversation, not a public utterance, and it is best understood as Beaumont’s despairing realization that Turner had bested him and others like him whose view of landscape painting was rooted in the practice of the old masters. Yet, irrespective of these circumstances, the idea of old age as a moment of slackening engagement with the observable world speaks volumes about the assumptions still made about it. One feature of some of the criticism Turner received in his later years was the notion that he had squandered the abilities that were so evident in his earlier work, either wilfully or because his mind had deteriorated. As one critic declared in 1846: ‘The genius of Turner of late has been perverted into a channel from which the scholar may obtain no lesson, and art in its loftiest significancy no illustration’ (Morning Post 1846). Some critics were kinder, but nevertheless felt it important to consider how Turner’s advanced age was relevant to understanding these pictures. As the art critic of The Times observed on the occasion of what was to be Turner’s final showing at the Royal Academy, what Turner’s new work seemed to reveal was a reversal of expectations: To the numerous class of visitors uninitiated in the works of Mr. Turner the four pictures exhibited this year by that veteran artist will convey no

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Sam Smiles notions more distinct than the fragments of that mysterious MS., “The fallacies of Hope,” which still serves to amuse Mr. Turner and to perplex the world. When we look back to those earlier works which have long since taken their place amongst the greatest productions of this country, it would seem as if Mr. Turner had possessed in youth all the dignity of age to exchange it in age for the effervescence of youth. But to the more practised eyes which still trace through these eccentricities the hand of a great master and a matchless command over the materials of painting, careless of form and prodigal of light, these four pictures are not deficient in beauty and interest (The Times 1850)

Most critics, however, instead of beauty and interest saw only the symptoms of morbid decline. Reviewing the paintings Turner showed at the Royal Academy in 1839, one described them as ‘the most absurd ridiculous productions of a mind in a state of mental aberration’ (Court Magazine 1839). In 1846 a critic declared: ‘[I]t is impossible to look at these abortions, and think of the magnificent pictures, painted by Turner before he went mad, without a sense of melancholy’ (Daily News 1846). A year later this presumed madness was tied specifically to ageing. The critic of the Illustrated London News said of Turner’s Hero of a Hundred Fights: ‘[T]his kind of painting is not the madness of genius – it is the folly and imbecility of old age’ (Illustrated London News 1847). Even Ruskin subscribed to this view. Looking back over Turner’s career after his death, Ruskin declared his ‘Third Period’ to be the decade 1835–45 which, although ‘the crowning period of Turner’s genius’, nevertheless contained evidence of his approaching decline: loss of distinctness, absence of deliberation in arrangement and increasing feebleness of hand. Looking at some of the later exhibited works, Ruskin declared that he would ‘take no notice of … pictures painted in the period of decline. It was ill-judged to exhibit them’ (Cook and Wedderburn 1903–12, vol. 13, p. 167). Their only value lay in their biographical testimony, with some features of their handling indicative of that mental disease which, for Ruskin, set in towards the close of 1845: ‘In 1845, his health gave way, and his mind and sight partially failed. The pictures painted in the last five years of his life are of wholly inferior value’ (p. 99). In another context, Ruskin dismissed pictures Turner had exhibited in 1846 as ‘indicative of mental disease’ which he went so far as to date to ‘three or four months, towards the close of the year 1845’ (p. 167). Ruskin’s declaration that Turner’s sight had also been affected by old age was something to which others referred. In 1837 the critic for Blackwood’s Magazine asked: ‘Has any accident befallen Mr. Turner’s eyes? Have they been put out by the glare of his own colours?’ (Blackwood’s 1837). The accusation reappeared 5 years later: ‘Turner’s eye must play him false, it cannot truly represent to his mind either his forms or colours – or his hallucination is great’. The idea of defective vision has remained an attractive hypothesis to some, and Turner’s later paintings have been used as evidence of the progressive degeneration of

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his eyesight. These enquiries began with Richard Liebreich, an ophthalmic surgeon at St Thomas’ Hospital, who in 1872 presented an academic paper to the Royal Institution in which he concluded that Turner must have suffered from cataracts (Liebreich 1872). Liebreich had learned, presumably from Ruskin’s writings, that Turner’s mind and sight had both suffered in the last 5 years of his life, but he detected changes in Turner’s painting practice some 15 years earlier than that. More recently the ophthalmic surgeon Patrick TrevorRoper included Turner in his study of painters and eye disease, The World through Blunted Sight (Trevor-Roper 1970). For Trevor-Roper, Turner’s tendency to use an orangey-red light and to blur his forms were signs of secondary astigmatism associated with sclerosis of the lens (pp. 92–3).2 In 2014, Brian Livesley proposed a number of possible ailments affecting Turner’s eye-sight, as well as more general observations about his health (Livesley 2014). None of these assertions is beyond doubt, however. We know that Turner needed glasses for close working because his spectacles were found in his studio after his death, but numerous contemporary witnesses record that otherwise his eyes did not seem to have suffered any deterioration and were as clear and brilliant as a child’s.3 Moreover, examination of the paintings Turner had in hand in these final years, especially taking into account his sketches and unfinished works, does not support the idea that he could not distinguish colours properly and therefore mitigates any posthumous diagnosis of eye disease. And even were the medical evidence good enough to produce such a diagnosis, the problem remains that while creative activity may be affected by a medical condition, an explanation of what results from that activity is not exhausted by reference to the medical condition alone. To approach an artist’s works symptomatically is to operate with a very narrow interpretive agenda. In Turner’s case, these medical hypotheses, if not wholly wrong, provide at best a narrative frame within which the more interesting subject of Turner’s art and its meaning is positioned. In 1862 Walter Thornbury published the first full-length biography, The Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner. Echoing the criticism Turner had encountered in the 1840s, Thornbury censured the final works severely: Of his later works I am no defender. They are dreams, challenges, theories, experiments, and absurdities. The figures are generally contemptible, and the pyrotechnic colour rises sometimes almost to insanity, and occasionally sinks into imbecility. With the eye dim and the sense of form lost, the outlines are gone, and the sentiment only remains. Certainly they are what no one else could achieve, but then no one wishes to achieve them. (Thornbury 1862, p. 347) In the biography’s revised second edition he further insinuated that Turner’s last paintings were produced in a degenerate state: ‘In 1842 Turner’s power of sight and accuracy was fast declining, and even brown sherry could not brace the once dexterous fingers or clarify the clouding eyes’.4

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Those Victorian biographers of Turner who followed Thornbury echoed his judgement on Turner’s last works. Philip Gilbert Hamerton’s account was published in 1879 and shared with Ruskin a belief that Turner’s powers had faded badly in his closing years. For Hamerton, all Turner’s work after 1845 was produced in ‘a state of senile decrepitude’ (Hamerton 1897, p. 297).5 Cosmo Monkhouse’s account also appeared in 1879. Like Ruskin and Hamerton, he dated the decline to 1845 and presented Turner as a hapless victim of his condition: a great painter, the very slave of his genius, compelled to paint this and paint that at its bidding without being able to distinguish what was great and what was little, what sublime and what ridiculous. … [H]e appears to us in these last days like a great ship, rudderless, but still grand and with all sails set, at the mercy of the wind, which played with it a little while and then cast it on the rocks. (Monkhouse 1879, p. 131) The cumulative message of all these accounts is that the aged Turner lost his abilities (of eye, hand and mind) and, more cruelly, lost the discrimination that should have suggested retirement. Three hundred years earlier Vasari had said much the same thing about Titian, that ‘it would have been well for him in these his last years not to work save as a pastime, so as not to diminish with works of less excellence the reputation gained in his best years, when his natural powers were not declining and drawing towards imperfection’ (Vasari 1568, pp. 177–8). The artist is presented as the victim of age, his presumed physical and mental decrepitude overriding his creativity. Senility, in these narratives, overwhelms the artist, robbing him of professional competence, but also compromising his agency and erasing his self-awareness. These accounts of Turner’s late work lasted little more than a generation; by the close of the nineteenth century Turner’s final years had begun to receive an entirely different estimation. The acceptance of Impressionism as an authentic strategy for representation led to a wholesale recalibration of what constituted a valid pictorial practice. At the same time within arts criticism and art history new understandings of ‘late work’ as an aesthetic category were emerging, encouraging a more positive attitude to the creative effort of the aged artist. Much of this was indebted to new critical evaluations of the later works of Beethoven and Goethe, whose example prompted a more sympathetic response to the late works of visual artists, too.6 Indeed, as early as 1878, Ruskin’s friend, the Rev. William Kingsley, aware that the battle for Beethoven’s late style had been won, defended Turner’s last watercolours with that example in mind: ‘These late Swiss Drawings bear the same relation to [Turner’s] early work that Beethoven’s Choral Symphony does to one of the simple movements of his early Piano Forte Sonatas’ (Kingsley 1878, p. 535). In these new critical circumstances Turner’s career was re-imagined as progressing ineluctably towards the final triumph of his late works, now seen as

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7

fully competent productions. In 1906, as a mark of this new respect, 26 of his unfinished canvases, together with some of the exhibited work of his last years, were shown at the Tate. By 1910, when the new Turner Wing at the Tate was unveiled, these later works were received with enormous enthusiasm. As one of his admirers reported, [o]f all the periods of his art life there is none to be compared with the period contained in the few glorious years when he was past sixty and drawing near to his seventieth year, the period when light in all its manifestations obsessed him, when he produced the ‘Norham Castle, Sunrise,’ the ‘Hastings’ with the red sail, the late ‘Venice’ pictures, and the later water-colours, so delicate, so flushed with sunshine that the world of sight seems to be swimming in iridescent vapour. (Hind 1910, p. 9) This judgement was not universally accepted, of course, but the idea that Turner’s late works showed him at his greatest tended to dominate most of the accounts written about him. Most notoriously, in 1966 the Museum of Modern Art, New York, mounted the exhibition Turner: Imagination and Reality, which presented Turner’s late work as somehow anticipating developments in post-war art’s allegiance to abstraction. Its curators, Lawrence Gowing and Monroe Wheeler, argued that Turner had not begotten a school or inaugurated a stylistic lineage; rather, he had left behind a potent example for his successors. What his last paintings revealed was the intrinsic quality of painting as a self-sufficient activity, independent of a picture’s ostensible subject.8 Turner’s late work was, therefore, radical in the extreme and it was best understood out of its period, almost as though he were a contemporary artist. Theodor Adorno, similarly, cited Turner as a good example of an ‘older modern’ whose twentieth-century reception proved the point that ‘only the most advanced art of any period has any chance against the decay wrought by time’ (Adorno 1999, pp. 51–2). The formal daring of Turner’s final paintings continues to attract respect. His example is cited in a number of the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, for example, of which this statement is the most immediately applicable to considerations of the ageing artist: There are cases in which old age gives, not eternal youth, but on the contrary a sovereign liberty, a pure detachment in which one enjoys a moment of grace between life and death, and in which all elements of the machine combine to launch into the future a figure that cuts through time: Titian, Turner, Monet. (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, pp. 1–2) For Deleuze and Guattari, Turner is an exemplary artist insofar as his oeuvre includes pictures which they refer to as ‘the series Turner does not exhibit, but

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keeps secret’. It is these works, the late and unfinished oil paintings of his old age, that they find especially intriguing because they posit the possibility of an alternative to the ideological values vested in conventional understandings of the world. There is no common ground between these competing accounts of Turner’s last years: the decrepit and senile painter of the Victorian imagination or the harbinger of radical modernity promoted by twentieth-century writers. Indeed, what is usually the case today is a self-congratulatory acceptance of the ‘modern’ Turner to sustain feelings of our cultural superiority over a critically blind nineteenth century. In either case, however, what is offered is a narrative centred on ideas about the creative life and its intersection with the life-span of the elderly artist. The Victorian narrative has Turner crippled by his mortality; the modern version sees him transcend it. In 2014 Tate mounted an exhibition that approached Turner’s last years from a different perspective. Late Turner: Painting Set Free opened at Tate Britain and then transferred to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the de Young Museum, San Francisco and finally the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Over three quarters of a million visitors went to it.9 The present author was one of its curators, working with David Blayney Brown and Amy Concannon of the Tate. The intention of the exhibition was clear: to challenge both the nineteenth-century and the modern narratives of Turner’s final years by restoring his works to the complex artistic, social and political world in which they had been created. Turner would be presented not as a baffling, incompetent or mad artist beset by senility or as a proto-modernist turning his back on the contemporary world to produce works that had no relevance to Victorian culture. Instead, Turner would be shown to be actively engaged in the concerns of the day and to be fully committed to representing the early Victorian world in all its volatility. His formal development as a painter would, of course, be on display and be discussed in the catalogue, but the subjectmatter of his pictures would be fully explored, too, both to explicate what had baffled his Victorian critics and to demonstrate to Turner’s modern supporters that concentrating on form alone was to trivialize Turner’s engagement with contemporary life. The sub-title, ‘painting set free,’ was intended to provoke. It borrowed one of Lawrence Gowing’s descriptions of Turner’s last works but deployed it ironically insofar as the exhibition was intended to free Turner’s art from the over-determined, modernist readings Gowing and others had supplied. Critical reaction to the exhibition was favourable, but the terms in which it was reviewed demonstrated that the modern narrative paradigm was not easily shifted: Turner, in this varied show, is at once romantic chronicler of industrialisation and fugitive from it, retreating into an inner life of abstract phenomena and myth. (Wullschlager 2014)

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… the curatorial conceit … tells us that here is a Victorian, setting himself towards the concerns of his age. But we know of course that his greatest concern was the exploration of light and colour, which the exhibition’s wall panels dwell on hardly at all. (Güner 2014) It’s not a far bridge to cross when you learn that the Impressionists – Monet and his ilk – looked back to Turner for inspiration, and indeed guidance, in the decades after his death. And so Modern painting was born, with a posthumous assist from Turner, whether he liked it or not. Painting hurtled into the 20th century from that point, to forever be challenged, broken and reassembled. (Whyte 2015) Here at last is the Turner who matters – the man who invented modern painting. (Jones 2014) None of the critics responded to the possible contingencies of Turner’s old age. Their allegiance to the idea of Turner as a proto-modern painter seemed to render such considerations irrelevant. Yet the catalogue and the exhibition’s first room, in its Tate setting, had included material highlighting his age, his health and the problems arising from that for interpreting his paintings. What the curators had proposed was a complex Turner, old and increasingly ill, but still committed to exploring the world around him in its social, technological and political variety. His more experimental procedures could thus be seen as the development of pictorial solutions to the challenge of representing the new circumstances of the age. This was, in short, an examination of a particular sort of late-life creativity in which professional allegiances and competencies are retained to the end. Insofar as it suggested a narrative of Turner’s final years, it was a multi-layered and varied account, with the catalogue in particular offering the opportunity for a number of voices to articulate different perspectives on the artist and the work he produced after he turned 60. What the critics took from the exhibition was less rich, a highly selective and by now somewhat traditional picture of Turner the prophet of modernism. By coincidence, two films about Turner’s last years opened while the exhibition was on. By their very nature, as bio-pics, the films had to deal with Turner in his time. Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner appeared in 2014. It was the first full-length film treatment of Turner’s life since Michael Darlow’s TV film The Sun is God: The Life of J.M.W. Turner (1974), starring Leo McKern. Darlow’s film, however, blended documentary with dramatized scenes, whereas Leigh’s was a fully realized drama. Starring Timothy Spall, it ranged over the last 25 years of Turner’s life and showed the private and public sides of the artist’s persona. In a series of set pieces, the film attempted to say something about Turner’s creativity and the quality of his work even when beset by

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infirmity in its final scenes. Leigh’s film overshadowed Michael Booth’s short film The Eccentric Mr Turner (2015), which was shot in one take and starred Gary Taylor as Turner, reviewing his life in flashback as he works on The Slave Ship (1840, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). All three films attempted to portray something of Turner’s creative process, both his intellectual preoccupations and his physical manipulation of materials, situating that activity in the context of his later life. Spall and Taylor’s portrayals of Turner at work show him in full possession of his professional abilities as an artist, but the films also pay attention to his increasing physical decline (Spall) and mental fantasy (Taylor), thereby suggesting that the art remains vital until the very last moment while its maker declines by degrees. Whether this approach throws any light on the particular nature of late-life creativity is a moot point. It is true that these films may be taken as celebrations of the elderly Turner, but we might ask whether the biographical portrayal of an artist, if it pays attention to the physical signs of ageing, can avoid its audience projecting on to it the accustomed narrative of creative vigour giving way to a poignant slackening of abilities. The assumptions about the ageing artist that dogged Turner in his later life may not have been vanquished after all. It seems, then, that in the early twenty-first century attitudes to Turner’s later works remain very positive, even if unduly reliant on a modernist premise, but it is also the case that these works are often regarded almost as autonomous creations, independent of their historical situation. The contingency of their production in the circumstances of the later 1830s and 1840s is of interest to art historians, but less so to others. Similarly, while Turner’s later life has received biographical treatment, in books and films the link between his physical condition and the work he produced has not been articulated in a way that would satisfy critical, historical and medical points of view. In Turner’s case, the problematics of his late-life creativity await resolution; the circumstances of the ageing artist are either ignored so as to concentrate critical attention on the work or they are introduced with a view to emphasizing the artist’s biography at the expense of an adequate engagement with what he produced. As I have hoped to indicate throughout this chapter, the seemingly intractable problem of reconciling Turner’s biography with a full consideration of his output is ultimately a problem of narrative. For his critics, his career was constructed as a cautionary tale of a great talent gone rotten, a rottenness stemming from the ageing artist’s isolation in a world of his own, heedless of aesthetic norms and increasingly subject to physical and mental impairment. For some, indeed, it was precisely this impairment that explained the idiosyncrasies of his paintings, to be understood symptomatically as indices of his declining abilities, themselves redolent of physical and mental decay. For his supporters, on the other hand, Turner’s later paintings can be understood not biographically but as part of a larger cultural narrative in which his achievement is positioned as the prologue to a history of intransigent artists who opposed conservative aesthetic principles and grappled with the modern world. On this reckoning no decline is visible; the last works are the purposeful and magisterial culmination of

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Turner’s career. Perhaps a third narrative can be posited, one that would look at his final 15 years and examine what he produced under the aegis of new interdisciplinary research into aspects of late-life creativity. In such a narrative Turner’s last works would figure not as exemplifications of a general tendency, shorn of their particular cultural engagement and their special circumstances, but as demonstrations of one way in which the ageing artist proceeds.

Notes 1 ‘What Turner might have done for us, had he received help and love, instead of disdain …’ (Ruskin 1860); ‘the old man’s soul had been gradually crushed within him …’ (Turner 1858). 2 He first presented this hypothesis in Trevor-Roper (1959). 3 See, for example, the reminiscences in Thornbury (1862, vol. ii, pp. 119, 273). 4 See Thornbury (1877, p. 171); further remarks on Turner’s over-indulgence in alcohol can be found on pp. 326 and 352. 5 Hamerton (1897, p. 297). The articles on which the book is based were first published in The Portfolio from January 1876 to December 1878. 6 See Smiles (2016). 7 For Turner’s posthumous reputation, see Smiles (2007). 8 See Smiles (2007, pp. 192–205). 9 The exhibition was at Tate Britain, 10 September 2014–25 January 2015; J. Paul Getty Museum, 24 February – 24 May 2015; de Young Museum, 20 June – 20 September 2015 and Art Gallery of Ontario, 31 October 2015–31 January 2016. Visitor numbers at Tate Britain were 267,704, with a further c. 500,000 in the USA and Canada. There were 172 exhibits in the Tate Britain exhibition, 62 at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the de Young Museum, and 50 at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

References Adorno, T. W. (1999) Aesthetic Theory. Eds G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. London: Athlone. Athenaeum (1851) Obituary of J. M. W. Turner. The Athenaeum. 27 December: 1383. Blackwood’s (1837) Exhibitions – The Royal Academy. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. 42(September): 336. Blackwood’s (1842) Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 52(July): 26. Brown, D. B., A. Concannon and S. Smiles (Eds) (2014) Late Turner: Painting Set Free. London: Tate Publishing. Cave, K. (Ed.) (1984) The Diary of Joseph Farington. Volume XIII: January 1814 – December 1815. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cook, E. T. and A. Wedderburn (Eds) (1903–12) The Works of John Ruskin. London: George Allen. Court Magazine (1839) The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic. Saturday, 1 June: 636. Daily News (1846) Exhibition of the Royal Academy. Daily News. Wednesday, 6 May: 5. Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari (1994) What is Philosophy? Trans. G. Burchell and H. Tomlinson. London: Verso. Güner, F. (2014) Review of Late Turner: Painting Set Free exhibition. ArtsDesk.com. 12 September.

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Hamerton, P. G. (1897) Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. London. [First published 1879]. Hind, C. L. (1910) Turner’s Golden Visions. London: T.C. and E. C. Jack. Illustrated London News (1847) Illustrated London News. 8 May. Jones, J. (2014) Review of Late Turner: Painting Set Free exhibition. The Guardian. 8 September. Katz, S. and E. Campbell (2005) Creativity across the life course? Titian, Michelangelo, and older artist narratives. In S. Katz, Cultural Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. 101–117. Kingsley, W. (1878) Rev. W. Kingsley on the Turner drawings. In Cook and Wedderburn. (1903–1912). 13: 535. Liebreich, R. (1872) Turner and Mulready – on the effect of certain faults of vision on painting, with especial reference to their works. Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 6: 450–463. Livesley, B. (2014) The later life of Turner: Body and mind. In Brown, Concannon and Smiles (2014). 25–31. Monkhouse, C. (1879) Turner. New York: Scribner and Welford. Morning Post (1846) The Morning Post. Wednesday, 6 May: 5. Ruskin, J. (1857) Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House. In Cook and Wedderburn (1903–12). 13. Ruskin, J. (1860) Modern Painters. Volume 5. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Smiles, S. (2007) J. M. W. Turner: The Making of a Modern Artist. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Smiles, S. (2016) From Titian to Impressionism: The genealogy of late style. In McMullan and Smiles (2016). 15–30. Thornbury, W. (1862) The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. London: Hurst and Blackett. Thornbury, W. (1877) The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R. A. Second edition. London: Chatto and Windus. Times (1850) The Times. Saturday, 4 May: 4. Trevor-Roper, H. (1959) The influence of eye disease on pictorial art. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 52: 721–744. Trevor-Roper, H. (1970) The World Through Blunted Sight: An Inquiry into the Influence of Defective Vision on Art and Character. London: Thames and Hudson. Turner, J. M. W. (1850) Letter to F.H. Fawkes, 27 December 1850. In J. Gage (Ed.), Collected Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. 224. Turner, J. M. W. (1858) Letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 14 October. In Cook and Wedderburn (1903–1912). 7: 454. Vasari, G. (1568) Tiziano da Cadore. In The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. G. du C. De Vere. London: Macmillan, 1912–1915. 9 (1915). Whyte, M. (2015) Review of Late Turner: Painting Set Free exhibition. Toronto Star. 4 November. Wullschlager, J. (2014) Review ofLate Turner: Painting Set Free exhibition. Financial Times. 12 September.

5

Constructing a late style for David Bowie Old age, late-life creativity, popular culture Gordon McMullan

‘Authenticity is the curse of music from which we need to cure ourselves’. (Critchley 2016, p. 47)

As a first step towards a fuller understanding of the nature of late-life creativity and thus a bridging of the gulf between the limited versions of that understanding current in the two broad disciplinary fields with which this collection is engaged – gerontology and the arts and humanities – we need to outline how the existing major paradigms for creativity in late life emerged so as to understand their subsequent deployments and assess their value for us now. I write as a literary critic with a longstanding interest in late-life creativity and will thus restrict myself to an account (a critique) of the means by which the arts and humanities address these issues, though it seems to me that the principal arts-and-humanities paradigm has crossed over, implicitly if not explicitly and almost certainly unwittingly, into the realm of gerontology. For the arts and humanities, the primary model for late-life creativity – one shared across the fields of literary criticism, art history and musicology – is the idea of ‘late style’, the isolation within the artistic trajectory of key creative figures of a period towards the end of the life in which there is a marked shift in style and mode that is typically characterised as at the same time a form of ‘life review’, a re-engagement with aspects of the artist’s early career, a loosening of technique and a kind of joyous or serene letting-go of some of the perceived formal restrictions of the career to date, expressed as a form of artistic redemption or reconciliation which also serves as a kind of prolepsis, a looking-forward to artistic developments yet to emerge in history. A decade ago I described the mainstream understanding of late style thus: Late-period work is typically depicted […] as a kind of coda, a supplementary phase of the creative life manifesting itself at the same time as a renewal, a rediscovery, a renaissance, characterised in particular ways, by a looseness of facture, a tendency towards intense colour or expression, a certain difficulty and abstraction of manner, and by a distinct style which is in a way childlike and yet at the same time – and this is frequently the key authenticator of true lateness – predictive of styles yet to be established by the artist’s successors, of

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This understanding of late style is deployed across the arts and humanities to account for the exceptional work created towards the end of their lives by artists ranging from Mozart to Stravinsky, from Sophocles to Ibsen, from Titian to Picasso. The most often-cited landmark instances of late work include the late self-portraits of Rembrandt, the last plays of Shakespeare and Beethoven’s final string quartets, all typically described as profoundly personal and redemptive work that is also expressive of artistic futures that lie beyond the creator’s life span. Late style is often characterised by a certain vagueness of description, due (it would seem) to the critical urge to locate the late work in a realm somewhere between life and a kind of projected artistic afterlife – for Havelock Ellis, the late work of Rodin consisted of ‘vast simple masses, softened and alleviated of all semblance to reality, gliding into a vast dim dream’ (Ellis 1924, p. 5), while for Erich Neumann ‘[w]hat speaks to us from a self-portrait of the aged Rembrandt[, …] from Shakespeare’s last plays[, or from] a late Beethoven quartet, is a strange transfiguration, a break-through into the realm of essence’ (Neumann 1959, p. 103) – and it is invariably generalised in a way that underlines the deployment of late style as an authenticator of genius: ‘Have not all the supreme artists tended to follow a like course?’, asks Ellis, sweepingly (p. 5). Late style is thus apparently characteristic of the work only of a handful of ‘supreme artists’ – which makes it odd, to say the least, that it has nonetheless been repeatedly extrapolated, contradictorily, as a paradigm for late-life creativity in general. The idea of late style is not venerable. It emerged in musicology and art history in the early-to-mid-nineteenth century and a few decades later in literary criticism, serving to replace earlier models of the artistic trajectory such as the Virgilian (a generic rather than personal model in which the poet builds across a lifetime of creative endeavour towards the ultimate genre of epic). Late style is, as I have suggested, a subcategory of the Romantic idea of ‘genius’ – that is, the belief that only the smallest handful of uniquely gifted individuals have the precise combination of creativity, imagination and technique required to produce profound artistic expression that will achieve genuine longevity of appreciation. Yet it is also deployed to express a more broadly directed optimism about the creative possibilities of later life that goes beyond the highly select band of ‘supreme’ artists to whom late styles have been attributed. The primary advantage of the late-style paradigm is that it offers a positive narrative

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of late-life creativity, a tangible alternative to the negative bell-curve of the Seven Ages of Man, in which the individual unavoidably experiences gradual personal, physical and creative decline to the state of the ‘lean and slippered pantaloon’ of Jaques’s celebrated speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Late style, by contrast, holds out the possibility of a final flowering, a resurgence of creative power at a stage at which it might be expected to be slipping away. As a concept, however, late style also has obvious limitations. Deriving as it does from the larger concept of genius, the idea of late style is bound to the Romantic moment, bringing with it certain assumptions that we may now find problematic, not least its intrinsically undemocratic orientation and its privileging of male creativity over female and of white Western creativity over that of other parts of the globe; it also runs into serious trouble with forms of art that wilfully refuse to be understood as the artist’s self-expression in the way assumed by Romanticism. Yet it remains the dominant discourse of late-life creativity, deployed repeatedly not only in respect of canonical artists but also, though with less conceptual precision, within the sphere of popular culture. A recent brief article in The Economist offers a typical instance of the version of lateness that has filtered into the mainstream, offering a series of reductive aphorisms, presented as novel assertions, to explain late style: ‘When time is precious, composers and playwrights outdo themselves’; ‘As life nears its end, thoughts can acquire urgent clarity’; ‘many great artists experience a psychological and artistic step-change late in life. For them, life’s candle burns most brightly when it is about to go out’ (Economist 2017). The anonymous Economist journalist names the major theorist of lateness, the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, suggesting (inaccurately) that he coined the term ‘late style’. Adorno in fact – particularly when read through the work of his disciple Edward Said – presents a significant problem for proponents of the mainstream version of late style since he articulates a notably less sunny or redemptive understanding of lateness than the optimistic version that reaches us from the mid-late nineteenth century. For Adorno, late work is ‘not well rounded, but wrinkled, even fissured’; it lacks ‘the harmony which the classicist aesthetic is accustomed to demand from the work of art’ (Adorno 1988, p. 123). The freedom that comes from a late sensibility is, rather, in Adorno’s analysis, explosive, fracturing, a rejection of the subjectivity that in its classic formulation late style appears to celebrate: ‘The force of subjectivity in late works is the irascible gesture with which it leaves them. It bursts them asunder, not in order to express itself but, expressionlessly, to cast off the illusion of art’ (p. 125). Thus the conventions of art, in late work, are ‘no longer imbued and mastered by subjectivity, but left standing’ (p. 125). For Adorno, late style is not the conclusion of a linear personal narrative; rather, it involves a looking back as a form of critique: the late work stands as a rejection of the deluded resolutions, of the attempted syntheses of subjective and objective, that in the central period of the artist’s work he sought to achieve. For Said, interpreting Adorno, lateness is not best expressed in ‘the accepted notion of age and wisdom in some last works that reflect a special maturity, a new spirit of

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reconciliation and serenity’ (Said 2006, p. 6). Rather, lateness ‘is a kind of selfimposed exile from what is generally acceptable, coming after it, and surviving beyond it’ (p. 16). ‘What’, he asks, ‘of artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution, but as intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction? What if age and ill health don’t produce the serenity of “ripeness is all”?’ (p. 7). In light of this wilfully downbeat understanding of lateness, and crucially for the concerns of this collection, we need to understand the danger that the simplistic premise which tends to be extracted from the idea of late style – that in later life an individual can (and perhaps should, if a certain level of personal fulfilment is to be achieved) achieve a joyous creative flowering that transcends what preceded it in that individual’s life – may lead to significant disappointment in anyone who finds this not to be the case, which within the terms of the late-style model is likely to be the vast majority of us, given that one of the key premises of late style is that it is attributable only to a handful of self-evident geniuses. Narratives of late-life creativity, as is clear in several of the contributions by gerontologists in this volume, tend to be insistently upbeat – understandably enough if therapy is the primary intention and a negative focus on the physical limitations and psychological challenges that accompany the onset of old age is viewed as likely to run counter to the patient outcome sought. Certainly, the ostensible negativity of Adorno and his interpreter Said (above all of the latter, with his overt celebration of late irascibility as a kind of self-exile, given the impenetrability of the former’s prose, especially in English translation) runs directly counter to the redemptive narratives of contemporary gerontology, potentially creating a significant gulf between the therapeutic imperative and the shared paradigms of the arts and humanities disciplines. Furthermore, one of the key underpinning assumptions of late style is that in order for there to be a late period in a given creative life there must have been an early style and a middle-period style, periods during which the artist fashioned a creative technique through the accretional nature of the professional process. The late stylist may in fact leave behind his or her normal techniques in the final phase – Matisse, for instance, unable to hold a paintbrush, turned to paper cutouts, giving cutting and shaping instructions to assistants – but the presumption remains that an established creative technique preceded the change and in some way continues to underpin it even in its apparent absence. (For Joseph N. Straus, in a provocative essay, it is in fact the requirement to adapt to disability late in life that produces the late style; he proposes that ‘late style may in some cases be more richly understood as disability style’ [Straus 2008, p. 6].) Yet not every artist to whom a late phase has been attributed necessarily has an unbroken career of consistent productivity: examples to the contrary might include figures as far apart in style and mode as Giuseppe Verdi and the American objectivist poet George Oppen, both of whose careers incorporated major caesurae, decades of artistic inactivity where the ‘middle period’ would normally be (on Oppen, see McMullan 2016). Moreover, perhaps most problematically, there is the question of the number of artists whose alleged ‘late periods’ come not in old age but in middle or even early life – not least the

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very first creative artist for whom a late period was proposed in the mid-nineteenth century, W. A. Mozart (a proposition played out in grand, if wholly fictional, style in the play and subsequent film of Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus). Once you realise that late style is not necessarily age-dependent, once it becomes apparent that a late style tends to be attributed as much to those dying before reaching old age as to artists in their eighties or nineties, you may begin to wonder if the idea of late style has any value at all for an account of the forms of creativity that might be associated specifically with old age. Moreover, as regards its general applicability to late-life creativity, the idea of late style assumes the existence of a creative career of some kind prior to the late phase, thereby excluding the bulk of individuals for whom this is not the case. Yet despite its very apparent limitations, ‘lateness’ has, since the later nineteenth century, been the principal discourse available to arts-and-humanities scholars directly engaged with creativity in later life, a fact that forms a significant problem for anyone trying to gain a working understanding of the parameters of late-life creativity, since late style as a methodology – or, perhaps better, as a genre, since from the moment the concept was created, artists in later life have tended to write themselves into the narrative it provides – offers at best a very limited set of possibilities for older artists and for critics of their work, never mind for a broader sense of the creative possibilities of the vast majority of older people who have not been professionally engaged with the arts. Thus when a version of the late-style paradigm appears in gerontological work – which is arguably whenever, driven by the twin urges of therapy and the psychological need for redemptive narratives of old age in general and of dementia in particular (as Martina Zimmermann notes both in this collection and elsewhere), that work insists on the possibility of a creative flowering in individuals in later life – it appears that a deracinated version of an already diminished understanding of a concept that has filtered across the disciplinary divide may well be in play, and invidiously so. The materials of late-style theory tend, by definition, to be those of high art. And while it is all very well, it might be said, for literary critics, art historians and musicologists to focus solely for their understanding of late-life creativity on the complexities and inaccessibilities of the work of a handful of unquestioned geniuses, what of popular culture, what of art forms that stand ostensibly closer to the majority experience of creativity, modes that in some way feel a little more within the grasp of someone who is not, has not been, a creative professional? How might we move away from high art to address the conjunction of old age and creativity in forms considered, broadly speaking, to be culturally ephemeral? I will take as my instance pop music. Late style and pop music are an uncomfortable combination for a number of reasons. One is the persistent non-canonicity, in the world of high culture, of even the most highly regarded and talented pop musicians, despite the vastly broader global reach they have than any musician or composer in the classical or jazz fields. Another discomfort, one that is overtly foregrounded by the juxtaposition of late style and pop music, is the relationship between the late work and death. A critic

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can, after all, write safely about the late work of a given artist only once that artist is dead because it is only at that point that the chronology is fixed and the usual parameters can be confirmed – ‘late periods’, as often as not, span a period of seven or so years towards the end of the life, though this figure is negotiable according to context. A critic writing about an older artist who is still alive, by contrast, cannot yet know if the most recent work is ‘final’ or merely interim: instances of long-lived artists who have repeatedly been given late periods at different times over a sustained period range from Bob Dylan to Elliott Carter. It is only relatively recently, of course, that pop musicians have begun perforce to address the question of old age as the baby-boomer generation encounters the Third Age. But, given the mainstream sustaining in pop music discourse of the Romantic privileging of dying young (which is one of pop music’s most obvious, and most clichéd, forms of conservatism), the perennial crisis caused by the juxtaposition of old age and proximity to death at any age in late-style discourse is significantly exacerbated in critical writings about pop and rock musicians. Furthermore, the age of the fan is interconnected with both the continued success and the critical reception of the artist, as is apparent in one recent wry observation about Dylan’s later work: ‘At age 68, Dylan is the oldest artist to debut at no. 1 in the Billboard charts[, but] his feat may have less to do with a spike in his popularity and more to do with having fans so old that they actually pay for their music’ (Zitcer 2009). There are two striking elements of the appearance of the term ‘late style’ in writing about pop music: one, as I have implied, is the extraordinarily uncritical way in which Romantic paradigms continue to be deployed in a cultural field which considers itself to be highly, even definitively, contemporary; the other, particularly when Adorno and/or Said are cited, is the inaccuracy or at best tangibly partial deployment of the concept to suit a brief, immediate agenda. The fullest assessment to date of late style and pop music is that of Richard Elliott in his 2015 monograph The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music, though the book is not in fact precisely an account of late-life creativity. Elliott specifically addresses the relationship between pop music and old age, yet he, like so many critics, acknowledges early on that he has found significant asymmetries between claims for a late style and actual ageing: While my initial thoughts about the concept were mainly connected to work produced by musicians (mostly singers) in the later parts of their careers and to what has been termed, in discussion of artists more broadly, ‘late style’, I soon became interested in the possibility of lateness recognised at earlier stages than might be customary. In other words, while there seemed to be a fit between chronologically late work (work created by artists late in their lives and/or careers) and themes of time, age and experience, there was nothing to exclude such a connection with artists at much earlier stages in their lives. (Elliott 2015, p. 3)

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The result is that Elliott adjusts the scope of his book to include the notion of ‘early lateness’. The issue is in part one of persona – the voice adopted by the artist which may or may not be that of the artist herself – and the ability of younger artists to speak as if in later life; Elliott is intrigued by singers whose voices make them sound ‘always already “old”’ (p. 9). He thus differentiates his interest from analyses of old-age style per se, which he refers to slightly awkwardly, sometimes with and sometimes without scare quotes, as ‘real late style’. His primary interest is in ‘the representation of time, age and experience alongside the ability to convincingly “voice” such representation regardless of career-point’ (p. 8), and it is very noticeable that he cites Adorno and Said just once in the introduction to his book in order to state that he has decided not to test their ‘accounts of late style against [his own] case studies’, thereby underlining how far his understanding of the term ‘late’ diverges from the primary model. Elliott’s interest in the ‘late voice’ is thus oblique to my interest in this chapter, though his fascination with the artist’s ability to assume lateness is something I share and is in fact key to my own argument in this essay. The major issues I have discussed so far – late style, old age, authenticity – have, as it happens, been particularly noticeable in the journalistic and critical response to the death of a musician whom Elliott does not mention – David Bowie – and the analysis in particular of the Bowie of the final two albums, The Next Day and (especially) Blackstar, as an authentic personal negotiation of age and death by a consummate artist has been a core element in that response. Perhaps the most straightforward instance is an article by Andrew Frayn and Rachael Durkin in The Conversation for 10 January 2017 with a title – ‘David Bowie’s late revival belongs to a grand tradition dating back to Beethoven’ – that makes plain the authors’ determination to associate Bowie’s oeuvre with the classic understanding of late style. Noting the ‘remarkable’ quality of The Next Day and Blackstar, they observe that this level of achievement is ‘in line with what happens to many great artists in their final years’. ‘Blackstar’, they claim, ‘was a self-composed epitaph, written as [Bowie] faced his mortality head-on’, and they draw direct comparisons with other figures from forms of popular music – Johnny Cash, Gil Scott-Heron – who have in recent years faced up artistically to the ends of their lives. The figure they suggest offers the closest comparison for an analysis of late Bowie is Leonard Cohen: Bowie was looking back on his career in this material. Blackstar was a selfcomposed epitaph, written as he faced his mortality head-on. Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker is very much in the same vein. Also released shortly before his death last November, it sees Cohen facing death in his signature style, combining maudlin piano melodies with his distinctive vocals and wit. Like Bowie, he approached his art with more urgency towards the end, releasing three albums in four years after a long period of wide gaps between new material. (Frayn and Durkin 2017)

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And they make a direct association with the late-style mainstream: ‘Bowie and these other examples echo what happened to Ludvig [sic] van Beethoven, whose late period was famously examined by the German thinker Theodor W. Adorno’. ‘In a similar way’, they continue, ‘Bowie alludes to his past works in Blackstar while continuing to develop, alongside composition that incorporates both convention and dissonance’. Reviewing the video of ‘Lazarus’, they note that ‘[t]he song’s lyrical content seems to speak from beyond the grave’, thus providing ‘the greatest insight into Bowie’s vision’. ‘It toys’, they suggest, with the very possibility of closure, as Bowie retreats into a wardrobe – dressed in the diagonally striped black body suit seen on the 1991 CD reissue of Station to Station. But then it stops with the door ajar, speaking to the permanence of art. Moreover, they add, ‘[t]he same motif continues in the final track of the album, “I Can’t Give Everything Away”. It reads as a summary of Bowie’s artistic principles, indicating his need to retain something of himself behind his personas’. And they conclude with an assertion of Bowie’s place in the pantheon of lateness: With this immense final statement, David Bowie has set the tone for a period in which major rock artists are conspicuously and consciously producing late works. In death as in life he set a benchmark. As many other contemporary artists reach the end of their lives, it is to Bowie’s works that their own late output will be compared. This is thus an overt claim for Bowie as a late stylist, an uncritical redeployment of the mainstream understanding of late style within the field of popular culture. Frayn and Durkin’s article was, as it happens, prompted by another, more substantive instance of the conscious shaping of late-period Bowie by way of the late-style paradigm: a TV documentary entitled David Bowie: The Last Five Years, first broadcast in early 2017, which sets out to read the last work as the direct expression of Bowie’s response to his illness and the imminence of death (Whateley 2017). The documentary follows several of the standard moves in the delineation of a late style – late work as a life review which is also a glance forward to the future beyond the artist’s lifetime; late work as freedom from generic expectations and restrictions; late work as a sharp, brief resurgence of creativity in the proximity of death – though the picture it paints is rather more complex than that offered by Frayn and Durkin. The marketing blurb on the BBC website underlines the film’s primary logic: There was nothing predictable about David Bowie. Everything was designed to intrigue, to challenge, to defy all expectations. But perhaps no period in David Bowie’s extraordinary career raised more fascination, more

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surprise, and more questions than the last five years. This is an intimate portrait of one of the defining artists of the 20th and early 21st centuries, told by the people who knew him best -–his friends and artistic collaborators. This film takes a detailed look at Bowie’s last albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, and his play Lazarus. In his final five years, Bowie not only began producing music again, but returned to the core and defining themes of his career. This film explores how Bowie was a far more consistent artist than many interpretations of his career would have us believe. It traces the core themes from his final works and relates them to his incredible back catalogue. His urge to communicate feelings of spirituality, alienation and fame underpin his greatest works from the 1960s to 2016. This is what lies at the heart of his success and appeal – music that deals with what it means to be human in a way that goes far beyond the normal palette of a rock star. The first and obvious premise here is that Bowie was ‘extraordinary’, a ‘defining artist’, whose work went ‘far beyond the normal palette of a rock star’: he is a genius and thus a worthy subject for an attribution of late style. The documentary’s focus is on the ‘final five years’ (adjusted from the usual seven or so years of the classic late phase so as to echo the title of one of Bowie’s bestknown, and appropriately apocalyptic, songs); these five years involve a ‘return to the core’, to the ‘defining themes of his career’, which Bowie consciously situates in relation to ‘his incredible back catalogue’. In multiple ways, then, what is being described is recognisable as the outline of a classic late period, and it becomes rapidly clear that the documentary in effect performs Bowie’s late style. The interviews that form the main material of the film, both from Bowie’s back catalogue and newly created by his friends and colleagues, underscore the core premise of lateness. First of all, the duration and consistency of the career and the style is specified. A clip has Bowie say: ‘Even though I seem to change superficially a lot, a style does come through’. And to confirm the undertaking of the late-style ‘life review’, he adds: ‘By virtue of the fact that I’m getting older, it’s given me quite a scope on what I can draw from within my own catalogue of albums’. A further clip has him ruminating on the passing of time, the shock for a pop star that he has survived the period that, according to the early-death model, you should not survive, a trajectory that you now have no option but to reject as naïve: ‘I had this poetic, romantic, kind of juvenile idea that I would be dead by 30, and suddenly you’re 30 and you’re 40, then you’re 50 and 57 and all that and it’s a new land, you know, a pioneer’. This is reconfirmed by the section titles on the screen: ‘In the last five years of his life Bowie released some of his most fascinating and revealing work’; ‘With two albums and a stage play, Bowie the artist explored both his past and his future’. Later in the film, another clip has Bowie in reflective mode: ‘I’ve done such a lot of work in 40 years. It’s only recently that maybe I’ve started to write in a kind of an autobiographical way. And this may be something to do with age and the way that one matures’.

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The documentary’s interviewees – band members, producers, designers, members of the cast of the musical Lazarus – provide a series of observations that underline the autobiographical nature of the late work as they see it. Earl Slick, Bowie’s longstanding guitarist, is quite clear: ‘I think that David’s music is totally autobiographical. He’s telling you everything if you just know what to look for’. This claim is immediately inflected by expressions of the creative value of longevity. Gail Ann Dorsey, bass player on the ‘Reality’ tour, reflects that ‘[a]t a certain time in your life you get to a point where you do feel freer and you don’t really care what people think and you can be yourself and you can laugh at things and you can not take things maybe so seriously’. The documentary begins further back than the five years of the title, in late 2003, when Bowie embarked on what was planned as the longest tour of his career (the ‘Reality’ tour), which produced the first, surprising signs that he was ageing. ‘There was a sense that David looked as young and as youthful as ever on that tour’, says Slick: ‘It did seem like he had the gift from the gods that he was never going to get old’. But he became ill during a concert, did one more performance, and it then became clear that he had had a minor heart attack. The tour was cut short, and he never undertook another. The film uses this structurally as the beginnings of the last phase: the screen title is ‘The Hurricane Festival was Bowie’s last full concert. He never toured again’. The film moves to 2011 and the secret recording of The Next Day, which brings the prologue to an end and opens the documentary’s main focus on the late period, pausing to negotiate the significant gap between the previous record and this one. The screen title reads: ‘After a seven-year absence, David Bowie returned to the studio to begin work on the album that became The Next Day’. His approach to recording had changed, the intensity toned down. ‘The hours were very short compared to normal’, notes Slick. Bowie’s longterm producer Tony Visconti notes that ‘[h]e really wanted no pressure on him to release an album. There was no press release saying “expect a Bowie album on this date”. This way he could finish every song to perfection’. Earl Slick: ‘I don’t recall David on the sessions really talking about being old. I think he would maybe joke that he would wear his slippers. He had his slippers brought down. We made a few jokes about that’. The documentary’s next step is to foreground the pared-down quality of late Bowie, the back-to-basics urge characteristic of classic lateness, combining a radical simplification of style with the tendency to perform a life review. Tony Oursler, the video maker for ‘Where Are We Now?’ – the stand-out track on The Next Day and also the one most obviously appropriable to late-style discourse – talks about Bowie’s invitation to make the film of the song: ‘Oh’, he thought, That’s quite a task. I was thinking this big-budget video and I was thinking to do this justice it has to be this momentous video that’s going to break the silence of all these years, and David said no, I want to do it in your studio, … very simple, rough.

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Zachary Alford, the drummer, notes of the title track: ‘This one is perhaps the most deliberately a nostalgic look into his past. He’s talking about all the places he frequented in Berlin. And it’s deliberately sad. He’s in the latter part of his life. Those days are gone.’ Oursler counters with another classic late-style move, negotiating nostalgia and innovation: ‘But you can’t read ‘Where Are We Now?’ as just a nostalgic story about Berlin at all. It’s much more about how memories affect the way we move forward’, he says, before partially withdrawing the claim by adding, ‘Or not’. Visconti admits surprise at the nostalgia: I knew this was about Berlin and I thought it was really really sweet and quite nostalgic, but the thing that really made me teary-eyed was when I saw the video for it. I thought I’d never expect him to look back: this is a new thing for him. The contributors to the documentary thus suggest that the last work is autobiographical, though with an undercurrent of uncertainty – Oursler’s ‘Or not’ – that is echoed subsequently in the film. Lazarus’s director and writer persuaded Bowie, who was initially resistant to the idea, that the musical could end with ‘Heroes’ as long as it was reworked not as an anthem but as something reflective, making the song (in the words of the musical director Henry Hay) ‘melancholy instead of triumphant’. The cast, who were not informed during rehearsal that Bowie was dying, seem subsequently to have decided to read the choice of song autobiographically – though not with total conviction. Michael C. Hall (playing the lead role of Thomas Newton) proposes that ‘[t] hrough his relationship with this girl [the unnamed role referred to as ‘Newton’s muse’] and her reawakening him to his vitality, Newton is brought back to life that he may ready himself to die’. Then a pause, after which he adds, grinning, ‘Perhaps. Or not’. There is thus a hesitancy on the part of Bowie’s collaborators over the extent to which the final work was genuinely autobiographical, something which is hardly surprising, you might think, given Bowie’s own well-known creative playfulness. In a clip shown earlier in the film, we hear the younger Bowie prefigure this uncertainty about his artistic intentions, speaking in gently mocking tones: I’m not really very keen to put on much of a theatrical show, you know, in terms of big sets and elephants and fireworks and things like that – but of course it doesn’t mean that I won’t go back on my word because that’s part and parcel of what I do for you: part of my entertaining factor is lying to you. And he smiles knowingly into the camera. Given Bowie’s lifelong habit of adopting (and abruptly discarding) stage personae, it is curious in a way that the final work should provoke such a marked urge to rewrite Bowie’s artistic life as authentic self-expression. Writing

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about Blackstar, Douglas Wolk offers a useful corrective, noting that ‘[u]nsurprisingly, the newly released songs are full of intimations of mortality – but it’s also too easy to listen for farewells and forget that they were written for dramatic personae, by a songwriter who adored masks’ (Wolk 2016). Simon Critchley, likewise, notes that [a]nyone who has listened to Bowie over the years is completely familiar with the almost vaudeville or pantomime quality of his cast of stock characters… . Variations on these characters, and others, appear on album after album. We are not stupid. We know that they are all fakes. (Critchley 2016, p. 35) Critchley thus reverses the late-romantic expectations of the pop musician by foregrounding Bowie’s insistent inauthenticity, which he labels Bowie’s ‘Warholian aesthetic’ (p. 21). ‘Bowie’s truth’, he argues, ‘is inauthentic, completely self-conscious and utterly constructed […]. Through the fakery and because of it, we feel a truth that leads us beyond ourselves, toward the imagination of some other way of being’ (pp. 36–7). ‘Bowie’s genius’, he adds, ‘allows us to break the superficial link that seems to connect authenticity to truth’ (p. 37). Bowie thrived on his fans’ assumption that he was obliquely expressing his inner selfhood while insistently subverting that assumption through the adoption of identities other than anything that might be considered ‘his own’. Critchley urges us to [c]onsider Bowie’s lyrics. It seems that – right from the beginning – we could not help but read them autobiographically, as clues and signs that would lead us to some authentic sense of the “real” Bowie, his past, his traumas, his loves, his political views. We longed to see his songs as windows on to his life. But this is precisely what we have to give up if we want to try and misunderstand Bowie a little less. As we know all too well, he occupied a variety of identities. His brilliance was to become someone else for the length of a song, sometimes for a whole album or even a tour. Bowie was a ventriloquist. (p. 45) And he adds: ‘This wasn’t a strategy that died with Ziggy onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973. It persisted right through to Bowie’s final two albums, The Next Day and Blackstar’ (pp. 45–46). For Critchley, crucially, ‘[t]he truth content of Bowie’s art is not compromised by its fakery. It is enabled by it’ (pp. 46–47). ‘Authenticity’, he argues, ‘is the curse of music from which we need to cure ourselves’ (p. 47). Even at key moments in his personal life, it seems, Bowie sustained this ventriloquism. When his brother Terry Burns, who had been suffering from mental illness, committed suicide in 1985, Bowie did not attend the funeral because, he claimed, he didn’t want to turn it into a media circus. Instead, he

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sent a bouquet with words described as ‘extremely poignant’ by Critchley: ‘You’ve seen more things than we can imagine, but all these moments will be lost – like tears washed away by rain’. Poignant words, certainly – but not Bowie’s own. They are in fact a mild misquotation from the celebrated death speech of Roy Batty, the alpha-male replicant in Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction film Blade Runner: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. Even mourning his own brother, then, Bowie adopts another persona – significantly, in the context of the long trajectory of conscious alienation from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Lazarus, one drawn from science fiction – situating himself and his dead sibling by way of quotation from popular culture. Why, then, should Bowie’s final creative phase be different in kind from the earlier phases of his career? Why should he suddenly shed the habits of a creative lifetime and adopt an ‘authentic’ mode for his late work? Critics have clearly felt the urge to read the last two albums, The Next Day and, especially, Blackstar, as late work in the classic sense, urgently connecting the songs to the life and especially to the knowledge of the imminence of death, and the documentary Bowie: The Last Five Years is the fullest expression of this urge to date. Yet the evidence of the whole career offers an insistent counter-claim. Thus the late-style paradigm appears to persist not only in respect of high culture but of popular culture too. It quietly – insidiously, perhaps – shapes our understanding of the nature of late-life creativity, ensuring the continuity of Romantic narratives despite the conscious (post)modernity of the popular-cultural scene. Not the least of the problems of the lateness paradigm, as I noted earlier, is that the direct causal connection between late style and old age presumed in most commentaries on late-life creativity begins to appear questionable. Robert Spencer, in this volume (see Chapter 6), makes the point that it is Said and other disciples of Adorno, rather than Adorno himself, who have ensured that the understanding of late style as it is currently constituted has become fixated with the individual life span. Rather, Spencer argues, lateness must be understood, in Adorno’s terms at least, as critical, not biographical, that is, as a critique of social, cultural and economic structures, specifically (for Adorno the Marxist modernist) those of capitalist modernity, one expressed through artistic innovation and the renegotiation of artistic tradition, and not as an expression of the stage of life of the individual artist. Spencer notes two key features of Adorno’s account of late style: one, his argument that lateness is best understood not in relation to the creative individual but to the moment of composition in its political and social contexts and implications; two, his recognition that lateness is something that can be performed by an artist at any age, a key musical instance

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being Mahler’s symphonies, which, for Adorno, are written ‘as if in extreme old age’ (Adorno 1991, p. 197). It is the as if that is key here. Richard Elliott, in his delineation of the ‘late voice’, may evade direct discussion of Adorno’s idea of late style but Adorno is in fact the key critical precursor for his own emphasis on the production of a certain kind of lateness by musicians at any age. Moreover, for Ben Hutchinson, in an important recent book, lateness is misapplied both to the individual life span and to old age; rather, he argues, lateness is an epochal, not a personal, phenomenon: it is ‘the ways in which modern literature understands itself as belated’ (Hutchinson 2016, p. 12). This may well manifest itself in the work of artists in old age, but it does so because of the historical moment within which the artist lives, not because of the stage of life he has reached. From these perspectives, then, it seems that lateness is a phenomenon – or, perhaps better, a style, a construct, a performance – that must be detached from old age. Late style may well be a legitimate expression of old age, the marker of a certain disillusion with the order of the world emerging within the life-trajectory of the individual, but it need not be; it is, as Adorno has proposed for Mahler and Elliott for Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and many others, a stance that can be acquired, expressed or performed in certain circumstances at any creative stage early in life, in mid-life or in later life. As such, the idea of late style seems to have, in the end, limited value for the analysis of late-life creativity, since there turns out to be no intrinsic connection between lateness and old age – something that is in any case apparent in the many attributions of late style to artists (Mozart is perhaps the most striking of all) who died long before they reached old age and for whom exceptions have been intricately made by critics (in Mozart’s case, it was solemnly argued in the nineteenth century that ‘[h]e died young because his vital forces were exhausted by producing works of superhuman quality, of which his ageing genius would no longer have been capable’) (Oulibichev 1843, p. 424; my translation). In the canonical German of classic late-style studies, Spätstil (late style) is not necessarily the same as Altersstil (old-age style). If, then, late style is not intrinsically a biographical phenomenon, if it is something that can defensibly be attributed to a creative artist at any stage of life, then it begins to appear highly problematic as a valid paradigm for the understanding of late-life creativity. The instance of David Bowie’s late work seems at first glance to offer such a defensible attribution – creativity that shares several of the identifying factors of late style and that emerges in the art created in the wake of the artist’s increasing awareness of his mortality and, finally, in the imminence of death – but closer inspection, I have argued, suggests that Bowie’s lateness is best understood primarily as the product of the performance and/or the imposition of a certain idea of late style in/onto his final works – both by way of Bowie’s own, wholly characteristic adoption of a late persona and of his admirers’ imposition, both before and after his death, of a limited model of lateness onto the work through a series of (at times equivocal) biographical assertions. If we are to offer an adequate account of the creativity of the late Bowie, we must, it

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would seem, look beyond the conventions of late-style attribution and reflect on the extent to which the apparently intrinsic connection between lateness and old age is, to a greater or lesser degree, arbitrary, the product of a prior critical framework rather than of the life experience and the creativity of the artist in question. If so, the case of the late Bowie offers us a clear reason – one based in a popular cultural mode arguably more democratically accessible than the technical complexities of classical musicology – to question the value of the idea of late style for a developed understanding of late-life creativity and to begin to look in quite different directions for an adequate working paradigm for the relationship of creativity and old age.

References Adorno, T. W. (1988) Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Ed. R. Tiedemann. Trans. E. Jephcott. Cambridge: Polity Press. Adorno, T. W. (1991) Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy. Trans. E. Jephcott. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Critchley, S. (2016) On Bowie. London: Serpents Tail. Economist (2017) Anon. What is late style? Why so many artists do their most interesting work in their final years. The Economist, 18 February. https://www.economist.com/ news/books-and-arts/21717018-when-time-precious-composers-and-playwrights-ou tdo-themselves-why-so-many-artists-do [Accessed 4 January 2018]. Elliott, R. (2015) The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Ellis, H. (1924) Impressions and Comments. Third Series (1920–1923). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Frayn, A. and R. Durkin (2017) David Bowie’s late revival belongs to a grand tradition dating back to Beethoven. The Conversation. 10 January. http://theconversation.com/ david-bowies-late-revival-belongs-to-a-grand-tradition-dating-back-to-beethoven-71 031 [Accessed 12 July 2018] Hutchinson, B. (2016) Lateness and Modern European Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McMullan, G. (2007) Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McMullan, G. and S. Smiles (2016) Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McMullan, G. (2016) The ‘strangeness’ of George Oppen: Criticism, modernity, and the conditions of late style. In McMullan and Smiles (2016), pp. 31–47. Neumann, E. (1959) Art and time. In Art and the Creative Unconscious: Four Essays. Trans. R. Manheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Oulibichev, A. (1843) Nouvelle Biographie de Mozart. Moscow: Auguste Semen. Said, E. (2006) On Late Style. London: Bloomsbury. Straus, J. (2008) Disability and ‘late style’ in music. The Journal of Musicology 25. 1 (Winter): 3–45. Whateley, F. (2017) David Bowie: The Last Five Years. Director F. Whateley. First shown by the BBC on 7 January 2017. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b088ktm6 [Accessed 11 November 2017].

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Wolk, D. (2016) Review of Lazarus OST. Pitchfork 27 October. https://pitchfork.com/ reviews/albums/22567-various-artists-lazarus-ost [Accessed 4 January 2018]. Zitcer, A. (2009) Bob Dylan’s late style. PopMatters9 June. http://www.popmatters. com/feature/94410-bob-dylans-late-style/ [Accessed 4 January 2018].

6

An ‘old man in the dimming world’ Theodor Adorno, Derek Walcott and a defence of the idea of late style Robert Spencer

This chapter reads the late St Lucian poet Derek Walcott’s final 2010 collection White Egrets in order to think further about the connections between Walcott’s late-life creativity and his poetry’s insights into the ‘dimming world’ of neocolonialism in the Caribbean. The aim is to use Theodor Adorno’s work on late style in order to elucidate Walcott’s extremely self-conscious performance of lateness in this collection. The lyric voice dramatized by Walcott’s collection knowingly performs this familiar and even slightly clichéd role of the ageing maestro facing up courageously if irascibly to the unavoidable facts of infirmity and death. This collection is ‘just the old story of a heart that won’t call it quits’ (Walcott 2010, p. 47), a story both about being old and a story that is itself old, hoary and over-familiar. Notwithstanding its understandable self-absorption, the voice heard in these poems is also preoccupied with what is presented as the wider social and political malaise of the contemporary Caribbean. Mortality, illness and the brokenness of the individual and social body are the themes of this collection, on the distinct but figuratively connected levels of the personal and the political. What is late about this collection? The poet, alas. But also the social and political world that is illuminated and exposed by the poems’ extended metaphor of lateness. Exploring the frustrated political aspirations of the postcolonial West Indies, the persistently uneven economic development of ‘too much tourist and too lickle employment’ (p. 12), the triumph of political independence alongside the humiliating servility of service-sector work, this is, to quote Adorno’s study of Beethoven, an ‘essentially critical’ work that looks outwards frowningly at the wider social world as well as inwards sorrowfully at memory and bodily discomfort (Adorno 1988, p. 97). My main point is that Walcott’s volume vindicates Adorno’s approach to the study of late work, which I want to defend as a useful guide to late-life creativity because of this emphasis, that one does not find in the biography-fixated works of later apostles of ‘late style’ such as Edward Said, on the socially and politically critical nature of late works. I am not wedded, incidentally, as Adorno is, to the term ‘late style’, since style is a term that tends to point us to the figure of the artist and away from his or her work’s critical relationship with its wider contexts and implications. It seems to me that Walcott’s late style or mode, of discontent and criticality, is a kind of intentional performance; his is

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an extremely self-conscious lateness. The poet assumes the guises of canonical figures of virtuosic or restless old age, from Shakespeare’s Lear and Prospero to Don Quixote and W. B. Yeats. There is nothing inevitable or involuntary about this sort of late style, a point that Adorno does not fully appreciate. Walcott’s lateness is, if not quite premeditated, then certainly not involuntary or merely serendipitous either. The best way to characterise Walcott’s lateness would be to say that the inescapable experience of old age, with its attendant frailties and restrictions and its acute consciousness of mortality, is transmuted in these poems, in a calculating and resourceful way, into a series of metaphors for the senescence and mortality of something else, which Adorno would call capitalist modernity in what I will call capitalist modernity’s neo-colonial mode. Moreover, the opportunities of old age, which might include a capacity for contemplation and creative reflection, an awareness of longer-term historical developments and continuities, as well as an intense appreciation of beauty and transience, enable Walcott in this volume to explore alternatives to neocolonialism. Those alternatives take shape in visions of free and creative forms of labour and a celebration of the local and the vernacular. Adorno, by contrast, sometimes appears to suggest that there is only one sort of late style that is trans-historical because it simply befalls important artists in the last phase of their careers, involuntarily, as it were. That claim is indefensible. But what Adorno certainly does appreciate, and what I think constitutes the chief merit of his widely but often inaccurately cited work on Beethoven’s late style, is the fact that it is criticality that makes certain works of art important and valuable. Adorno sometimes appears to think that old age necessarily produces this element of criticality, which cannot be the case; not every artist faced with illness and the proximity of death responds in the same way as Walcott. Adorno’s oeuvre might also lead one to believe that it is only canonical European works that possess this element of criticality, which demonstrably isn’t the case. There are many reasons, biographical or social or technical or more likely some complicated combination of all three factors, why works might attain this quality of criticality. One way is to perform lateness, to assume sometimes sincerely and sometimes ironically a guise of mordant dissatisfaction that allows one’s work to be critical of the hypocrisies, conflicts and contradictions of one’s wider social milieu. This is a particularly fruitful option or opportunity for the late-life creator. Walcott inhabits what is probably one of the most familiar images of late-life creativity, the ageing and irascible maestro, in order to explore the provocations and illuminations of which this guise is still capable. The lateness to which Walcott’s collection draws our attention is partly the lateness of his own life, of course, but also the lateness of a whole colonial or rather neo-colonial social and economic system that is advancing into senescence and decrepitude. But Adorno’s work on late style has come under sustained critical assault. Gordon McMullan and Sam Smiles are convinced ‘that the idea of late style, far from being a universal critical given, can be understood … as a critical and ideological construct, the product of a certain kind of critical wish fulfilment’

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(McMullan and Smiles 2016, p. 1). That idea is unusable because it remains wedded to a Romantic cult of artistic genius. McMullan’s own study of Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing argues that the notion that artists’ works typically assume a powerfully expressive manner in response to the experience of advanced age amounts to an effort to rehabilitate author-centred methods of interpretation and to marginalise the materialist view that political and historical context is essential to the analysis of cultural texts. McMullan objects that ‘the idea of late writing’ is inherently dubious; it ‘offers a critical focus for our persistent belief in genius, for our insistence on the centrality of biography to critical analysis, and thus for the way we treat the relationship between creator and creation in all fields of artistic endeavour’ (McMullan 2007, p. 6). Furthermore, the idea of late style is apparently allied to outmoded ideas about canonicity and aesthetic value. The appreciation of late work ‘is itself considered something of an achievement – an acquired taste, a marker of a level of aesthetic sophistication restricted to a cultural elite’ (McMullan and Smiles 2016, p. 2). Connoisseurs of late style tend to applaud the achievements of revered artists while recounting their lives and extolling their greatness. They should be indicted for not attending closely enough to the formal qualities as well as the varied contexts of a more broadly and generously selected body of texts. To chalk up Shakespeare’s last plays to a particular phase of his ‘genius’, therefore, is to ignore everything that is most bracing and instructive about them. Such readings detach the plays ‘from the material and institutional conditions in which they were produced’ and present them ‘instead as the direct manifestation of the author’s mind’ (McMullan 2007, p. 8), about which, in every case and especially in Shakespeare’s, precious little can in fact be known. Even worse, the connotations of masterliness that cling to the idea of genius mean that the artists to whom a late style is commonly attributed, from Beethoven to Rembrandt, Shakespeare to Yeats, Titian to Turner, are invariably male: ‘there is no clearer indication of the limitations’ of the ‘discourse of lateness’ for McMullan ‘than its systematic exclusion of women’ (McMullan 2007, p. 17).1 But I want to look again at the specific meaning of that word ‘genius’. Adorno’s study of Beethoven, which is practically the Ur-text for discussions of late style, does indeed ascribe Beethoven’s late work to Beethoven’s ‘genius’. But the term did not mean for Adorno what it means for us today. Far from it, in fact, because for Adorno the criterion that distinguishes genius is not uniqueness but something more like originality and exemplarity. The genius is not some superior being, in other words. Adorno is entirely uninterested in Beethoven the man. He does not undertake the impossible task of working out why or how Beethoven in the last decade of his life produced such original and demanding works. He is interested above all, indeed exclusively, in the music. The incipient emancipation of dissonance from harmony in Beethoven’s late work is for Adorno an event of literally incomparable significance in the history of culture and it is this phenomenon alone that makes the composer a ‘genius’. Beethoven’s late work thus establishes a touchstone, what Kant calls an

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‘aesthetic idea’. Adorno demonstrates through careful analysis of form that cultural expression of whatever kind should henceforth be critical, that is, unflinching, taxing, provocative and disputatious, in addition to being dissatisfied at the intertwined levels of theme and form with contrived and unconvincing aesthetic reconciliations. It is this last quality above all, late style’s capacity to simulate and make known the disharmoniousness of the social and political worlds in which late works are composed and experienced, that for Adorno constitutes their most profound merit. Shierry Weber Nicholsen is one of the only critics who has recognised that the ‘late’ in ‘late style’, for Adorno at least, refers mainly to capitalism itself (Nicholsen 1987, p. 8). The difficult, rebarbative and even unsettling quality of Beethoven’s late compositions therefore offers a model both for the artist and the critic. Lateness is a shorthand for all the qualities that Adorno finds in late Beethoven. It is therefore both a mode that can be adopted by creative artists (especially but not only older creative artists, as Walcott shows) and a criterion that the critic can use to identify and try to elucidate works whose criticality provides insight into the social order which gave birth to them. I want to think about how Adorno uses the concept of genius to explore the relationship between Beethoven’s ‘late style’ and the production of aesthetic ideas whose value is to be found in their original insights into particular social orders that are similarly ‘late’ in the specific sense of being senescent and on borrowed time. Adorno’s work on late style only appears to be about Beethoven’s individual genius; its deeper theme is the way in which aesthetic form might shed critical light on a work’s social and political context. Similarly, Walcott’s last collection is only partly about the poet’s old age; its deeper and very critical theme is the lateness or obsolescence of the neo-colonial system that still dominates the Caribbean. Let us remind ourselves of what Adorno actually says about Beethoven’s ‘genius’: To the musical experience of the late Beethoven the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, the roundedness of the successful symphony, the totality arising from the motion of all particulars, in short, that which gives the works of his middle period their authenticity, must have become suspect. He saw through the classic as classicism […] At this point he raised himself above the bourgeois spirit, of which his own oeuvre is the highest musical manifestation. Something in his genius, probably the deepest thing, refused to reconcile in the image what is unreconciled in reality […] It is, in the proper sense of the word, a realistic trait in him which is dissatisfied with tenuously motivated conflicts, manipulated antitheses of the kind which in all classicism generate a totality which is supposed to transcend the particular but in reality is imposed on it as if by a dictate of power. (Adorno 1988, pp. 151–2) This is an extraordinarily rich formulation of the central ideas of Adorno’s entire theory of aesthetics. Adorno’s study focuses on the transition from

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Beethoven’s classical to his late style or period. He shows how the thematic resolutions accomplished during the composer’s middle period begin to seem increasingly reluctant and contrived. Adorno describes the late works as bare, fragmentary and ‘enigmatic’ (p. 124), not least because their abrupt transitions, disturbing caesurae and incongruously archaic conventions are no longer controlled and subordinated, as they are in the middle-period works, to some grand design by the composer’s subjectivity and will. Adorno’s bold contention, as I see it, is that for some combination of reasons which he obviously finds it difficult but also needless to identify, reasons that are all at once individual as well as political and historical and above all technical, the transition from the classical aesthetic of Beethoven’s middle period to the greater fragmentariness and bareness of the last quartets and piano sonatas exposed a powerful truth about all authentically critical cultural expression in alienated and class-divided societies: the truth that harmony is spurious (a mask that conceals dissonance) and that the power of the most eloquent works of art is therefore nothing other than their facility for ‘realistically’ articulating the alienation and fragmentation of ‘bourgeois’ society. For Adorno the classical aesthetic of Beethoven’s early and middle periods and even the very structure of sonata form express something of the heroic aspirations of the bourgeoisie in its revolutionary phrase. The massive architectonic structures of Beethoven’s symphonies in addition to the meticulous development and triumphant reconciliation of themes remind Adorno of the dialectical logic of Hegel in which all details and conflicts are ultimately resolved and made meaningful by the benign passage of the world spirit, ‘the totality arising from the motion of all particulars’ (p. 151) or ‘the primacy of the whole over the individual part’ (p. 9). Both the composer and the philosopher portend a society that is not riven with class or any other form of conflict but harmonious, equal and free. ‘Irresistible in the young Beethoven’s music is the expression of the possibility that all might be well’ (Adorno 1996, p. 306); it ‘reverberates with the roar and ideals of the heroic years of its class’ (Adorno 2006, p. 100), the universalist aspirations for liberty, equality and fraternity. The beginnings of a movement beyond these forms in Beethoven’s music is put down by Adorno less to anything so crude as the composer’s precocious disillusionment with bourgeois civilisation than to Beethoven’s purely technical exploration of his musical material, to a working out or through of the potential of harmony itself – which ‘proves to be unreachable according to its own concept’ (Adorno 1999, p. 110) and therefore to a profound mistrust of harmony as a principle of aesthetic construction. Beethoven ‘raised himself above the bourgeois spirit, of which his own oeuvre is the highest musical manifestation’ by exhausting the expressive potential of harmony. Serendipitously, by refraining from furnishing delusory images or semblances of reconciliation his last works also speak eloquently against a society characterised instead and increasingly by discord, inequality and alienation. Oppositions and conflicts are not suppressed by an imperious ‘dictate of power’ in Beethoven’s late works. Therefore, what distinguishes these works,

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in both senses of that term, has less to do with the exemplary talent or virtuosity of their creator and much more to do with their ability to articulate, at the level of form, the comparable failure of bourgeois society itself. That society’s antagonisms and inequalities prevent the realisation of the universalist ideals of the bourgeoisie’s ‘heroic years’. ‘The force of subjectivity in late works is the irascible gesture with which it leaves them’ (Adorno 1988, p. 125). The main theme of late works is not subjectivity at all, still less the triumphant or controlling subjectivity of the artist, but the alienation of subjectivity, its expressive fragility. What Adorno’s work on Beethoven teaches us, to come to the point, is how to measure artworks against a yardstick of eloquent criticality. By refusing ‘to reconcile in the image what is unreconciled in reality’, Beethoven’s late music starts to demonstrate art’s capacity to register and amplify the conflicts and paradoxes that capitalist modernity brings in train. Aesthetic Theory declares that ‘[s]ocial struggles and the relations of classes are imprinted in the structure of artworks’ (Adorno 1999, p. 232). From this point of view all the qualities that Adorno esteems in music and literature, such as dissonance, difficulty and abstractness, are revealed to be ways of mirroring and expressing the comparable dissension, fragmentation and alienation of bourgeois society itself. Formal dissonance is a way of making visible or audible social dissonance. Adorno could not be clearer that it is a dereliction for criticism to leave behind the work and its form and concentrate instead on reductive speculations about biography even when faced with the awesome fact of death: The accepted explanation [for the difficulty and rebarbativeness of Beethoven’s late works] is that they are products of a subjectivity or, still better, of a ‘personality’ ruthlessly proclaiming itself, which breaks through the roundedness of form for the sake of expression, exchanging harmony for the dissonance of its sorrow and spurning sensuous charm under the dictates of the imperiously emancipated mind. The late work is thereby relegated to the margins of art and brought closer to documentation. Accordingly, references to Beethoven’s biography and fate are seldom absent from discussions of his last works. It is as if, in the face of the dignity of human death, art theory wants to forfeit its rights and abdicate before reality. (Adorno 1988, p. 123) Adorno is extremely impatient with the standard biographical explanations of the late style that try ‘to explain the sense of the extraordinary by the life of the old Beethoven, his illness, his difficulties with his nephew and all those things’ (p. 187).2 So what on earth is that incongruous term ‘genius’ doing there? My sense is that this is far from accidental and still less is it evidence of some crudely biographical approach. For Adorno is pointing not at Beethoven’s life but at the quality of criticality that makes the late work exemplary. Exemplarity is what the word ‘genius’ means for Adorno. Aesthetic Theory, which is a sustained effort to radically repurpose the central categories of philosophical aesthetics,

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chiefly those developed by Hegel and Kant, seeks to retain but also clarify the concept of genius. ‘If anything is to be salvaged of this concept it must be stripped away from its crude equation with the creative subject, who through vain exuberance bewitches the artwork into a document of its maker and thus diminishes it’ (Adorno 1999, p. 170). The concept of genius ‘diminishes’ artworks because it assumes that their creator is more important than what he or she creates. Critics are thereby excused from the painstaking process of reflection and self-reflection that aesthetic experience ought to induce: The concept of genius becomes the potential enemy of artworks; … the person back of the work is purported to be more essential than the artworks themselves … . This suits crude bourgeois consciousness as much because it implies a work ethic that glorifies pure human creativity regardless of its aim as because the viewer is relieved of taking any trouble with the object itself: The viewer is supposed to be satisfied with the personality – essentially a kitsch biography – of the artist. Those who produce important artworks are not demigods but fallible, often neurotic and damaged, individuals. An aesthetic mentality, however, that wholly swept away the idea of genius would degenerate into a desolate, pedantic arts-and-crafts mentality devoted to tracing out stencils. (p. 171) Artworks, Adorno reasons, ought to be demanding and complicated enough to provoke careful reflection, not least on the social world from which those works emerge and which in various ways they express. The lazy wish to simply chalk them up to some naïve and irretrievably bourgeois notion of individual genius deprives such works of the challenges they offer us and reduces them to what Adorno calls mere articles of consumption. Yet we should not abandon the concept of genius, Adorno argues, despite the danger that it might mislead us into thinking of artworks as documents of their makers. Without the concept of genius we would have no way of identifying novel or unusual forms of aesthetic expression, so that the critic would be left expecting an endless repeat of the same sterile and familiar forms of creative work. For Adorno, then, genius is emphatically not the ‘crude bourgeois consciousness’ of ‘pure human creativity’. It is a category that enables us to recognise when it comes the ‘ingenious’, even fantastic, occurrence of ‘important’ work, of ‘what has not been copied or repeated’, what is ‘free, yet at the same time bears the feeling of necessity’ (p. 171). Works of genius do something new, but Adorno demonstrably does not think that their novelty can be put down to ‘crude bourgeois’ clichés about the all-powerful ego. Instead they are products of the ‘fallible’ person ‘back of the work’ and of the social order that has somehow, as it were ‘necessarily’, found expression in his or her work. The term ‘genius’, to which McMullan takes such profound exception, whatever its connotations in ordinary speech and whatever it implies for twenty-first century literary theorists who long ago convicted the author and

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compelled him to mount the scaffold, is certainly not used by Adorno as a kind of pat explanation for the qualities he finds in Beethoven’s last compositions. Far from it, in fact, because in the tradition of German philosophical aesthetics, to which Adorno’s aesthetic theory in a sense belongs, to which it repeatedly returns but which it also endeavours to transcend, geniuses are not considered to be geniuses because they are thought to be somehow unique or superior. To the contrary, geniuses provide others with models to follow. The criterion that distinguishes genius is originality. The artistic products of genius are of special value, then, because they provide new and distinctive ways of seeing and understanding the world. Beethoven’s ‘genius’, for Adorno, refers in fact to his late work’s discovery of new forms and means of musical expression that subsequent composers might utilise (and also adapt or take further) and that might form the basis of a new criterion of critical judgement. When Adorno uses the word ‘genius’, therefore, he is most likely referring firstly to Beethoven’s work’s superiority or at least excellence, which I think is forgivable, but also, crucially, to its originality and value. That is simply what the word means for the specific cultural and philosophical tradition out of which Adorno writes, though McMullan is also right, for it no longer means that for us. Kant asserts in the Critique of Judgement that ‘[g]enius is a talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given’ (Kant 1987, p. 175, §46), in other words a work for which no standard or category yet exists that will help us make sense of it. Originality is the hallmark that distinguishes works of genius, according to Kant. In Timothy Gould’s words, they are ‘things which make sense, but which cannot be made sense of according to existing rules’ (Gould 1982, p. 184). A work of genius, then, is initially so singular that it sometimes induces hostility. The work of genius might equally be greeted at first with confusion or incomprehension. But such works therefore break new ground for artists and critics alike. They become, as Gould puts it, ‘an exemplary new way of making sense’.3 The products of ‘genius’ are not just novel and unusual, or, to put the case the other way round, novelty and unusualness are not sufficient to make them works of genius; for that title to be conferred, a work must be capable of representing something or of making something known in a way that is standard-setting and prototypical and that can therefore be pursued and adapted by others. This understanding of genius, it must be stressed, is in no way dependent on the vulgar notion of the genius as a kind of higher being, what Gould calls, in a really useful phrase, the ‘reduction of the concept of genius to mere biology’ (Gould 1998, p. 290). I say all this, then, not because I have any wish to rehabilitate the category of genius, which I think we can safely put to bed, as McMullan recommends. By now it is fatally adulterated by dubious notions about masterly and all-powerful creators. I am trying to put my finger on what Adorno is getting at when he uses the term and in so doing to stress the fact that Adorno’s work on late Beethoven is anything but a naïve paean to the higher being of the great artist. One reason why Adorno’s account is important is that it shows how Beethoven’s late style set down a kind of model for aesthetic practice:

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From the perspective of the philosophy of history, it is hardly an improper generalization of what is all too divergent if one derives the antiharmonic gestures of Michelangelo, of the late Rembrandt, and of Beethoven’s last works not from the subjective suffering of their development as artists but from the dynamic of the concept of harmony itself and ultimately from its insufficiency. Dissonance is the truth about harmony. If the ideal of harmony is taken strictly, it proves to be unreachable according to its own concept … . Far beyond any individual oeuvre, this style has exemplary force: that of the historical suspension of aesthetic harmony altogether … . The emancipation from this ideal is an aspect of the developing truth content of art. (Adorno 1999, p. 110, my italics) This passage gets to the heart of what Adorno means by referring to Beethoven’s genius. Adorno appears unaccountably wedded to the notion that after a long career ‘important artists’ (p. 110) succeed in working through and beyond the principle of harmony in order to explore the expressive potential of dissonance. That might be true of some artists but it is demonstrably untrue of others. Many younger artists might ‘suspend harmony’ in their works; many older artists might not. So there is no reason to think that the emancipation of dissonance in artists’ last works is some sort of trans-historical constant or that the emancipation of dissonance only occurs in artists’ last works. The really important point, ‘far beyond any individual oeuvre’, is that the emancipation of dissonance is an historical rather than biographical phenomenon. So the reference to Rembrandt and Michelangelo is not very helpful. The elaboration and exhaustion of ‘the dynamic of the concept of harmony’ over the course of an artistic career is not a very precise way at all to characterise the oeuvres of three artists working in such radically different contexts, periods and mediums. This is presumably why the quintessential late style for Adorno is Beethoven’s, since the bareness and fragmentariness of the late piano sonatas, for example, are resonant and revealing in the context of a capitalist social order to an extent that, say, the fresco of the Last Judgement or Rembrandt’s selfportraits in the last decade of his life simply aren’t. Adorno’s argument is, as ever, extremely complicated here, but I read him as claiming that harmony is ‘unreachable according to its own concept’, at least not without some sort of artistic violence or deception, because artworks are always the ‘appearance’ or expression of their wider social and political context, which in a society divided into classes is invariably disharmonious. One way of summarising Adorno’s influential account of the German and Austrian musical tradition is, therefore, to present the ‘exemplary’ transition in Beethoven’s work (from development and resolution in his classical or middle period to bareness and fragmentariness in the last piano sonatas and quartets) as a kind of premonition or initiation of the larger-scale unfolding of the inner logic of that tradition itself. According to this reading, the Second Viennese School’s eventual move beyond the ideal of harmony into the farthest reaches of atonality and then seriality represents the simultaneous consummation and destruction of that tradition. The emergence

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or, as Adorno puts it, the ‘emancipation’ of dissonance from harmony, which is, he tells us, ‘an aspect of the developing truth content of art’, is first enacted or foreshadowed in the oeuvre of Beethoven but is also painstakingly worked out in the subsequent history of German and Austrian classical music. Thus Gustav Mahler’s symphonies, his ‘ballads of the defeated’, whose ‘fractures are the script of truth’ in which ‘the social movement appears negatively, as in its victims’, are composed from a perspective ‘as if in extreme old age’, according to Adorno (Adorno 1991, pp. 195–7). Mahler’s is a performance of lateness, in other words, indebted to the ‘aesthetic idea’, as Kant puts it, which is first laid out in Beethoven’s final compositions. Not only do the exiles and outcasts in the symphonies and Lieder alert Mahler’s listeners to the ‘victims’ of an antagonistic society but that society’s ‘truth’ is disclosed even more powerfully by the composer’s radical approach to traditional musical forms whose promise of development, unity and completion is now made to seem forced, ironical or even downright intolerable. Beethoven’s late style ‘is essentially critical’ (Adorno 1988, p. 97). What it turns out to be critical of, we can see in retrospect and can view even more clearly in the works of Beethoven’s successors in the Viennese tradition, is a developing capitalist system or rather of a capitalism that is developing in ways that are profoundly and intrinsically uneven. Beethoven’s last quartets and piano sonatas, as Said has said, ‘constitute an event in the history of modern culture’ (Said 2006, pp. 7–8), not as Said thinks because they show for the first time how ‘great artists’ (p. 6) near the end of their lives become disenchanted and disenchanting but because those works indicate to critics and others what the kind of fragmentary aesthetic form that they typify and pioneer actually does and why that form is valuable: lateness is an ‘aesthetic idea’, a quality of works that alerts us to the incorrigible unevenness and therefore the failure of capitalist modernity itself. There was ‘something’ in ‘Beethoven’s genius’ that enabled his work to raise itself above the bourgeois spirit by eschewing reconciliation and embracing negativity, though what that something was cannot be divined and does not really matter, since what is crucial about the late works is not what Beethoven intends but what his work does, the works’ prescience rather than their provenance. It must be admitted, of course, that in Adorno’s hands, the tradition that Beethoven instigates and that Adorno takes it upon himself to chronicle and appraise is an unacceptably patrilineal one, just as the line stretching from Beethoven through Mahler to Schoenberg is conventionally (even dauntingly) canonical. There’s nothing wrong with prescribing canons, in my view, but the rules of entry to Adorno’s are notoriously prohibitive and, as it were, decidedly Deutschlandfokussiert. We must also admit that Adorno’s work does, alas, systematically exclude women, to use McMullan’s phrase, but that’s only another way of stating that we are not obliged to focus our critical energies on the traditions and works that interested Adorno. There is no reason why we should be so loath to allow admission to works of music and literature from other times and places as well as works that are rather different at the level of form

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and theme but that can nonetheless be analysed with the aid of what is, for me, Adorno’s truly indispensable insight that what makes a work late in addition to what makes a work important is its capacity to register above all at the level of form the failure or miscarrying and therefore the obsolescence and dispensability – in short, the lateness – of a specifically capitalist social order. McMullan is right to caution us against talking about lateness in a crudely and reductively biographical way. But Adorno does not attribute Beethoven’s late work to Beethoven’s late life. Though he describes the late works as products of Beethoven’s genius he means by that word that they are extremely prescient, both for the musical tradition in which Adorno is interested but also for the rest of us as critics seeking to identify what Kant calls the ‘aesthetic idea’ that allows certain works to achieve what Beethoven’s late works start to do, that is, to be ‘essentially critical’ (Adorno 1988, p. 97) of the social order from which they spring. Adorno would also reject the naïve view that style is ‘the organic product not of an epoch but of the life and will of a given artist’ (McMullan 2007, p. 2). Indeed, I would go further and state that the last century’s most sophisticated and influential Marxist critic’s explicit aversion to biographical criticism and his stress on the eloquent criticality pioneered by Beethoven’s late works is entirely consistent with McMullan’s own desire to ditch the clichés about ageing maestros in favour of the materialist analysis of social and political contexts. The signal achievement of Adorno’s analysis of Beethoven’s late works is that it encapsulates Adorno’s most important critical insight, which is also the most important insight put forward by materialist cultural criticism: that especially under the changed conditions of a specifically capitalist social order it is critique rather than affirmation and it is dissonance rather than harmony that are the most powerfully meaningful qualities that artworks might undertake to express. Beethoven’s late works are for Adorno the limit point beyond which the highest forms of cultural expression are essentially critical. Lateness is a model, not just for the artist but for the critic as well. Thanks to Adorno, we know what we are looking for. Products of ‘genius’, in Kant’s words, are ‘exemplary’ and become ‘a standard or rule by which to judge’ (Kant 1987, p. 175, §46). Criticality is what makes a work late, which is another way of saying that criticality is the quality in works that enables them to explore capitalism’s lateness, the fact not so much that capitalism is on its last legs but that it is an intrinsically uneven and antagonistic system and is therefore fallible, contingent and historically specific. *** As I have argued elsewhere, Adorno’s radical redefinition of capitalist modernity in works like Negative Dialectics presents development or modernisation as not only uneven and incomplete but also catastrophic (Spencer 2016). In fact development is, as it were, incompletable within the constraints of a capitalist society in which social progress must by definition lag behind technological progress. The forces of production (capitalism’s colossal productive power) are in flagrant and intolerable conflict with exploitative and unequal and therefore

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wholly obsolete relations of production. The now entirely unnecessary pursuit of breakneck growth and accumulation occurs at the unsustainable cost of the domination of both human and non-human nature. Adorno’s oeuvre is studded with these images of catastrophically uneven development, of misdirected technological prowess placed in the service of total barbarism, space travel juxtaposed with mass hunger, bureaucratic efficiency allied to the commission of genocide. In a sense therefore, capitalism is for Adorno always already late, that is, moribund, motionless, a system that stymies authentic progress, which for Adorno could only mean progress in the achievement of freedom and the diminution of suffering. Adorno’s work is therefore in large part a sustained reflection on a blockage in history or, put differently, on the failure of capitalism to develop into or give way before something genuinely new and on how art and philosophy respond to this experience of failure, which is essentially a failure to fulfil the bourgeoisie’s revolutionary goals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Adorno therefore allows us to formulate a radical new conception of modernity. Ben Hutchinson has likewise argued that post-Romantic European literature should be seen not as modern or modernist literature but as a variety of responses to a sense of lateness (Hutchinson 2016). Similarly, modernity for Adorno has to be grasped, counter-intuitively, as an arena not of progress but of the entrenchment of a system that merely feigns novelty and that merely impersonates progress. Modernity, in short, is a misnomer. Adorno’s focus is on the contradictions and catastrophes of European history. Enrique Dussel goes much further. He argues that modernity has served historically as an ideology that has masked European colonial domination. Modernity is the thoroughly contradictory planetary culture of the world-system that first came into being with Spain’s incorporation and administration of Amerindia and with the consequent constitution of Europe as the ‘centre’ and the rest of the globe as its ‘periphery’. ‘Modern’ European values, technologies and political institutions, indeed capitalism itself, have all developed their distinctive character as a result of this global genesis. Free labour, for example, increasingly became a crucial aspect of the core’s ideological self-image and therefore of its claim to be modern. But Europe’s definitive competitive advantage over the Islamic, Indian and Chinese worlds in fact came about as a result of its ability to use forced labour: to produce value (in Marx’s sense) from the toil of vast numbers of indigenous peoples in the Americas and from millions of plantation slaves of African provenance (Dussel 1998, p. 12). To talk about modernity then, is not just to talk about Europe’s image of itself as the origin and exemplar of what it means to be modern, but to think about how that narrow and self-serving, as well as extremely durable, conception of modernity came about in response to a process of ‘modernisation’ that was, to put it mildly, much more complex and uneven. Capitalist modernity, in short, is a profoundly contentious and contradictory, not to mention catastrophic and crisis-prone, phenomenon, one that is limited as Dussel puts it and that since its inception always has been limited and is in fact constitutively limited by ‘the impossibility of the subsumption of the

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populations, economies, nations, and cultures that [modernity] has been attacking since its origin and has excluded from its horizon and cornered into poverty’ (p. 21). ‘Disconsolation’ is the term that Neil Lazarus employs to describe the critical and disenchanting effect not only of the canonical works that Adorno extols but also of work produced outside the frankly Eurocentric bounds of Adorno’s experience and expertise (Lazarus 2002, p. 431). All of Walcott’s work registers the weight and appeal of a European aesthetic tradition that it perceives and even partly constructs from the oblique angle of a formerly colonised subject. Adorno is preoccupied with the crises and catastrophes of European modernity, with social inequality and with the consciousness-dulling power of the culture industry and above all with war and genocide. ‘Disconsolation’ is also, Lazarus suggests, the potential effect of work that amplifies the crises and catastrophes of non-European modernity as well, or rather that foregrounds the catastrophes attendant upon a process of capitalist modernity that is conceptualised, as Dussel conceptualises it, as being from the outset a fully global system. What is so intriguing and challenging about White Egrets is that it combines both a militant disavowal of a colonial or, more accurately, neo-colonial system in the Caribbean with a conscious and even enthusiastic indebtedness to the modes and forms of European aesthetic tradition. The poet rails against new forms of colonial domination and their impoverishing effects. But he does so in the guise of a figure who is acutely and forcefully conscious of his own mortality, a role that is plainly modelled on canonical exemplars of lateness like Keats, Shakespeare’s Lear and especially Yeats. The tension between resisting and embracing European forebears is evident at the minutest level of the collection’s form; this numbered sequence of poems of varying lengths is composed in rhyming quatrains but the quatrains do not constitute stanzas and nor are these poems, which often end abruptly or else continue unexpectedly, invariably divisible by four. Orthodox rhyme schemes give way to more complex patterns of para- and internal rhyme or even to contrived and tinny rhymes, such as ‘Arethusa’ with ‘lose her’ and ‘Siracusa’ (Walcott 2010, p. 20), that find equally forceful ways of accentuating the potentially constraining nature of the form that the volume has chosen for itself. These faintly or creatively or stiltedly rhyming ‘quatrains’ are at once a departure from a freely adopted and patently admired tradition and an insistent reminder that the tradition in question is itself hardly proscriptive or unilinear since the quatrain is by no means a uniquely or even predominantly European form. This collection encloses itself in a tradition that is constraining and oppressive but also unexpectedly capacious, flexible and susceptible to creative innovation. This is a point about poetic form but also about what that form represents, which is modernity itself, revealed by this collection to be a radically contradictory global (as opposed to narrowly European) phenomenon. So White Egrets dramatizes the imminent demise of two things. The first is the life of the poet who is fixated with memory and with the physical effects of ageing. Old age also gives the poet the opportunity to assume a part, very

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knowingly, often earnestly and sometimes sardonically, that he has inherited from poetic tradition. The second thing that is coming to an end, therefore, is not so much that tradition but its identity and authority. It is European modernity itself, the durable belief and practice of cleanly dividing ‘Europe’ as centre from its colonial ‘peripheries’, that is placed on borrowed time. What Dussel’s analysis reveals is that the idea of ‘Europe’ has always been a kind of sleight of hand, the cultural or ideological product of the careful exclusion and forgetting of the dependency of European wealth and cultural prestige from the outset on the expropriation of the wealth and cultural integrity of other peoples. What Walcott’s volume does is occupy that tradition, not just to herald its demise but in so doing to open it out to the other experiences and voices it previously occluded. Walcott’s is not a submission to European modernity but an appropriation of it. These poems foretell the end of empire and the imminent or at least potential emergence of empire’s successor, a quite different social, economic and cultural order based not on control or hierarchy but in some non-prescriptive and post-nationalist way on ideals of freedom and creativity. At the end of the first poem ‘A sable blackbird twitters in the limes’ (p. 3), echoing the gathering swallows twittering in the last line of Keats’s ‘Ode To Autumn’, another familiar exemplar of lateness. Walcott’s is an allusive and rather self-aggrandising affiliation with a certain canonical tradition that meditates on mortality and endings. The blatant archaism of ‘sable’ tells us as much, as does the mourning garb of this recurring image. The poem’s ekphrastic subjects, the ‘life-sized terra-cotta warriors’ of Qin Shi Huang to which the poet’s ‘rigid’ ‘chessmen’ are likened, are still serving their dead ‘emperor, his clan, his nation’. Time might have come to a disarming standstill in that ‘astonishing excavation’. But it continues to pass in the poet’s garden. There the ‘changing light/ on the lawn outside where bannered breakers toss/ and the palms gust with music that is time’s’ are ominous signs of time’s relentless passage. This is a source of fear for the ageing and immobile poet as he seeks to kill time by playing chess. But the shifting patterns of light as well as the palms and breakers, St Lucia’s trees and its seas being perennial signifiers of place in this collection, are also sources of creative inspiration. They generate sound and ‘music’, the art of the Muse and therefore also poetry. I read this opening poem not only as a frankly paradoxical meditation on the grandeur and obsolescence of empire but also as a reflection on how the ‘vows’ and ‘voice’ of these ‘breathlessly erect’ guardians of a bygone empire, which is thus paradoxically both dead and alive, endow the ageing poet with a voice and purpose of his own. He sings both of an empire ‘that has lost its voice’ while remaining ‘erect’ and of something else, an outlook or set of attachments that emerges much more cryptically in the course of these poems but is perhaps alluded to in the poet’s acceptance of time’s uncertainties as well as in his description of the ‘excavation’ as ‘astonishing’. What the poet finds so wonderful and surprising about the terracotta warriors is their sheer meaningfulness. Not only the chessmen and the ubiquitous

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white egrets but in fact everything that the infirm poet sees through his window is immediately transformed into metaphor. To be astonished is certainly not the same thing as being dumbfounded or deprived of speech. Astonishment is more like being rendered motionless and rapt, not like the ‘rigid’ and ‘odourlessly strict’ warriors but more like the immobile yet intensely vigilant poet confined here, in another recurring image, to a restricted but absorbing view of some ‘lawn’. The astonishing but modest phenomena of natural growth and change, the geographically specific minutiae of his island that reveal themselves to the watchful invalid, are at the level of metaphor the exact opposites of empire’s grandiose delusions of permanence and universality. Walcott is echoing themes of Yeats here and is even restaging the whole miseen-scène from Yeats’s ‘An Acre of Grass’, the incapacitated versifier in his garden resisting the temptations of serenity or defeat and instead invoking exemplars of angry old age. Among Walcott’s many costumes, therefore, is that of the post-nationalist Yeats in old age (see Spencer 2011, pp. 60–103). It is not only the breakers and birds of St Lucia that astonish the poet in the course of the collection but also the sunflowers of Urbino, the Sicilian light and the ‘blazing country/ in eastern Pennsylvania’ that inspires a ‘love for what is not your land’ in ‘Pastoral’ (p. 43). Time is both resisted and accepted in these poems. Many of them are dedicated to deceased companions and friends. They are elegies, poised somewhere between acts of mourning that reconcile the poet to the fact of death and fits of melancholia that refuse to accept loss or be appeased by glib consolations and epitaphs. Time entails mortality of course. But it also betokens renewal. These poems therefore oscillate between two moods or modes, equanimity and indignation, acceptance and resistance. We must not overlook the fact that this is irreducibly the poet’s predicament, that of nearing the end of one’s life, tormented by illness and debility, filled with regrets but also with last-ditch plans, memories of pleasure and feelings of pride in accomplishment. But it would be a mistake to take all this at face value. For even the poet’s life is transmuted into metaphor. The poet is constructing and performing a part or voice that threatens at first to accept ‘the drumming world that dampens your tired eyes’, to accept even ‘the quiet ravages of diabetes’ ‘with level sentences’ and the ‘sculpted settlement’ of ornate verse forms. The sequence entitled ‘White Egrets’ withstands that temptation. The poet anticipates ‘that peace/ beyond desires and beyond regrets,/ at which I may arrive eventually’, though evidently not yet. In the third poem of the sequence a storm lashes the trees in the poet’s garden: ‘light cracks and thunder groans’ like the blowing winds and cracking cheeks of Lear’s ‘cataracts and hurricanoes’ (King Lear 3.2.2). ‘“Who’ll house the shivering hawk, and the/ impeccable egret and the cloud-coloured heron,/ and the parrots who panic at the false fire of dawn?” In Shakespeare’s play, of course, it is the ‘houseless heads and unfed sides’ of the ‘[p]oor naked wretches’ ‘[t]hat bide the pelting of this pitiless storm’ that alert Lear for the first time to the sheer bodiliness and mortality that even a king shares with his fellow humans. Lear resolves to embrace a kind of obligation or even solidarity

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to his fellow beings: ‘Take physic, pomp;/ Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel’ (King Lear 3.4.28–34). Walcott, meanwhile, pities the houseless birds. The allusion to Lear is an act of self-aggrandisement of course, but this is also an imaginative feat of compassion. The shivering hawk and the panicking parrots are symbols of imperilled nature, while the multiply meaningful and ‘impeccable egret’ is, as ever, an image of survival and renewal. The egret is a ‘mythical conceit’ (p. 8), an extended and highly polysemic metaphor. Egrets seemingly invite their own transmutation into images and figures or ‘egret-emblems’, to use Walcott’s Yeatsian term, every bit as cryptic but also prolifically evocative as the Irish poet’s swans: ‘These birds keep modelling for Audubon’ (p. 8), the nineteenth-century American ornithologist and water-colourist. They repeatedly beseech decipherment, variously betokening ancientness and death, creative ingenuity and discrimination, angelic or ‘seraphic’ immortality. Yet their ‘indifference’ to the poet leaves them uncaptured by these various imposed meanings. They return ‘like memory, like prayer’ so that time and again in this collection ‘an egret astonishes the page’ (p. 8). The egret’s meanings are multiple and often contradictory: they ‘stalk through the rain/ as if nothing mortal can affect them’ (p. 8) and they are ‘sepulchral’, large and sinister creatures ‘“like something out of Bosch”’ (p. 9), at once immortal and deathly, emissaries from heaven and denizens of hell. What they denote, therefore, is not one single thing but the poet’s capacity to transform all things into lively metaphors or, put differently, the poet’s capacity to be astonished again and again by phenomena that escape secure definition. Watching and describing egrets is a task that resembles prayer in the same sense that poetry’s task, in the words of W.H. Auden’s elegy to Yeats, is to ‘Teach the free man how to praise’ (Auden 1977, p. 243). ‘The perpetual ideal is astonishment’, paradoxically, because it is definitely not the perpetual or eternal quality of the egrets that repeatedly delights the poet but their unfailing capacity to mean different things at different moments. If empire aspires to permanence and universality, then the egrets signify the transience of nature and its irreducible specificity. If empire seeks to stabilise meaning then the egrets free meaning up and multiply it. They permit a creative freedom of description and interpretation. Poetry itself therefore becomes a kind of anti-imperialist emblem of freedom, independence and creativity, albeit a practice that is perennially under threat. ‘The Acacia Trees’ remembers when it was possible to write beneath the acacias on ‘the hot, empty beach’ that is now being measured up ‘with tapes and theodolites’. I watched the doomed acres where yet another luxury hotel will be built with ordinary people fenced out. The new makers of our history profit without guilt and are, in fact, prophets of a policy that will make the island a mall, and the breakers grin like waiters, like taxi drivers, these new plantations by the sea; a slavery without chains, with no blood spilt – just

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chain-link fences and signs, the new degradations. I felt such freedom under the acacias. (p. 11) The poem, with its strident certainties and its shocking comparison of tourist developments to slave plantations, is untypically prosaic and didactic. But it thus serves to sketch a larger historical and political context for the rest of the collection’s insistence on the creative freedom that is exemplified by the practice of writing and reading metaphors. Fences and signs are the methods of the new imperialism: fences privatise sites of liberty and community while signs fix meanings and possibilities of interpretation. Tourist development ‘will make the island a mall’, transforming its multiplicity of unregimented existences into saleable commodities, its people into obsequious house boys and the manifold phenomena of its natural world into reified spectacles. The twin freedoms of writing and of reading, the very freedoms practiced and encouraged throughout this collection and which are placed by ‘The Acacia Trees’ in an explicitly anti-colonial or more specifically anti-neo-colonial political context, are exemplary freedoms to see and create things anew, to praise and be astonished by (to recognise the beauty and importance of) that which is not yet pinned down or fenced off. Of course the poet is conscious that the power of poetry is merely exemplary rather than actual. ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’, to quote Auden’s elegy for Yeats once more. Indeed the poet acknowledges in parenthesis that ‘blank, printless beaches are part of my trade’, since writing poetry is a service occupation like waiting tables or driving a taxi and poems too hawk images of commodified nature to wealthy foreign patrons. The point is that the promise of independence and freedom is as yet unfulfilled, or rather that the duelling mindsets and structures of freedom and empire remain locked in combat. ‘The Lost Empire’ recalls the sudden demise of British imperialism along with imperialism’s world-encircling authority and its delusions of permanence. Barely voiced here but certainly manifest in other poems about infirmity and illness is the poet’s own waning strength: ‘there is no greater theme than this chasm-deep surrendering of power’ (p. 37). If there is certainly grandeur in the fluttering flags and pennons and ‘the tasselled cortège’ of the expiring empire then there is a similar dignity and solemnity to the poem itself, its stately rhyme scheme, its echoes of Prospero’s celebrated valedictory speech in the fourth act of The Tempest, and its creator’s seemingly undiminished virtuosity. ‘The force of subjectivity in late works is the irascible gesture with which it leaves them’ (Adorno 1988, p. 125), according to Adorno. Irascibility is hardly the right term for the air of composed gravity that presides over this poem. But it is certainly true that its willed and rather archaic and ambivalent insistence on formality (its four orthodox ABAB-rhyming quatrains interrupted in the middle by an incongruously half-rhyming additional line) complements the ceremonious ‘funeral pom-poms’, the marching boots and rifle’s volley and the mournful last post sounded by the ‘sobbing bugle’. The force of subjectivity in this late work

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is the intensely formal gesture with which it takes its leave. Both the political forms of empire and empire’s tightly controlled poetic expressions are expiring. In the second part of this poem what they are succeeded by is not only the emergence of a more creatively complex rhyme scheme but a veritable celebration of informality at the level of the poem’s themes. A map of the Antilles ‘looks as if a continent fell/ and scattered into fragments’ (p. 38). There follows a celebration of local places, ‘from Pointe du Cap/ to Moule à Chique’, and a list of vernacular and multi-lingual names for the islands’ flora: ‘bois-canot, laurier cannelles,/ canoe-wood, spicy laurel, the wind-churned trees/ echo the African crests’. The stars at night are not the imperial capitals and financial centres of ‘Genoa, Milan, London, Madrid, Paris’ but ‘far fishermen’s fires’ and ‘crab-hunters’ torches’. This small place produces nothing but beauty, the wind-warped trees, the breakers on the Dennery cliffs, and the wild light that loosens a galloping mare on the plain of Vieuxfort make us merely receiving vessels of each day’s grace, light simplifies us whatever our race or gifts. I’m content as Kavanagh with his few acres; for my heart to be torn to shreds like the sea’s lace, to see how its wings catch colour when a gull lifts. ‘This small place produces nothing but beauty’ is both a prideful boast that everything produced in St Lucia is beautiful and a disappointed admission that the island is at a competitive disadvantage in the cutthroat world of late capitalism since beauty is all that it produces. Yet The Tempest is perhaps not the only Caribbean inter-text present in this poem for we might also pick up an allusion to the celebrated Cahier d’un retour au pays natal of Aimé Césaire, the ‘maître’ to whom ‘Elegy’ is dedicated (p. 87), and Césaire’s excited ‘Hurrah for those who never invented anything’. The ‘wind-churned trees/ echo the African crests’ is a reminder of the island’s African rather than British provenance but also of the violent dispossession of the middle passage. ‘This small place’, like the similarly ‘small place’ of Jamaica Kincaid’s Antigua, has actually produced a very great deal over the years, not least through slavery the wealth that enabled the industrial take-off of the West. That it now produces nothing but beauty is cause for regret, since the ‘slavery without chains’ that is tourism is by far the island’s leading source of foreign exchange earnings. Yet beauty is productive in another and much more auspicious sense. The poetic labour undertaken in this second part of the poem is nothing like the formal arrangements of the first part. What is described here is more like an ad hoc, albeit somewhat idealised list of striking scenes from island life. The poet does not impose meaning but describes all witnesses or readers of these scenes as ‘merely receiving vessels of each day’s grace’. The production of beauty, either through composition or perception, augurs an alternative form of creative or free labour. Nature is a source of astonishment not something to be controlled and commodified. The fishermen and crab hunters are examples of forms of non-alienated labour in sustainable

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symbiosis with nature. Poetry itself is a form of labour that does not marshal its images or control their interpretation but simply makes those intensely resonant images available for contemplation. The ‘us’ who are ‘receiving vessels of each day’s grace’ are the same inclusive ‘us’ who for the poet’s painterly eye are ‘simplified’ by light ‘whatever our race or gifts’. The names of its places and fauna are testament to the island’s diverse sites of origin therefore, an effect redoubled by the perhaps surprising reference to the celebrated insularity of Patrick Kavanagh. The poem ends, ultimately, with a Césaire-like vision of post-imperial inclusivity, a ‘rendezvous de la conquête’ where all races and identities may converge and where it is the creative freedom of poetry itself that exemplifies a wholesale alternative to the dying age of empire. The poem is certainly, in the mode of the Irish poet, a celebration of the vernacular and of the beauty and significance of the seemingly commonplace, a vindication of this ‘small place’ as opposed to the space-devouring expansionism of empire. But it is also a hugely auspicious announcement that what makes this place, St Lucia, significant is its capacity to call forth a kind of creative practice. Composition and interpretation are forms of freedom. A breaker resembles lacework, which is not so much because everything is a work of art but because everything can be transformed into metaphor and thus made into a work of art. Why? Because poetry is an exemplary form of free and creative (rather than forced) labour. His praise for Beethoven’s ‘genius’ should not mislead us into thinking that Adorno is so naïve that he thinks that what makes a work of art estimable is the masterly subjectivity of its creator. To the contrary, what distinguishes late works, for Adorno, whether or not those works are produced by artists in the last periods of their lives, is their capacity to express the lateness or obsolescence of capitalist modernity. Adorno is by no means convinced, however, that capitalism is somehow on borrowed time or that works of art herald its demise. Adorno is not a sibyl but a Marxist wedded to a characteristically Marxist conviction that capitalism is an intrinsically contradictory and uneven social and economic system, one bedevilled by its own limitations and contradictions and therefore prone to crises and catastrophes. Late works express not so much capitalism’s imminent demise, therefore, as its contingency; by amplifying limitations and contradictions late works present capitalism, to borrow a phrase from Georg Lukács, as ‘a historical phenomenon even while it exists’ (Lukács 1990, p. 261; emphasis in the original). Adorno’s insistence on Beethoven’s ‘genius’ has nothing to do with Beethoven’s life, which Adorno is not interested in, or with Beethoven’s distinctive talent, which Adorno concedes but which he acknowledges cannot be explained, but rather with Beethoven’s work’s originality and exemplarity, which is simply what the word means for the particular cultural and philosophical tradition out of which Adorno writes. Late-style Beethoven is ‘the prototypical modern aesthetic form’, in Said’s words (Said 2006, p. 14). Adorno’s distinctive attribute as a cultural critic, one honed in the course of his life-long fixation with late-period Beethoven and realised even more fully in a series of studies and monographs on everything from Wagner’s Parsifal to Hölderlin’s late poetry and from Beckett’s Endgame to the astrology

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column of The Los Angeles Times, is his consistent demonstration that the quality or criterion that sets some works apart from others is the extent to which, intentionally or not, they succeed in invigorating and emboldening those who experience them and in directing us away from the merely aesthetic sphere to a critical engagement with the unsatisfactory and antagonistic order in which those works originate. There are no doubt as many late styles as there are late stylists. But Adorno is unashamedly offering us a criterion for evaluation. Works that are critical in the sense that Beethoven’s late works are critical and that, I have been arguing, this late collection of Walcott’s is critical are simply valuable and worthwhile. That is not because Beethoven or Walcott are somehow superior beings, which would be a ridiculous, sinister and insupportable claim. It is because their work does something important, which is to direct us away from the figure of the artist to the substance of his art, which is historical and political. Narratives for Peter Brooks are ways of making sense of the passage of time (Brooks 1992). They give shape and meaning to what might otherwise appear to be chaotic or simply adventitious. Most narratives about the production of art in old age are personal and redemptive ones. Even where late works are seen to be angry and discontented rather than serene or consoling, they are still presented as crowning accomplishments of an artistic career. Where the artist might be expected to settle down or to encounter creative incapacity, late works are often presented by contrast as a sort of surprising burst of exemplary creative effort. These are the stories we tell ourselves about late style. In a sense, it is also the story that Walcott tells himself and his readers. But another story emerges in the course of this collection, one in which the life of the artist is transformed into a metaphor for something else entirely, something like the Yeatsian theme of the rise and fall of civilisations and empires, and thus not the ordering of time and the arrangement of time by narrative into a palatable and comprehensible shape but the affirmation of time as the medium of change, creativity and, yes, mortality. Walcott’s White Egrets is in part a collection of poems about the frustrations, preoccupations and opportunities of old age. But it is a collection that, while appearing to embrace the slightly clichéd figure of the ageing maestro, also uses that figure’s acute awareness of the passage of time, of mortality and transience, to explore the comparable lateness and contingency of neo-colonialism in the Caribbean. Temporality, including the mortality of the poet, of the poetic tradition he ambivalently occupies and of the evanescent beauty and specificity of the island’s natural world, are implicit ripostes to empire’s delusions of permanence and to its continuing determination to reify and exploit the people and nature of St Lucia. Forced labour has been the underside of capitalist modernity, conceptualised from Dussel’s fully global perspective, from slavery to the ‘slavery without chains’ of service-sector employment. But it is the creative and free labour of description and interpretation that Walcott’s collection both demonstrates and enables. All of Walcott’s work is unflinching in its condemnation of ‘the traitors/ who, in elected office, saw the land as views/ for hotels’, who

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exchanged freedom for dependency (Walcott 1990, p. 289). Furthermore, this late collection’s knowing embrace of temporality and transience constitutes not just what Anthony Carrigan calls a ‘counter-historicization of landscape’ (Carrigan 2011, p. 54) but a veritable counter-historicization of the Caribbean itself. The deeper theme of Adorno’s work on late style turns out to be not Beethoven’s individual genius but Beethoven’s work’s precocious criticality in relation to the conflicts and contradictions of capitalist modernity. So too does it transpire that the theme of White Egrets is not just the poet’s old age but also the ways in which old age, transmuted into metaphor, illuminates the history and possible future of the Caribbean region. White Egrets stresses the continuity of slavery and the prospect of freedom as well as the ongoing struggle between these two eventualities. ‘Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists?’ Jamaica Kincaid asks her readers in the same direct form of address that Walcott frequently employs. ‘Well, it’s because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital’ (Kincaid 1988, pp. 36–7; emphasis in the original). The scrutiny of, as well as the exploration of alternatives to, that kind of system is what makes a work late.

Notes 1 See also Battersby (1990). 2 Elsewhere Adorno eschews even more forcefully the biographical approach that has served, he argues, to domesticate the ‘alienness’ and ‘difficulty’ of Hölderlin’s late poetry. See Adorno (1992, pp. 109–49). 3 Gould (1998, p. 290). Jacques Derrida has mounted a qualified defence of Kant’s suggestion that the concept of genius helps us to identify the emergence of aesthetically new ideas and forms. See Haworth (2014).

References Adorno, T. W. (1988) Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music. Ed. R. Tiedemann. Trans. E. Jephcott. Cambridge: Polity Press. Adorno, T. W. (1991) Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy. Trans. E. Jephcott. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Adorno, T. W. (1992) Parataxis: On Hölderlin’s Late Poetry. Notes to Literature, vol. 2. Ed. R. Tiedemann. Trans. S. W. Nicholsen. New York: Columbia University Press. Adorno, T. W. (1996) Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. London: Routledge. Adorno, T. W. (1999) Aesthetic Theory. Eds G. Adorno and R. Tiedemann. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. London: Athlone. Adorno, T. W. (2006) Philosophy of New Music. Trans. and Ed. R. Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Auden, W. H. (1977) In Memory of W.B. Yeats. In The English Auden: Poems, Essays, and Dramatic Writing, 1927–1939. Ed. E. Mendelson. London: Faber & Faber. Battersby, C. (1990) Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics. London: John Wiley. Brooks, P. (1992) Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Carrigan, A. (2011) Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture and Environment. London: Routledge. Dussel, E. (1998) Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of Modernity. In Cultures of Globalization. Eds F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 3–31. Gould, T. (1982) The Audience of Originality: Kant and Wordsworth on the Reception of Genius. In Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics. Eds T. Cohen and P. Guyer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 179–193. Gould, T. (1998) Genius: Conceptual and Historical Overview. In Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, vol. 2. Ed. M. Kelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 287–292 Haworth, M. (2014) Genius Is What Happens: Derrida and Kant on Genius, RuleFollowing and the Event. British Journal of Aesthetics, 54:3: 323–337. Hutchinson, B. (2016) Lateness and Modern European Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgment. Trans. W. S. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Kincaid, J. (1988) A Small Place. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. Lazarus, N. (2002) The Politics of Postcolonial Modernism. In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Eds A. Loomba, S. Kaul, M. Bunzi, A. Burton and J. Esty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 423–438. Lukács, G. (1990) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Trans. R. Livingstone. London: Merlin Press. McMullan, G. (2007) Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McMullan, G. and S. Smiles (2016) Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicholsen, S. W. (1987) Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno’s Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Spencer, R. (2011) Cosmopolitan Criticism and Postcolonial Literature. London: Palgrave. Spencer, R. (2016) Lateness and Modernity in Theodor Adorno. In McMullan and Smiles (2016), pp. 220–234. Walcott, D. (1990) Omeros. London: Faber & Faber. Walcott, D. (2010) White Egrets. New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux.

Part III

The varieties of late-life creativity

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Late-life creativity Assessing the value of theatre in later life Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to consider the relationship between late-life creativity and our understandings of cultural value. Drawing primarily on findings from two projects funded under the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) ‘Cultural Value’ programme, we focus on what the existing literature tells us about theatre in later life; and on what we have learned through our own explicit – and methodologically innovative – arts-based approach to the evaluation of project participants’ experiences. We begin by exploring the concept of cultural value, consider the scope of research in this area to date, and set the scene for an examination of the ways in which late-life creativity contributes to cultural value. We then show how our use of theatre and drama, as a form of collaborative research enquiry into cultural value, puts older people at the centre of the research and performance process and has the potential for capturing and conveying some of the affective and intrinsic dimensions of older people’s creative experiences. It also helps us explore the extent to which latelife creativity can be seen as something that arises from an interaction between instrumental, institutional and aesthetic forms of cultural value. Our examination of late-life creativity and cultural value is set against the growth of interest amongst gerontologists and literary and cultural scholars alike in arts participation and the artistic outputs of older people. That said, comparatively little attention has yet been paid to theatre and drama. Likewise, community or participatory theatre has long been used to address issues affecting marginalised or excluded groups but is a presently under-utilised medium for exploring ageing or for conveying positive messages about growing older. In order to respond to this gap in research and practice, we have been involved, since 2009, in a continuing collaboration with colleagues at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Developed under the generic title of ‘Ages and Stages’, we have undertaken a series of multidisciplinary research projects investigating the role that theatre and drama can play in experiences of ageing and later life, whilst simultaneously co-creating innovative drama-based engagements with older people.

102 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett The first ‘Ages and Stages’ project was funded by the UK national crossresearch-council ‘New Dynamics of Ageing’ programme from October 2009 until July 2012. In it, we explored historical representations of ageing within the Victoria Theatre’s well known social documentaries and conducted narrative interviews with 95 older people who had been involved with the theatre as volunteers, actors and employees, audience members, and sources for the documentaries (Bernard et al. 2015). The interviews were designed to encourage participants to ‘tell their stories’ (Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou 2013; de Medeiros 2013) about the role the theatre had played, and continued to play, in their creative lives. That initial archival and empirical research was drawn together to create an interactive exhibition narrating the theatre’s 50year history and a new hour-long verbatim documentary drama, Our Age, Our Stage, performed by older people (aged 59–92) interviewed for the project together with members of the New Vic Youth Theatre (aged 16–19). This was followed by a year of knowledge translation activities (2012–2013), funded by the UK’s AHRC, in which we established the ‘Ages and Stages Company’; devised and toured a new forum theatre piece: Happy Returns; developed, delivered and evaluated a pilot inter-professional training course; and scoped out, with a range of partners, the potential for a ‘Creative Age Festival’ in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. In 2013–2014 we were awarded further funding for two linked projects under the AHRC’s ‘Cultural Value’ programme: a research development award which aimed to develop the ‘Ages and Stages Company’ into a ‘company of researchers’ capable of examining and interrogating their own – and each other’s – experiences of theatre-making (Bernard, Rezzano and the Ages and Stages Company 2014), and a critical review on Ageing, Drama and Creativity (Rickett and Bernard 2014).

Researching cultural value The overarching AHRC ‘Cultural Value Project’ (2013–2015) sought to make a major contribution to how we think about ‘the value associated with people’s engaging with and participating in art and culture’ (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016, 13). Seventy-two awards were made comprising nineteen critical reviews of existing literature and research; forty-six research development awards for new empirical projects; and seven specialist workshops which brought together academics and practitioners. The findings from these wide-ranging awards were then drawn together to articulate the components of cultural value, to uncover the myriad ways in which cultural value has been evidenced and evaluated and to explore how we think about the value of arts and culture to individuals and to society (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016). The starting point for our own projects resonates most closely with Crossick and Kaszynska’s simple definition of cultural value as ‘the effects that culture has on those who experience it and the difference it makes to individuals and society’ (2016, p. 124). However, we also acknowledge that cultural value is a much-contested term with a long history, and there is a continuing lack of

Late-life creativity 103 agreement over how to assess it or what counts as valid evidence (O’Brien 2010). Forms of analysis of cultural value have been much debated with some commentators focussing on the potential of economic valuation methodologies to capture cultural value, stressing the compatibility of this type of evidence with policy maker agendas (Bakhshi 2012; O’Brien 2010). In contrast, Belfiore and Bennett (2010) argue for more disinterested research (as opposed to advocacy-driven research) that provides reflexive, open-ended critique while, a decade ago, Holden (2006, p. 56) also called for more public engagement in the conceptualisation and generation of cultural value. He delineated three interdependent elements of cultural value: instrumental values relate to social and economic impacts; institutional values relate to the esteem generated by institutions; and intrinsic values relate to the unique qualities of art forms (Holden 2004, 2006). Holden asserted that all three elements are important and called for analysis that not only focuses on quantifiable outcomes, but also on affective experiences. However, in contrast to this expansive definition, the ‘value’ of the arts, and cultural value in particular, has increasingly come to be seen as a construct of policy within the UK context, driven by economic concerns rather than taking account of – and arising from – the experiences of participants: experiences which Crossick and Kaszynska (2016, p. 7) assert now need to take centre stage. With regard to how older people perceive and understand cultural value, our difficulties are compounded by the negative and limited ways in which we tend to view later life and the engagement of older people in creative activities. Many cultural institutions, the general public and (it has to be said) older people themselves, hold stereotypical and deficit views about what older people are or are not capable of. As Cutler (2009) has argued, this means that their contributions to their communities and localities, in cultural as in other arenas, tend to get ignored or written off. Such ageist attitudes narrow the opportunities for older people to engage in cultural activities and/or develop and share the cultural capital they may have accumulated over a lifetime (Goulding 2012). Our two interlinked projects were aimed at challenging these limited and limiting views, and developing a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which late-life creativity – as expressed through drama and theatre – bring value to older people and those around them.

The cultural value of older people’s experiences of theatre-making: a review Our critical review, Ageing, Drama and Creativity (Rickett and Bernard 2014), explored what the research literature to date tells us about the cultural value older people derive from their involvement in theatre and drama. It built on our previous research for ‘Ages and Stages’ and on the findings, experiences, learning and networks we had established. It was also set within a wider academic context which, as this volume attests, has been increasingly drawing together critical gerontological perspectives with the arts and humanities in

104 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett order to explore the experience of, and meanings associated with, later life (Cole, Kastenbaum and Ray 2000; Twigg and Martin 2014, 2015; Goulding and Newman, in press). Perhaps unsurprisingly, our first searches using the term ‘cultural value’ in relation to older people’s experiences of theatre and drama, brought up no results. ‘Cultural value’, it seems, has not yet been used as an explicit framework for analysing late-life creativity as expressed through older people’s drama participation. Nor have older participants been asked to reflect on their experiences in this way. We therefore had to broaden our search and, instead, looked for literature which focussed on the ‘value’ or ‘benefits’ of older people’s drama involvement. Given the lack of scholarly attention to date, we took an expansive approach, exploring both the academic and grey literature and including descriptive pieces and short overviews as well as research studies. We excluded literature not in English as well as practical guides to producing seniors’ theatre, arts and creative interventions where drama was just one component (e.g., arts workshops which include drama exercises alongside other arts forms) and literature which took an explicitly therapeutic approach. Seventy-seven documents (from 1979 to 2014) formed the basis for the final review, and a key finding was that the literature in this area has increased exponentially in recent years. There was a sharp increase from 2000, with a third (n = 25 or 32.5 per cent) of the included documents having been published between 2010 and 2014. The literature we selected included 4 existing reviews, 35 research articles and books, 11 evaluation reports and 27 descriptive overviews. As expected, a wide range of academic disciplines featured, including drama/theatre, education, psychology, social work, health studies, nursing, and social gerontology; and a number of the studies were multidisciplinary. Several studies were focused on pre-existing senior or intergenerational theatre groups, and several studies brought together academic researchers with theatre companies, drama groups, and practitioners of various kinds in both residential and community settings. We found that three elements of cultural value were particularly prevalent in the literature: it was viewed in terms of benefits to health and well-being, in the development of group relationships, and in opportunities for learning and creative expression. These elements fit most closely with what Holden (2004, 2006) terms the ‘instrumental’ dimension of cultural value: its social and economic benefit. However, they also encompass elements of intrinsic value: the subjective and transformative effects of drama on people’s lives and viewpoints. A fourth area, the aesthetic value and quality of older people’s drama, was touched upon in the literature but is under-researched to date. Health and well-being: Many of the included studies were specifically designed to assess the benefits of theatre and drama to older people’s health and wellbeing. A substantial body of evidence shows improvements in mental health, quality of life and well-being with participants reporting decreased anxiety, decreased loneliness, increased self-confidence and self-esteem, and increased sense of value and purpose. The long-established research of Helga and Tony

Late-life creativity 105 Noice in the USA also demonstrates the cognitive value of older people’s involvement in drama workshops and training. Their findings consistently evidence improvements in cognitive functioning, memory, word generation and comprehension, and problem solving (see, for example, Noice and Noice 2006), while other work shows older people associating their theatre participation with feelings of excitement, fun, happiness and freeing of the imagination. These findings resonate with other literature which shows that involvement in the arts in all its forms has multiple benefits for the health and well-being of individuals and society (Fraser et al. 2015). However, research to understand and capture the specific merits of theatre and drama is lacking, nor have the longer-term health and well-being outcomes been explored to date. Group relationships: The review highlighted the role of theatre and drama in enhancing or transforming group relationships, and we identified four types of project as being important: those that bring generations together; those that bring people from different racial and cultural backgrounds together; those that focus on relationships between older people in residential care and their carers and families; and those that focus on the relationship between people with dementia, their families, and health and social care professionals. The focus of such projects is on enabling people to exchange stories and experiences and develop positive views of themselves and others. Increased trust, improved communication and understanding, and a sense of togetherness are valued most. Opportunities to develop new intra-, inter-generational and inter-cultural friendships, or enhance existing relationships through improved understanding and empathy, were also valued. The use of dramatic role play and devising appears to be key, providing a safe space for expressing and challenging agerelated stereotypes and for finding commonalities and accepting differences. That said, research has not yet explored the specific processes and practices through which theatre and drama facilitates this kind of reflection, empathy, and transformation, either for participants or for audience members. Learning and creativity: The value of theatre and drama was also articulated in terms of the opportunities it provides for older people to learn and creatively express themselves. This partly relates to improved cognition but, more importantly, to the development of new skills and of responses to challenge, and to the taking of risks in later life through which older people subsequently gain a sense of achievement, enrichment and fulfilment. Creative, drama-based activities provide opportunities for self-expression, play and fun, broadening people’s horizons and impacting positively on other areas of their lives. Finally, as well as the impact on older people’s own lives, there is a potential wider social impact through the challenging of ageist stereotypes. Aesthetic value and quality of older people’s drama: Very little of the research discussed in our review focuses on this fourth area: the aesthetic quality of older people’s drama or what it feels like to have an aesthetic experience. Anne Basting’s research (1995, 1998) is the exception. In her work, she explores the power and complexity of images of age and ageing produced by older people’s performances, an area which has been subsequently developed by Valerie

106 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett Lipscomb (2012) but in which more analysis is still needed. In similar vein, we would contend from our experience that the aesthetic value and transformative potential of devised productions, derived from creative co-constructed research with older people, also merits further development and exploration. As we hope to illustrate below, this would help enhance our understanding of the cultural value provided by older people, rather than just the value they derive from their creative engagement and participation. Moreover, our review also revealed a number of gaps in the literature which we have alluded to in the above discussion. In particular, more comparative research is needed to elucidate the specific cultural value and benefits of drama for older people in comparison with other creative activities. Longitudinal research is also required to assess the potential longer term benefits of drama interventions or ongoing participation in older people’s theatre and drama groups. More nuanced and comparative research exploring the effects of gender, race, age and social class on creativity and participation would also be beneficial. The review also highlights important areas for development in theory and research methods. Only a small minority of the studies identified a theoretical or conceptual framework guiding their work. This lack of focus on theory potentially limits the development of the field and its capacity to contribute to wider discourses around ageing, the arts, late-life creativity and cultural value (Lipscomb 2012); it is also an important element in improving the quality of research and evaluation across the arts more generally (Crossick and Kaszynska 2016). Methodologically, although the existing literature uses a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate late-life creativity and capture cultural value, our concern here is two-fold. First, in many instances, older people are directed to articulate their experiences of what they value in theatre and drama largely in terms of its benefits to their health and well-being. What is missing are approaches which encourage older people to set the research agenda and to reflect on the cultural value of their creative participation in broader and less directive ways. Second, arts-based research methodologies were notable by their absence. Only two studies in the review explicitly took an arts-based approach to the evaluation of participants’ experiences. One is an evaluation of Anne Basting’s ‘Penelope Project’: a devised theatre project set in a Wisconsin nursing home in the United States (Mello and Voigts 2013); the other is an evaluation of a 10-week drama intervention for older people in Coventry in the UK, delivered by a theatre company (Savin-Baden et al. 2013; Wimpenny and Savin-Baden 2013). It was also evident from most of the studies that older people had rarely, if ever, been actively involved in devising, conducting or analysing the research on which such findings are based, a situation which we address further below. In summary, the four dimensions of cultural value identified in our review support and reflect the findings of the wider AHRC ‘Cultural Value’ project which stresses the importance of repositioning ‘first-hand, individual experience of arts and culture’ as fundamental to any discussion of cultural value (Crossick

Late-life creativity 107 and Kaszynska 2016, p. 7; see also Kaszynska 2015). From the perspectives of older people, our review also confirms and challenges the range of benefits that might be derived from their involvement in theatre and drama, both as producers and consumers. In particular, theatre and drama can help shape reflective individuals, promote understanding and empathy and stimulate civic and community engagement.

Ages and Stages: developing methodology and empowering older people This brings us to the development of our own methodological approach to the study of late-life creativity and older people’s experiences of theatre and drama. Our theoretical and methodological approach derives from our roots in critical gerontology and in participatory drama-based practice, and from a shared commitment to what Holstein and Minkler (2007) have termed ‘passionate scholarship’. Such an approach aims to counter deficit stereotypes surrounding older people’s creativity and also begins to harness the innovative potential of the arts as a form of enquiry and dissemination, as well as a focus of study in the field of ageing. It involves a commitment to multidisciplinary research, to collaboration with arts-based practice/practitioners, and to the involvement of older people throughout the research process. Background: developing a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach The initial three year ‘Ages and Stages’ project brought together social gerontologists, humanities scholars, psychologists, anthropologists and theatre practitioners. Our research included: archival analysis focused on representations of ageing and later life in the Vic documentaries; individual and group interviews and ethnography; and the devising of an original documentary drama, Our Age Our Stage, which drew creatively from the research data. Using multiple research methods enabled us to chart a ‘timescape’ of ageing and theatre (Bytheway 2011), revealing the place of the Victoria Theatre in experiences of ageing and the shifting relationships between generations and between a theatre community and its older members. The archival ‘timescape’ illuminated the importance of older people as sources for the original Vic documentaries, the ways in which their opinions and experiences were transformed into theatrical narrative and performed on stage and how both the archive and the documentaries invoke intergenerational exchanges of meanings. Our contemporary research interviews and observations highlighted the importance of individuals’ emotional and affective connections with this particular theatre, and the sense of belonging, well-being and self-value it can provide. We uncovered the importance of theatre participation as people negotiate later life transitions such as widowhood and retirement. We also found that the theatre provides an opportunity for broadening horizons, taking risks and developing new social

108 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett connections and intergenerational exchanges from within an environment described as intimate, ‘homely’ or like ‘family’. The final phase of the project, the devising of a new documentary drama, enabled us to bring our historical and contemporary narratives into one space of engagement, while also showcasing the creativity and skills of our older participants. A group of our interviewees (most of whom had never performed on stage before) were brought together with members of the New Vic Youth Theatre for a series of drama-based workshops facilitated by Co-I Jill Rezzano (Head of Education at the New Vic), through which our research materials were brought to dramatic life, the new production took shape and participants developed skills in performance and the dramatic process. The cultural value of older people’s theatre making: further developing arts-based methods and co-constructing research Our experiences and research findings from ‘Ages and Stages’ solidified our desire to challenge stereotypes that the capacity for creativity and participation in later life unavoidably and inevitably declines. In particular, we wanted further to develop our use of drama as a form of creative research enquiry into ageing that puts older people at the centre of the research and performance process. After a year of knowledge translation activities, we used our AHRC ‘Cultural Value’ research development award (September 2013 – May 2014) to develop the ‘Ages and Stages Company’ into a company of researchers and to use ‘Ages and Stages’ as a case study to explore how older people felt about their experience as participants in the research and performance process, how they understood and engaged with the concept of cultural value and, methodologically, what is involved in undertaking co-created and co-operative research with older people. To our knowledge, older people themselves had rarely if ever been asked about their perceptions of cultural value, let alone to consider it in respect of the specific cultural activity in which they might be participating. This is despite the fact that cultural gerontology and research on ageing with an Arts and Humanities focus is, as we noted earlier, a growing field. The project involved company members conducting interviews with each other, and with family members and younger people with whom they had worked on ‘Ages and Stages’ productions, and then, with the research team, co-creating three new drama pieces/provocations, which were performed by the Company as part of a concluding Symposium held at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme in May 2014 (Bernard, Rezzano and the Ages and Stages Company, in press). By this stage our participants (now officially the ‘Ages and Stages Company’) had received a substantial amount of drama and theatre training but had not been actively involved in undertaking research interviews themselves. We therefore held a research skills training day at Keele University, at which company members co-created the interview schedules and subsequently conducted 11 interviews (10 with each other and 1 with a family

Late-life creativity 109 member), while 5 were undertaken by Bernard and Rezzano (1 with a company member, 2 with younger company members and one with a family member). The interviews varied in length between 30 minutes and an hour and a half; all were digitally recorded and then transcribed. A series of 2-hour drama-based workshops were then held at the theatre, through which the participants explored their experiences of interviewing and used the accumulated interview data to stimulate reflections about their experiences of being involved in ‘Ages and Stages’. After these collaborative workshops, the investigators and the Company worked together to develop three new performance pieces under the generic title of ‘Out of the Box’. These pieces aimed to convey, first, something of the experience of taking part in ‘Ages and Stages’; second, participants’ thoughts and understandings of what ‘cultural value’ is; and third, the range of engagements company members had been involved in, their feelings about them, and how they saw the future. Each piece – and the associated interactions with the audience ‒ was developed, devised and shaped through an iterative process. Parts were allocated and discussed; some members chose to be in some pieces but not all; and everyone agreed to help facilitate discussions. After a three-day intensive rehearsal period, the three pieces were performed to an invited audience of 60 people as part of the Symposium. In keeping with the focus of this chapter, we concentrate here on one performance piece in particular – ‘Out of the Box 2’ – which specifically explored cultural value. The findings encapsulated in ‘Out of the Box 2’ represent our contribution to conveying some of the ways in which this particular group of older people are thinking, talking about and showing to others the cultural value of what they have been creatively engaged in. For the ‘Ages and Stages Company’, the ‘question’ of cultural value seemed to lend itself to a quiz panel format, not least because a quiz had been a motif in our performance pieces to date. The piece was framed as a quiz being watched on television by an older couple. The script for ‘Out of the Box 2’ was based on the data from the research interviews and the debates that had taken place during our research skills training day; we also asked audience members to write down on a card what they understood by the term ‘cultural value’ and to post the card into a box we provided for that purpose. The piece begins with the older couple settling down to watch the quiz while, in the studio, the five contestants on the panel are arranging everything they need. The (young) host sweeps down the studio steps, box in hand, depositing it at the front before welcoming everyone to ‘“Out of the Box”, the quiz show that takes questions out of their box, unwraps them and then puts them away, neat and tidy.’ The question she draws ‘out of the box’ for that day’s show is, ‘What is Cultural Value?’ Panel members try, in vain, to answer the question – their answers never being quite what the host has on her card. The host then passes the question to the audience to see if they can ‘beat the panel with your thoughts’. Should the audience be reluctant to respond to such a direct question, as they initially were on

110 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett this occasion, the host had also pre-selected some of the answers which had been written on the cards and posted in the box. These were then used to stimulate further discussion and, once this had run its course, the Company returned to the script. At the end of the piece, we asked the audience if what they had seen and heard had stimulated more thoughts. The ensuing discussion was wide-ranging, some of it reflecting the definitions and debates we had tried to distil from the research and encapsulate in the script, notably how difficult a concept cultural value is to grapple with; whether and how we distinguish between ‘cultural value’ and ‘the value of culture’; the necessity to look beyond economic value and embrace a broader understanding of what culture consists of and what cultural value is; the importance of trying to capture how engagement with a cultural environment (or cultural experience like ‘Ages and Stages’) makes us feel; and how creative and cultural engagement changes and evolves us as people. The piece also wonders aloud what it would be like if, instead of automatically going to the sports desk at the end of every television news bulletin, there was a regular round-up of what is happening in the arts. In addition, it deliberately revisits that age-old chestnut, ‘high art’ versus ‘popular culture’, juxtaposing theatre/arts with football, and asking why it seems that theatre is not valued as much culturally as sport. The lively exchanges with the audience, together with the cards they had written about cultural value, ranged widely around the transformative power of the arts; flagged up issues of access and barriers to engagement which, in the context of our work, are especially important where older people are concerned; reiterated the positive impacts that the arts can have on people’s wellbeing and how it brings out the best in, and can give meaning to, individuals, groups and communities; emphasised the importance of valuing and experiencing other cultures; highlighted the role the internet now plays in altering our ideas of how culture is constituted and reaches people; and, linked with this, how our understanding and conceptualisation of cultural value needs to credit the extent of social change we have experienced over the last 50 years. For us, discussing and conveying our findings about cultural value in the form of a quiz was a way of suggesting that there are no simple answers to this question; even having debated and discussed it over very many weeks, the Company still had more questions than answers. The audience too seemed content not to have been provided with pat answers; some in fact commented that it was a question they did not want answering and that they were comfortable to find that their understanding of it kept shifting, even during the course of the Symposium.

Discussion and conclusion The research data from our interviews and workshops, the discussions enacted through our ‘Out of the Box’ performances and the findings from our critical review all demonstrate that the cultural value of theatre-making for older people is complex, nuanced and context-specific, involving participation in the

Late-life creativity 111 whole creative process; choice and challenge; the benefits for both oneself and the group; and the fun and the fear associated with taking part. We suggest that if we are to understand and conceptualise cultural value in later life, we need to locate older people at the centre of the research; we need to look beyond the benefits to health and well-being articulated in much of the existing research; and we must pay more attention to the ways in which the intrinsic and affective elements of creative experience may in turn have instrumental effects on older people’s lives (see also Rickett and Bernard 2014, p. 45). Moreover, in terms of our empirical research, John Holden’s discussion of what it is that the public values about culture perhaps resonates most closely with the range of definitions, debates and discussions we had with the Company and with the audience at the Symposium. Holden identifies three key things that ‘the public’ value about culture. The first is the way that it can ‘shape and reflect their sense of self and their place in the world’; the second is ‘being treated well and honestly by the cultural organisations that they choose to engage with’; and the third is ‘the rootedness that culture provides … a sense of place and geographical location, where cultural infrastructure can anchor local identities, and … a sense of belonging to a community, either a geographical community, or a cultural community of interest’ (Holden 2006, pp. 23–24). Finally, although our research development award project was driven by preset research questions, these had been derived from the collaborative work we had done with the Company over a number of years. In this sense, older people’s late-life creative experiences, together with the limited understanding in the existing literature about what participation meant to them, has been the basis for this project. The project, and the research we undertook as an integral part of it, was co-constructed, collaboratively undertaken, co-produced and coevaluated. Using the artistic medium in which we were working – namely theatre and drama – to show rather than just to describe elements of the cultural value of older people’s experiences of theatre making was, for us, a logical approach to take. However, as noted earlier, our critical review showed that such approaches are very rare. We believe that arts-based research methods such as these have much potential for capturing and conveying some of the affective and intrinsic dimensions of older people’s creative experiences as well as the interplay between these dimensions and the instrumental value they derive from their participation. Such arts-based approaches can also show audiences something of the actual creative process, what happens ‘in the moment’ and how participants feel and respond. They point too to the necessity for a more nuanced and encompassing exploration and understanding of cultural value and late-life creativity.

Acknowledgements This chapter has been developed from our ongoing ‘Ages and Stages’ projects, but draws particularly on two AHRC-funded studies: a critical review on

112 Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett Ageing, Drama and Creativity (AH/L005522/1) and a linked research development award exploring the cultural value of older people’s experiences of theatre-making (AH/L006103/1). We also wish to acknowledge the contributions and support of our colleagues David Amigoni, Ruth Basten, Tracey Harrison, Lucy Munro, Michael Murray, Jackie Reynolds and Jill Rezzano; as well as all the creative older people who have taken part – and continue to take part – in the projects.

References Andrews, M., Squire, C. and Tamboukou, M. (2013) Doing Narrative Research. London: Sage. Bakhshi, H. (2012) Measuring Cultural Value. Keynote speech delivered at Culture Count: Measuring Cultural Value Forum, Customs House, Sydney, Australia, Tuesday 20 March. https://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/measuring_cultural_va lue.pdf. Basting, A. (1995) ‘Stages of Age: The growth of senior theater’, TDR/The Drama Review, 39(3): 112–130. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1146468. Basting, A. (1998) The Stages of Age. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. (2010) ‘Beyond the “toolkit approach”: Arts impact evaluation research and the realities of cultural policy‐making’, Journal for Cultural Research, 14(2): 121–142, doi:10.1080/14797580903481280. Bernard, M., J. Rezzano and the Ages & Stages Company (2014) Ages and Stages: The Cultural Value of Older People’s Experiences of Theatre Making. Swindon, UK: Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available at: http://www.keele.ac.uk/csg/research/ theculturalvalueofolderpeoplesexperiencesoftheatremaking/Bernard_Rezzano.pdf. Bernard, M., J. Rezzano and the ‘Ages & Stages Company’ (in press) ‘“Ages and Stages”: Creative participatory research with older people’, in A. Goulding and A. Newman (eds), Creativity and Resilience: Arts Interventions for Older People. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Bernard, M., M. Rickett, D. Amigoni, L. Munro, M. Murray and J. Rezzano (2015) ‘Ages and Stages: The place of theatre in the lives of older people’, Ageing and Society, 35(6): 1119–1145. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X14000038 (published online 10 March 2014). Bytheway, B. (2011) Unmasking Age: The Significance of Age for Social Research. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Cole, T. R., R. Kastenbaum and R. Ray (2000) Handbook of the Humanities and Aging. New York: Springer. Crossick, G. and Kaszynska, P. (2016) Understanding the Value of Arts and Culture: The AHRC Cultural Value Project. Swindon: Arts and Humanities Research Council. Cutler, D. (2009) Ageing Artfully: Older People and Professional Participatory Arts in the UK. London: The Baring Foundation. de Medeiros, K. (2013) Narrative Gerontology in Research and Practice. New York: Springer. Fraser, K. D., H. M. O’Rourke, H. Wiens, J. Lai, C. Howell and P. Brett-MacLean (2015) ‘A scoping review of research on the arts, aging, and quality of life’, The Gerontologist, 55(4): 719–729. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnv027

Late-life creativity 113 Goulding, A. (2012) ‘How can contemporary art contribute toward the development of social and cultural capital for people aged 64 and older?’, The Gerontologist, 53(6): 1009–1019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geront/gns144. Goulding, A. and A. Newman (Eds) (in press) Creativity and Resilience: Arts Interventions for Older People. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Holden, J. (2004) Capturing Cultural Value: How Culture Has Become a Tool of Government Policy. London: Demos. Holden, J. (2006) Cultural Value and the Crisis of Legitimacy: Why Culture Needs a Democratic Mandate. London: Demos. Holstein, M. B. and Minkler, M. (2007) ‘Critical gerontology: Reflections for the 21st century’, in M. Bernard and T. Scharf (eds), Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Kaszynska, P. (2015) ‘Capturing the vanishing point: Subjective experiences and cultural value’, Cultural Trends, 24(3): 256–266, DOI: doi:10.1080/09548963.2015.1066077. Lipscomb, V. B. (2012) ‘“The play’s the thing”: Theatre as a scholarly meeting ground in age studies’, International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 7(2): 117–141. http://dx. doi.org/10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.1272a6. Mello, R. and Voigts, J. (2013) The Penelope Project: Using the Power of Myth to Transform Long Term Care. Program evaluation report. Available at: http://www.thepenelopep roject.com/links/materials/penelope-program-evaluation. Noice, H. and Noice, T. (2006) ‘Theatrical intervention to improve cognition in intact residents of long term care facilities’, Clinical Gerontologist, 29(3): 59–76. http://dx. doi.org/10.1300/J018v29n03_05. O’Brien, D. (2010) Measuring the Value of Culture: A Report to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. London: DCMS. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/77933/measuring-the-value-culture-report.pdf Rickett, M. and M. Bernard (2014) Ageing, Drama and Creativity: A Critical Review. Swindon, UK: Arts and Humanities Research Council. Available at: http://www. keele.ac.uk/csg/research/ageingdramaandcreativity/Rickett_Bernard.pdf. Savin-Baden, M., G. Brady, K. Wimpenny and G. Brown (2013) Final Evaluation Report: The Belgrade Theatre Creative Gymnasium Project, Coventry. Coventry, UK: University of Coventry. Twigg, J. and W. Martin (Eds) (2015) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. London: Routledge. Wimpenny, K. and Savin-Baden, M. (2013) ‘Using theatre and performance for promoting health and wellbeing amongst the 50+ community: An arts-informed evaluation’, The International Journal of Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts, 8 (1): 47–64.

8

Late-life creativity: methods for understanding arts-generated social capital in the lives of older people Jackie Reynolds

The concept of social capital relates, in essence, to people’s relationships in families, communities and other social networks. It is often described as the ‘social glue’ that holds people together through bonds of trust, mutual support, sense of belonging and shared identities. The links between social connectedness and health and well-being are well recognised, and in the context of an increasing focus on addressing the damaging impacts of loneliness in later life, it is valuable to understand how social capital may be developed and experienced. The key focus of this chapter is on examining the ways in which qualitative research methods, including creative, arts-based approaches, may be effective in both exploring and generating social capital in later life. In particular, I emphasise the crucial role of storytelling and the ways in which the reciprocity of sharing stories can in itself be seen as a distinctive aspect of arts-generated social capital. Much research on social capital has focused on theoretical understandings and on how it may be measured. There is a lack of qualitative understandings of how people actually experience social capital. Moreover, whilst there is recognition that arts participation can generate social capital, little is known about the potentially distinctive nature of such social capital. In this chapter, I highlight some of the ways in which my doctoral research (Reynolds 2011) aimed to address such gaps in our understanding through examining the meanings that older people attach to their participation in group arts activities throughout their lives. The research did not offer any prescriptive definitions of ‘art’ or ‘creativity’: the design of the project aimed to yield insights into older people’s own understandings of such things. The chapter begins by introducing the concept of social capital in greater detail and discussing the rationale for the research design and methods for the project, which was based in a case-study town and influenced by life course perspectives and narrative methods. The methodological approach is outlined in detail, and I then discuss some of ways in which using a social-capital lens to analyse people’s experiences offered new insights into the nature of arts-generated social capital in later life. The chapter will also highlight some of my more recent research, as well as relevant literature, in order to reflect on the potential of creative, arts-based research methods to explore and generate older people’s social capital. I draw

Late life creativity 115 upon my experience as senior researcher on a project called ‘And the Doctor Said … .’ (2012–14), which used creative writing as a method to explore people’s experiences of healthcare in North Staffordshire. I highlight ways in which people’s writings included some implicit links to the concept of social capital, and I also discuss some of the evaluation comments, which suggested that social capital was being generated through the research workshops. Finally, I refer to two participatory research projects with older people identified in the literature – one involving photography and the other involving film. Again, my aim is to highlight the ways in which people’s narratives offer implicit insights into their experiences of social capital over time. I discuss certain ethical considerations in relation to creative research methods, before offering concluding reflections on opportunities and challenges.

Social capital: methodological gaps? The idea of social capital originated in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and was popularised by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone (2000). Putnam (2000, p. 19) describes social capital as ‘connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them’. As John Field (2008, p. 1) notes, the essence of social capital can be summed up in the words ‘relationships matter’: By making connections with one another, and keeping them going over time, people are able to work together to achieve things they either could not achieve by themselves, or could only achieve with great difficulty. People connect through a series of networks and they tend to share common values with other members of these networks; to the extent that these networks constitute a resource, they may be seen as forming a kind of capital. Despite this simple definition, social capital is a complex concept; the way that it may function in people’s everyday lives is poorly understood, and there is a range of different meanings and emphases between disciplines: sociologists tend, for instance, to emphasise the individual character and benefits of a variety of social networks, whereas political scientists stress the civic community aspects of social capital (Halpern 2005, p. 50). Moreover, little is known about the ways in which social capital generated by specific types of activities may be seen as distinctive. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore such complexities in depth, the conceptual confusion means that social capital research tends to emphasise theoretical discussions about the nature of the concept, along with analyses of large-scale survey data in order to try to measure levels of social capital and to suggest changes over time and according to geographical location. Putnam’s focus (as a political scientist) is on a perceived decline of social capital since the 1950s. He argues that this is due to a decline in membership of

116 Jackie Reynolds civic organisations, which results in disengagement from political involvement, which in turn is problematic for democracy. However, one of the key criticisms of Putnam’s work on social capital is that it is unclear how involvement in voluntary associations generates social capital (Mohan and Mohan 2002). Blackshaw and Long (2005) similarly suggest that Putnam’s theoretical position is limited by his lack of qualitative insights, opting instead for multiple statistical indicators that secure the attention of policy makers. Fukuyama (1997) also emphasises the need for a qualitative dimension to the measurement of social capital and notes that there is no consensual means of judging the qualitative differences of existing empirical data. Whilst it may be important to measure levels of social capital, especially from a policy perspective, there is also a case for developing a greater understanding of its practical implications for individuals and communities. In response to some of the gaps that have been identified, Johnston and Percy-Smith (2003, p. 331) offered a research agenda that helped to shape both my doctoral research and later studies: What is required instead is a series of intensive, community-based studies which (as far as is possible) start with a very limited number of hypotheses about the nature, characteristics and consequences of social capital which can then be tested through in-depth, predominantly qualitative, community-based research. A starting point might be an account of what constitutes ‘successful’ or ‘effective’ communities … an understanding would need to be developed of the context – social, historical and economic – of those communities and the perceptions and insights of people who live in those communities. Having thus identified the rationale for a qualitative investigation into social capital, I will now outline the significance of the concept in relation to arts engagement in later life.

Arts, ageing and social capital In literature addressing ageing, issues of social capital are more commonly implicit than explicit. Much, for instance, has been written about social relationships in later life and about the need for support. There is wide recognition that, for older people in particular, opportunities to forge social relationships may not be as widely available as they once were due to changes in the nature of communities (Gilleard and Higgs 2005). However, whilst it is recognised that social capital is a resource that accumulates throughout people’s lives, life-course perspectives do not generally feature in research into social capital in later life. Of the literature focusing explicitly on older people’s social capital there is again a focus on their need for support (see for example Gray 2009); there is also recognition that older people may have accumulated valuable stocks of social capital that can be developed to the benefit of themselves and others.

Late life creativity 117 Heenan (2010) undertook qualitative research amongst older people living in farming communities in Northern Ireland and found that older people were both producers and consumers of social capital. Heenan identified community engagement, trust and reciprocity as the three main components and emphasised the need to pay more attention to reciprocity, which is an important issue in the lives of older people, especially in relation to notions of equality and liberty. There is also a lack of academic literature directly addressing the links between arts engagement and social capital. Sometimes the links are implicit when examining the range of personal and social benefits to be gained from arts participation (see, for example, Matarasso 1997). The Better Together Report (2000) was published as an outcome of the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, led by Putnam, which focused on developing strategies to increase community engagement and social capital. An entire chapter of the report was devoted to the arts and social capital, suggesting that ‘[t]he enjoyable nature of the arts makes them perhaps the most promising, if neglected, means of building social capital’ (p. 5). However, little progress has subsequently been made on increasing our understanding of the relationship between arts participation and social capital, and even the limited policy focus on the issue (see for example Daly 2005) has not continued as the concept of social capital largely disappeared from UK political discourse during the Coalition government of 2010–15. In a study investigating cultural value in terms of social capital, Vella-Burrows et al. (2014, p. 40) suggest that while there is a degree of consensus that arts and cultural organisations have a role to play in generating social capital and improving health and well-being, there is generally ‘a paucity of relevant evidence’ to support their understanding. The past decade has seen a burgeoning interest in later life creativity, from both research and practice perspectives. The Baring Foundation has been highly influential in funding arts work with older people in the UK, since launching a new funding programme in 2009 to support arts organisations working in a participative way with older people. The funding programme was initially informed by a report by David Cutler (2009), which analyses 120 case studies of arts organisations working with older people. In highlighting the value of arts participation for older people, it focuses on two inter-related dimensions of health (mental and physical) and personal and community relations. Thus, the implication again is that social capital is of great significance. Most recently, Age UK’s Index of Wellbeing in Later Life (Green et al. 2017) identified creative and cultural participation as the most significant indicator of well-being in later life, but also that other indicators, such as having a large social network and being involved in social activities, were strongly related to such participation. This reinforces the strong rationale for undertaking research into the nature of arts-generated social capital in later life. Responding to these debates, the study’s research questions reflected a broad and wide-ranging approach, whilst nevertheless being designed to capture issues

118 Jackie Reynolds relating to the nature of people’s experiences of arts-generated social capital throughout their lives:     

What is the nature of older people’s engagement with collective arts activities during their life course? What are the factors (e.g. age, cohort, gender, health and social class) that may impact upon people’s engagement in such collective arts activities? How do people’s close personal relationships impact on their arts participation? What is the relationship between individual arts participation and participation in collective arts activities in later life? What are the links between arts participation and social capital?

About the research: designing a methodology The methodology for my doctoral study was shaped by the factors outlined above: the significant relationship between arts engagement and social capital in later life, and the potential for further understanding the nature of arts-generated social capital and how it is experienced. As noted earlier, Johnston and PercySmith (2003, p. 331) made a convincing case for ‘intensive, community-based studies’ to explore such questions. I thus adopted a case-study methodology, which is recognised as a valuable approach when seeking to understand complex social phenomena (Yin 2009), enabling detailed exploration of the relationship between people’s individual experiences and the context in which they are located. A small town (with a population of around 25,000) in the English Midlands was chosen and given the pseudonym Greentown. Reasons for choosing this particular town as a case study included the fact that it has clearly defined geographical boundaries, an ageing population, a mix of affluent and deprived wards, and a range of different arts groups directed towards older people. Once the context for the research was established, the methodological gaps in relation to arts engagement and social capital led me to see the potential of life-course perspectives and in-depth qualitative interviews to generate further understandings by encouraging people to reflect on their arts engagement throughout their lives. In a study that revolves around people’s subjective interpretations of their experiences, qualitative approaches uniquely offer people the space and time to reflect on their personal meanings (including their interpretations of ‘creativity’), to express those meanings in their own words and focus on the issues that they see as important. Moreover, the approach addresses issues raised by Wenger (2003), who warns of the dangers of becoming overly preoccupied with age when conducting research with older people and argues that it should not be assumed that everything that is under consideration can be viewed as age-related. Qualitative approaches and life-course perspectives enable us to look at issues more widely, by inviting participants to identify the issues that they see as significant, whether they are age-related or not:

Late life creativity 119 Rather, the focus is on the implications of the passing of time for individuals, on the implications and experience of being at a particular point in time, and the links between earlier and later points in time as well as the links between social structures and individual experiences. (Jamieson and Victor 2002, p. 11) As Jamieson and Victor also note, by understanding people’s past experiences through life-course approaches, we are more able to understand their wishes, feelings and activities in their later lives. I took a broad approach to understanding people’s participation, focusing less on activities led by professional artists and including the types of creative activities that may be significant in terms of people’s everyday experiences throughout their lives. Such activities often tend to lack perceived value and recognition in social contexts, so to focus on them in qualitative research offers recognition of their importance. The methodology was also significantly shaped by the influence of narrative approaches. In essence, narrative research focuses on the lives of individuals; the researcher asks one or more people to provide stories about their lives. Riessman (1993) highlights the fact that there is no overall theory of narrative; rather, there is conceptual diversity (again, often reflecting the focus of different disciplines). However, a number of common themes can be seen to run through research that pays attention to narratives in participants’ accounts: 1 2 3 4 5

An interest in people’s lived experiences and an appreciation of the temporal nature of that experience; A desire to empower research participants and allow them to contribute to determining what are the most salient themes in an area of research; An interest in process and change over time; An interest in the self and representations of the self; An awareness that the researcher him- or herself is also a narrator. (Elliott 2005, p. 6)

Ruth Ray (2007) cites Bruner (1986) in distinguishing between paradigmatic knowing and narrative knowing. Paradigmatic knowing relies on observation, description and reason to derive empirical ‘truths’, whereas narrative knowing emphasises people, feelings and relationships, with the aim of deriving personal or emotional ‘truths’. Narrative approaches have often been used in the context of life-history interviews, and ‘narrative gerontology’ focuses on older people’s interpretations of lived experience. By adopting what Holstein and Gubrium (1995) refer to as an ‘active interview’ methodology, the interview becomes a dynamic process for reflecting on the meanings of experiences and thus for generating new knowledge. Ray (2007) suggests that narrative gerontology can lead to social change; that when narrative possibilities are limited, people’s sense of their own possibilities will also be limited, but that by sharing alternative stories people may become aware of new possibilities, which can have a transforming and liberating effect.

120 Jackie Reynolds In living out transformative narratives, people can begin to challenge social norms. At the same time, as with any qualitative research, it is always important to recognise that the participation of the interviewer in the process of reflection challenges traditional understandings of validity and reliability and means that it is vitally important for the interviewer to reflect on the ways in which they may have influenced the participant’s account.

The project context Greentown lies in a high shallow valley, surrounded by arable fields and countryside and is around 10 miles from the nearest conurbation. Following the decline of local industries (coal, steel and fabrics) and the resulting lack of employment opportunities, the town has an ageing population. Most of the arts and cultural opportunities in the town are led by volunteers. There is little in the way of purpose-built accommodation, so venues include the Town Hall, the library, community centres, churches and schools. There is a branch of the U3A (University of the Third Age) in the town, established in 2005, and a variety of other arts activities and organisations, typically attracting older participants. Participants for the study were recruited through a range of groups, including choirs, dancing, amateur dramatics and arts and crafts groups. By involving people who were actively engaged in their community, sometimes in leadership positions, there was a focus on understanding ‘what works’, an approach that challenges the standard ‘deficit’ approach to research with older people. The interviews took place between March and October 2008. A total of 24 participants took part, including 8 men and 16 women, aged between 60 and 87. The semi-structured interviews were developed around a number of openended themes, including the nature of people’s arts participation (past and present), the impact of key life-course transitions, the role of arts participation in dealing with life’s challenges and setbacks, motivations and barriers to participation, whether creativity (however defined) changes over time, and the impact of relationships and of belonging to particular communities or neighbourhoods. Whilst the shortest interview lasted 45 minutes, typically they took much longer, up to around 3 hours. Interviews were audio recorded, fully transcribed and thematically analysed using NVivo software.

Findings Whilst the main focus of this chapter is methodological, it is useful to highlight some of the ways in which the design of the research contributed to greater understanding of the nature of arts-based social capital, especially in later life. By way of qualitative research methods, the findings offer new perspectives on arts and ageing. In particular, the influence of narrative approaches resulted in a focus on those issues that are personally significant to participants. Derek (aged 60), for example, commented that during the interview he had thought about

Late life creativity 121 things that he had not previously considered, such as why he had been involved in arts activities, what his music meant to him and why he was involved in the community. Discussions of what constitutes ‘art’ and ‘creativity’ focused partly on ‘what counts’, and the activities that people included in their narratives varied greatly. They would often look to me to confirm or reject activities as being of interest, and the interviews sometimes seemed to leave people with an increased realisation of their own creative achievements: this is reflective again of the taken-for-granted nature of people’s arts participation as part of everyday life. There was often discussion of the ways in which certain creative skills are no longer routinely taught and of the value of sharing those skills with younger generations, whether in families or through volunteering. Creativity was also sometimes expressed in terms of identity: for example, Monica (aged 71) described how she always felt drawn to artistic and creative people because of her upbringing. Applying life-course perspectives also revealed the complex long-term factors that impact upon people’s arts engagement. This included the key roles played by people’s childhood experiences at home, school and church, as well as in some cases their employment experiences as adults. It was also clear that there were some important gender and class differences in the experiences of this group of older people, and these in turn were significantly influenced by historical context. In particular, the findings emphasised that working-class culture encouraged various forms of arts engagement, including music, singing, and domestic crafts. Participants’ lives were often influenced by limited educational and career opportunities and traditional gendered expectations, especially in relation to women as homemakers. This continued strongly to influence the types of arts activities that most of the women took part in (Reynolds in press). In their later life, these factors, along with others such as time availability, health, transport and costs, could all be seen to impact upon participants’ arts engagement. The qualitative approach was also effective in highlighting the crucial importance of issues of identity in helping to understand the nature of people’s engagement in group arts a`ctivities throughout their lives. This in turn supports the usefulness of continuity theory (Havighurst 1968; Atchley 1989) in explaining the ways in which people’s life-course participation can be seen as logical and coherent. It becomes particularly significant for those adapting to ill-health, and it was notable that individuals’ arts engagement could be viewed as a positive strategy in relation to both their use of time and their sense of identity in the face of health problems. Analysing people’s arts engagement from a social capital perspective highlighted the critical importance of their relationships in this context. This included both their close personal relationships and their social relationships. People’s arts engagement could be seen to have its historical roots in a range of communities, including communities of place, work-based communities, faith communities and communities of interest. Examining the role of group arts activities in shaping people’s relationships and assessing some of the outcomes

122 Jackie Reynolds reveals new understandings of the nature of the arts-generated social capital of older people. In particular, some arts activities (e.g. singing) involve intrinsic mutual support, and overall a wide range of both practical and emotional support could be seen to stem from group arts activities (Reynolds 2015; Reynolds in press). Some of that support is specifically shaped by the artistic nature of the activity. This might include the sharing of expensive equipment or the cost of a magazine subscription, and sharing creative skills (both within the group sessions and sometimes at each other’s homes). In terms of emotional support, the encouragement of the group when trying out a new skill was often significant in developing individuals’ confidence and self-belief. For people whose narratives emphasise the importance they place on being busy and productive, the fact that the support takes place in a context of learning and achievement is also important. Both men and women addressed the different kinds of interaction and support that can be seen in all-male environments (e.g. a male voice choir) and all-female environments (e.g. a patchwork and quilting group). There were also numerous examples of the ways in which practical and emotional support was offered to people during periods of ill-health. This might include lifts to the groups for people with limited mobility or to hospital visits for partners who don’t drive. Again, the nature of the activities could shape that support: for example, one participant who was recovering at home after a major operation had her ‘art homework’ dropped off by another U3A art group member, and a male voice choir member was visited in hospital by a large group of fellow choristers, who all sang around his hospital bed! This supports Paulson’s (2011) work on dance groups for older people which she describes as ‘therapeutic communities’, based on the ways in which they offered social support and exhibited concern for members affected by illness. Moreover, my research demonstrated that arts groups (most notably choirs) can function as a community in both a literal and a metaphorical sense (Reynolds 2015). This contributes further evidence in support of previous research on dance groups (Cooper and Thomas, 2002; Paulson, 2010), which uses the concept of communitas to denote the strong sense of solidarity, bonding and egalitarian community spirit in such groups. Effectively, the collective act of dancing (or singing) becomes a metaphor for community itself. People’s arts engagement could be linked to their sense of approaching ageing in a positive way, with themes such as ‘being a lifelong learner’, ‘being sociable’, ‘being a performer’ ‘being busy and practical’ and ‘being a volunteer’ all serving as examples of the positive narratives that people developed around their self-identity. By analysing the ways in which people explain the meanings that they attach to their participation in group arts activities throughout their lives, and by considering the factors that impact on such engagement, I conclude that ‘resourceful ageing’ (UN 1999) is a valuable concept for gerontologists. In response to demographic changes and increased numbers of older people, it is important to explore the factors that might make the experience of ageing more positive.

Late life creativity 123 Considering the resources to which people have access in later life permits a move beyond problematic notions of ‘successful’ and ‘active’ ageing by recognising that older people do not operate on a level playing field, all equally able to take decisions that enable them to age ‘successfully’. Rather, they are affected by their life-course experiences and by a range of structural factors, which are influenced in turn by a range of policy decisions. They are also affected by the environments in which they live and the opportunities for social engagement these permit. It would be easy to adopt an uncritically upbeat and positive portrayal of ageing when addressing the topic of arts and creativity in relation to older people. However, examining the issue from the perspective of the resources that participants can be seen to have accumulated allows us to take a critical approach that recognises the impact of inequalities and of other challenges that may be faced.

Reflections on the potential of creative research methods Since completing my doctorate, I have gone on to undertake research using a range of creative, arts-based methods, working in partnership with artists and creative practitioners (see, for example, Webster et al. 2014; Reynolds et al. 2014; Ray et al. 2017). My motivation for doing so is reflected in the words of Holstein and Minkler (2007, p. 22), who suggest that we need to employ a wide range of research methods in order to try and gain greater understandings of ageing, and that we should not demand broadly generalisable data but be prepared to prioritise understanding over control: Methodological bricolage means not ruling out knowledge that is gained from personal narratives, fiction, poetry, film, qualitative investigations, philosophical enquiries, participatory action research and any other method of enquiry we may discover that yields insights into fundamental questions about how, and why, we experience old age in very particular ways. Whilst my research has not been focused exclusively on issues of ageing and social capital, it has undoubtedly highlighted the potential of creative methods in addressing these topics. In particular, such methods further build on narrative approaches in order to explore people’s experiences and the nature of human connection: Telling and listening to stories is at the heart of social and cultural life. Much of what we understand as personhood, identity, intimacy, secrecy, experience, belief, history, and common sense turns on the exchange of stories between people. (Narayan and George 2003, p. 463) Through recognising the powerful role of storytelling within societies, we begin to see the potential of a range of creative methods, including

124 Jackie Reynolds participatory visual methods, for exploring issues of social capital across the life course and within particular geographical and organisational contexts. In the following examples, I am going to discuss creative writing, photography and film making, as examples of such participatory methods. I would also draw readers’ attention to the value of drama and theatre making methodologies, as explored by Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett in Chapter 7. In highlighting the potential of creative writing, I will reflect upon my own experiences working on a project called ‘And the Doctor Said …’. Examples of photography and film making are drawn from literature. In each example, including ‘And the Doctor Said …’, it is important to note that there was no explicit focus in the original research on the concept of social capital, but I would suggest that the studies nevertheless point to the potential of creative methods in exploring older people’s social capital in ways that are meaningful to participants. I was a member of the research team for the ‘And the Doctor Said …’ project whilst working as a Senior Researcher at Staffordshire University: the study piloted the use of creative writing as a research method for exploring people’s lifetime experiences of health, illness and medicine in North Staffordshire. A series of workshops led by creative writers, playwrights and storytellers took place during 2013 in various community venues in and around Stoke-on-Trent. Through creative writing, participants shared, reflected on and wrote about their health experiences. Participants were not all older people, but rather encompassed a wide age range. Groups included a mixed group of teenaged mothers and older women; a group of women from Voices of Experience, a mutual support group for women who have experienced domestic abuse; and two open groups comprising adults of various ages, including older people. This highly participatory community research project applied principles of co-production: all of the writings were shared (with the consent of individual participants) in a book of the project (Webster et al. 2014), and an exhibition of writing, audio recordings, photographs, film and pottery painted with extracts from people’s stories was developed and exhibited in local venues. Participants were invited to launch events, at which some were willing to read their poems or extracts from their stories. The project was a ‘Connected Communities’ project (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council) and focused on achieving new insights into the nature of community over time and on connecting academic and community expertise. It generated diverse and poignant creative writings, some of which included an implicit focus on issues relating to social capital, such as relationships, sources of support and resilience. Moreover, they included life-course perspectives and were very clearly rooted in a particular geographical area, a sense of locale which we have seen is particularly pertinent in studies of social capital. Participants completed evaluation questionnaires, which included both closed and open questions. The success of the approach in both exploring and generating social capital could be seen in some of the qualitative responses. One of the participants, for example, was encouraged to attend by the fact that ‘it was a workshop specifically for women, and I was part of a small group of women whom

Late life creativity 125 I knew to be supportive of each other’. People valued the opportunity to share their stories, and the affirmation that came from doing so in a supportive and encouraging environment. Comments on questionnaires included the following: The freedom – the confidence that came with others reading my work and listening positively/constructively. I found the experience affirming … it was good fun with a serious outcome. Gave me some purpose and ideas on how to begin writing. I wrote prose – a first since school days. Getting to know people and getting the confidence in reading my story out. Moreover, some people’s motivation in telling their stories was clearly to make an impact, both in terms of challenging other people’s perceptions and of helping to influence policy and practice. Arthur W. Frank (2013) writes compellingly about the value of thinking with stories rather than thinking about them, and how this can help professionals to reflect on their practice through recognising ill people’s stories and understanding what they represent. He also highlights what may perhaps be seen as another distinctive aspect of art-generated social capital – the way in which the sharing of stories is underpinned by reciprocity and mutual support: Storytelling is for an other just as much as it is for oneself. In the reciprocity that is storytelling, the teller offers herself as guide to the other’s self-formation. The other’s receipt of that guidance not only recognises but values the teller. The moral genius of storytelling is that each, teller and listener, enters the space of the story for the other. Telling stories in postmodern times, and perhaps in all times, attempts to change one’s own life by affecting the lives of others. (Frank 2013, pp. 17–18) Stories can also be told through sharing and discussing photographs that are meaningful to people: the use of photography as a participatory research method can generate changes in communities. Photovoice – a qualitative research technique involving participants in recording and reflecting on their community through photography – is increasingly popular in participatory research, but has not been extensively used in research with older people. Novek et al. (2012) examined the application of photovoice in researching agefriendly community characteristics in four communities in Manitoba, Canada. Participants took up to 16 photographs that they felt were significant in terms of age-friendly communities. They reflected on their approach by keeping a journal, and then they participated in an individual 1-hour interview with researchers. Three priority photographs were chosen and used to compile a list of key issues within each community. Focus groups were then held in each community to discuss these issues, identify priorities and create an action plan

126 Jackie Reynolds for community improvements. To help develop an understanding of the base for social capital in a given locale, participants were encouraged to photograph not only tangible features of their physical environment but also less tangible, social aspects of their communities. The authors suggest that participants were successful in addressing this aim: While the results indicate that it is easier to depict the physical environment, many participants found creative ways to capture less tangible aspects of life, illustrating themes such as the social environment, independence, community history, respect and participation. Participants brought their cameras indoors, shedding light on otherwise hidden aspects of their lives. These intimate portraits of seniors’ lives provided emotionally powerful material documenting a range of experiences including social isolation, family relationships and the day-to-day challenges of living alone (Novek et al. 2012, p. 459) One of a relatively small number of examples of a participatory approach to film-making with older people is a study carried out in long-term social care with 10 people with Alzheimer-type dementia (Ludwin and Capstick, 2015; Capstick and Ludwin, 2015). Participants in this study were selected on the basis of concern about their low levels of social engagement at the outset of the study, and the study aimed to assess the impact of the film-making process on the well-being and social participation of participants. Again, the concept of social capital is implicit in the authors’ accounts of the stories that people told, particularly in terms of the communities that people have lived in and belonged to. For example, they note that [p]articipants frequently drew on concepts such as neighbourliness, community values or personal determination to explain how they had met, and continue to meet, [life’s] challenges. (Capstick and Ludwin 2015, p. 158) Moreover, the process of co-producing research through the exchange of stories again suggests that social capital was generated by the actual process of the research. It required reciprocity, especially between the researchers and the participants, and this could be seen to challenge typical assumptions about people living with dementia: The process of fieldwork, particularly this type of ethnographic work, means that our interactions are not just about the research agenda as it is laid out, but that the process inevitably, necessarily, and ethically becomes a very porous, human interaction. Here, the encounters took on a reciprocal quality, as (often in response to questions from participants) we shared aspects of our own lives and experiences with participants … sometimes, a nurturing, caregiving dynamic arose, where people we

Late life creativity 127 worked with were seeking to encourage and support us in our endeavors. This counters the all-too-often held assumption that equates dementia with incapacity to relate to other people and their needs and a consequent inability to create intersubjective meanings. (Ludwin and Capstick 2015, p. 33) This quotation also highlights some of the ways in which participatory approaches and creative methods may address the power imbalance between researchers and participants, particularly in comparison with traditional topdown research frameworks. However, researchers undertaking such approaches will still need to address ethical challenges. In Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences, Helen Kara (2015) explores the ethical issues in some depth. Kara suggests that whilst people who are new to ethics may anticipate a ‘topdown’ approach, involving clear rules and guidelines that are applicable to different research situations, more experience tends to bring greater recognition of the need for a more ‘bottom-up’ approach, allowing the subjects to determine the direction of travel. Whilst emphasising ethical absolutes, such as not causing harm to participants, she also highlights a set of ‘grey areas’ and the potential that exists for assessing each project ‘in its own, unique terms and context’ (p. 48). This certainly resonates with my own experiences, particularly in relation to arts-based research. One of the key issues, for example, is the ways in which creative writing, films and photographs challenge traditional guidelines regarding anonymity of participants, especially when people wish to claim ownership of their stories and of their creative work.

Conclusion This chapter has highlighted a number of small-scale research projects that, despite their modest size, offer important and far-reaching insights into the potential of qualitative, participatory and creative research methods for understanding and generating older people’s social capital. A key focus of the chapter has been on the exchange of stories, and I have suggested that such reciprocity may be seen as a distinctive feature of arts-generated social capital. Arts-based research methods offer a valuable way of further building on the narrative approaches that often underpin qualitative interviews. Whilst there is clearly a need for further research that engages with increased numbers and with an increasing diversity of participants, I would argue that arts-based methods may be valuable in exploring the development of older people’s social capital over time, especially if it is conducted in ways that are shaped by older people themselves. In addition, such methods appear to have further potential in terms of effecting change through the research activities themselves. The nature of that change requires evaluation as an integral part of the research process. It also necessitates a significant element of critical reflection on the part of researchers, especially in relation to ethical considerations. Effective co-production requires particular skills from researchers – something that is especially problematic,

128 Jackie Reynolds given the limited opportunities for formal training that are available – but can be both rewarding and challenging.

Acknowledgements ‘And the Doctor Said …’ (Medical Histories: Creating Health Narratives) was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/J006017/1). The research team also comprised: Mark Webster (Principal Investigator, Staffordshire University); Professor Alannah Tomkins (Co-Investigator, Keele University) and Dr Geoff Walton (Manchester Metropolitan University). The research team worked in partnership with writers Deborah McAndrew, Maria Whatton, Dave Reeves and Chrissie Hall.

References Atchley, R. (1989) A continuity theory of normal aging. The Gerontologist 29(2): 183–190. Better Together (2000) The Arts and Social Capital. Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America. Cambridge, MA: John F Kennedy School of Government. Available from: www.creativecity.ca/database/files/library/better_together.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2017]. Blackshaw, T. and J. Long (2005) What’s the big idea? A critical exploration of the concept of social capital and its incorporation into leisure policy discourse. Leisure Studies 24(3): 239–258. Capstick, A. and K. Ludwin (2015) Place memory and dementia: Findings from participatory film-making in long-term social care. Health & Place 34: 157–163. Cooper, M. and Thomas, H. (2002) Growing old gracefully: Social dance in the third age. Ageing & Society 22(6): 689–708. Cutler, D. (2009) Ageing Artfully: Older People and Professional Participatory Arts in the UK. London: Baring Foundation. Available from: www.baringfoundation.org.uk/wp-con tent/uploads/2009/08/AgeingArtfully.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2017]. Daly, S. (2005) Social Capital and the Cultural Sector: Literature Review Prepared for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. London: LSE. Available from: www.citeseerx. ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.108.5929&rep=rep1&type=pdf [Accessed 20 October 2017]. Elliott, J. (2005) Using Narrative in Social Research. London: Sage. Field, J. (2008) Social Capital (2nd edition). London: Routledge. Frank, A. W. (2013) The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness & Ethics (2nd edition). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fukuyama, F. (1997) Social Capital: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Delivered at Brasenose College, Oxford, May 1997. Available from: www.tannerlectures.utah. edu/_documents/a-to-z/f/Fukuyama98.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2017]. Gilleard, C. and P. Higgs (2005) Contexts of Ageing: Class, Cohort and Community. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gray, A. (2009) The social capital of older people. Ageing & Society 29(1): 5–31. Green, M., J. Iparraguirre, S. Davidson, P. Rossall and A. Zaidi (2017) A Summary of Age UK’s Index of Wellbeing in Later Life. London: Age UK. Available from: www. ageuk.org.uk [Accessed 20 October 2017].

Late life creativity 129 Halpern, D. (2005) Social Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Havighurst, R. (1968) Personality and patterns of aging. The Gerontologist 8: 20–23. Heenan, D. (2010) Social capital and older people in farming communities. Journal of Aging Studies 24(1): 40–46. Holstein, J. and J. F. Gubrium (1995) The Active Interview. London: Sage. Holstein, M. B. and M. Minkler (2007) Critical gerontology: Reflections for the 21st century. In M. Bernard and T. Scharf (Eds), Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Jamieson, A. and C. Victor (2002) Researching Ageing and Later Life. Buckingham: Open University Press. Johnston, G. and J. Percy-Smith (2003) In search of social capital. Policy & Politics 31(3): 321–334. Kara, H. (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Bristol: Policy Press. Ludwin, K. and A. Capstick (2015) Using participatory video to understand diversity among people with dementia in long-term care. Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture 5(4): 30–38. Matarasso, F. (1997) Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts. Stroud: Comedia. Available from: www.culturenet.cz/res/data/004/000571.pdf [Accessed 20 October 2017]. Mohan, G. and Mohan, J. (2002) Placing social capital. Progress in Human Geography 26 (2): 191–210. Narayan, K. and K. M. George (2003) Personal and folk narrative as cultural representation. In J. F. Gubrium and J. A. Holstein (Eds), Postmodern Interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 449–466. Novek, S., T. Morris-Oswald and V. Menec (2012) Using photovoice with older adults: Some methodological strengths and issues. Ageing & Society 32: 451–470. Paulson, S. (2010) An Exploration of How Various ‘Cultures of Dance’ Construct Experiences of Health and Growing Older. PhD thesis. City University, London. Paulson, S. (2011) The use of ethnography and narrative interviews in a study of ‘cultures of dance’. Journal of Health Psychology 16(1): 148–157. Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ray, M., M. Bernard and J. Reynolds (2017) The ageing of British gerontology: Learning from the past to inform the future. Generations Review 27(1): 30–37. Ray, R. (2007) Narratives as agents of social change: A new direction for narrative gerontologists. In M. Bernard and T. Scharf (Eds), Critical Perspectives on Ageing Societies. Bristol: Policy Press. Reynolds, J. (2011) Creative Ageing: Exploring Social Capital and Arts Engagement in Later Life. Unpublished PhD thesis, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK. Reynolds, J., J. Hetherington, A. O’Sullivan, K. Clayton and J. Holmes (2014) The Story of Lidice and Stoke-on-Trent: Towards Deeper Understandings of the Role of Arts and Culture. Final Report, AHRC Cultural Value project. Stoke-on-Trent: Staffordshire University. Available from http://blogs.staffs.ac.uk/culturalvalue/our-research-p roject/full-report/ [Accessed 13 November 2017]. Reynolds, J. (2015) Stories of creative ageing. Working with Older People 19(1): 33–40. Reynolds, J. (in press) Crafting resilience for later life. In A. Goulding, B. Davenport and A. Newman (Eds), Creative Practice in the Resilience of Older People. Bristol: Policy Press.

130 Jackie Reynolds Riessman, C. K. (1993) Narrative Analysis. London: Sage. UN (1999) International Year of Older Persons, 1999: Activities and Legacies. New York: UN. Vella-Burrows, T., N. Ewbank, S. Mills, M. Shipton, S. Clift and F. Gray (2014) Cultural Value and Social Capital: Investigating Social Capital, Health and Wellbeing Impacts in Three Coastal Towns Undergoing Culture-led Regeneration. Folkestone, UK: Sidney De Haan Research Centre for Arts and Health. Available from: http://nickewbank.co. uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cultural-value-report.pdf [Accessed 6 November 2017]. Webster, M., A. Tomkins, G. Walton and J. Reynolds (2014) And the Doctor Said … Stories of Health, Illness and Medicine in North Staffordshire. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: North Staffordshire Press. Wenger, G. C. (2003) Interviewing older people. In J. Holstein and J. Gubrium (Eds), Inside Interviewing: New Lenses, New Concerns. London: Sage. Yin, R. (2009) Case Study Research: Design and Methods (4th edition). London: Sage.

9

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ Dress, creativity, old age Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila

Introduction This chapter brings together and depicts some broad and contested concepts: dress, creativity, old age. Through the medium of dress, we seek to understand how creativity may function in certain everyday, mundane yet socially charged practices of the elderly. We explore how narratives of creativity and narratives of old age are challenged and conformed to by three women for whom dress has always mattered and who sometimes find it matters even more in their later life. In discussing their individual cases, we seek to contribute to the theoretical debates about the meanings and practices of creativity in later life. We begin, briefly, with definitions. A classical definition of dress views it as an ‘assemblage of body modifications and/or supplements’ (Eicher and RoachHiggins in Hansen 2004, p. 371). This broad understanding of dress is useful for our discussion, as it stresses the importance of the body and is not reductive but encompasses clothing and other accessories. Everything that is done in the effort to make the body socially acceptable can be included in dress and the act of dressing, and, indeed, according to this view, an individual is never naked (Entwistle 2000). What interests us here is the relationship of old age and fashion and what it can tell us about creativity in later life. Old age has of course been understood in a range of ways, and what counts as old age has also shifted and changed and is historically contingent (Higgs and Gilleard 2015). In this chapter, we focus on individuals who are in the Third Age, defined as a period after retirement associated with leisure, pleasure and freedom from many duties: the three women we interviewed all live active lives and construct their existence in terms of opportunities rather than frailty. Creativity, too, has been understood in many ways. One definition, from a neurological point of view, is that it ‘involves the ability to produce something that is both original and appropriate to the goal it was designed for’ (Palmiero et al. 2012, p. 193). Creative processes are thus linked to acts of production, to individual motivations and emotions; creativity is associated with self-actualisation and the expression of one’s inner self. This definition of creativity is closely linked to the idea of individuality and of the ‘creative individual’. It is of relevance for our discussion here in that the myth of the ‘creative individual’, the

132 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila ‘genius’, is a powerful narrative shaping social understandings of creative activities, and also the understandings of our informants, as we shall see. This myth, it is increasingly recognised, also informs shared ideas about age and creativity (McMullan and Smiles 2016). Focussing on the characteristics and capacities of an individual defined as particularly ‘creative’, the narrative understands creativity as something psychologically inherent to a creative individual (Osborne 2003). In this chapter, we want to shift the focus towards ordinary people and mundane everyday activities instead. Considering creativity and the production of creative acts as collective rather than inherent to any individual (Becker 2004) and also as associated as much with process as product (Plucker and Beghetto 2004), we explore the opportunities and constraints that dress and dressing practices afford older individuals. We also recognise that ‘creativity’ has its political implications, too, as is argued by those who have critiqued the myth of the ‘creative individual’ itself. So, for example, McRobbie (2016, pp. 10–11) points out that a shift from ‘cultural industries’ to ‘creative industries’ is politically motivated, and that as ‘the word “creativity” displaces and supplants the word “culture” … [c]reativity becomes something inherent in personhood (childhood, adolescence and young adulthood; less often, old age), which has the potential to be turned into a set of capacities’. We recognise that Palmiero’s definition of creativity has a significant weakness: how do we actually define ‘originality’? According to some definitions – for instance, those more closely related to the world of ‘high art’ (Bourdieu 1993) – it would be impossible to consider the process of selecting and combining garments – usually not designed or made by the individual herself – as containing elements of ‘originality’. Yet when we consider dress as part of a process and as a medium, tool or strategy of self-actualisation, its creative capacities become more pronounced. It is certainly possible to use garments in ways that are original and creative. Yet such creativity as this has its social and material limits: what is accepted by an individual’s social environment, and what is possible for her in terms of availability and accessibility of garments (Almila 2018). Indeed, an individual’s wardrobe and social setting may be seen as a limiting frame within which creative practices may nonetheless happen. Particularly in the third, empirical section of this chapter, we explore dressing as an interstitial space in which micro-acts of creativity gain significant importance. But ‘creativity’ has recently also come to mean something very different. A popular buzzword, it is celebrated especially within frameworks of capitalism: everyone is declared as potentially (almost compulsorily) creative. This dogma of mandatory creativity, especially in work life but increasingly also beyond (Osborne 2003), takes different forms for older people and for those who are retired. On the one hand, it pushes individuals towards a certain kind of performance of active, creative ageing (Sabeti 2015). This may be well in accordance with individuals’ desires and aspirations, but it also stigmatises those who do not wish to, or cannot, participate in such practices. After all, the imperative to ‘be creative’ may also be experienced as a stressor. On the other hand, old age and especially retirement may provide resources – most importantly, time – through

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ 133 which to engage in creative activities with less pressure and compulsion than is often placed upon ‘creativity’ during working life. This creative activity may be positively associated with the maintenance and promotion of various aspects of health and wellbeing (Price and Tinker 2014). Though we are interested in forms of everyday creativity, we also recognise that this sort of creativity is not available or accessible to or personally desired by every elderly person. Until relatively recently (e.g. Gibson 2000; Twigg 2007, 2013, 2015), dress and fashion studies have been blind to the elderly. One reason for this has been the centrality of cultural studies for the field – such studies having been primarily interested in youth groups, deviancy and the spectacular (e.g. Hebdige 1979). Yet these studies have also made important contributions towards understanding everyday creative practices and acts. The idea of resistance in relation to dress is central to such acts, countering the early assumption in studies of fashion that individuals have very little power to contradict the forces of fashion (e.g. Simmel 1904). One further narrative that frames our discussion, therefore, is the narrative of fashion and fashionability that our informants both conform to and resist. Telling stories is a quintessentially human activity. We live immersed in a multiplicity of stories, and we narrate our lives in constant monologues (Sandelowski 1991). In this chapter, we are particularly interested in the metanarratives that shape our understandings of dress phenomena. Twigg’s pioneering work (2013) has elaborately discussed life narratives of elderly women in terms of their dress, focussing on continuity and change through dress choices and preferences. Although the themes of choice and continuity are also important for our analysis, our overall focus is different. We are primarily interested in how metanarratives of creativity and old age interact to shape individual choices and practices – how our three informants both resist and conform to age-ordered and gendered demands and expectations. We are interested in the ways in which dress can be an agentic, creative practice for older women, how the conscious choice of clothing – the way it is worn, constituting an individual’s style – can be interpreted as a meaning-making and creative practice. Therefore, dress operates at two different levels in this account: it is explored as it constitutes an everyday practice and tool for the women we talked with, but it is also a frame and lens through which issues of old age and creativity can be discussed and analysed. Wardrobe interviews (Woodward 2007) were conducted with three older London-based women who all had an interest in clothing: two of the women, Hinda and Liz, were in their mid-70s and one, Bridget, was in her later 80s.1 These women were middle class and had worked in professions largely dominated by women. Snowballing was used to find informants, using our own networks of women who had previously attended a conference exploring cultural representations of older women at the London College of Fashion. This meant that we were consciously seeking women who had interest in fashion and clothing. Clearly, we are not claiming any kind of representativeness for our select informants: our findings are specific and cannot be extrapolated. Rather, we are drawing on these women’s stories to understand how forms of

134 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila creativity may matter particularly in later life and how certain metanarratives shape their activities with regard to dress. The interviews lasted approximately one and a half hours in each case. As in Lövgren’s (2016) work, we looked at garments in the women’s wardrobes whilst also exploring topics related to dress, ageing and creativity. Rules of ethical conduct were adhered to and the voluntary nature of participation was stressed, particularly as we conducted part of each interview in the women’s bedrooms. The interviews were analysed using a form of emergent thematic analysis. This is a form of content analysis that is more concerned with patterns than frequency and which uses empirically emergent rather than theoretically generated themes (Dodds et al. 2008; Searing and Zeilig 2017). It is not about the quantity of data but the richness of those data that interests us. As an essential part of this process, the interviews were transcribed and uploaded into Atlas.ti, qualitative software that was used to assist in the coding of the interviews. These codes included ‘accessories, style, fabric, expressivity, creative connections, colour’, among others. From this initial coding both investigators, in an iterative process, have identified three principal themes: ‘self actualisation and aesthetic pleasure’, ‘dress as a multifaceted creative practice’ and ‘temporality and resistance’. Thorough field notes, including sketches and colour maps, were also taken by both researchers, and these helped to inform the analysis.

Self-actualisation and aesthetic pleasure As has been noted by Twigg (2007, 2015), the role that clothing plays in respect of ‘expressivity’ and ‘identity’ (2007, p. 287) in older women’s lives has been largely overlooked in fashion research. However, the ways in which dress expresses and signals social and personal identity has been a theme of sociological and psychological literature for many years (Twigg 2015, p. 57). Similarly, the role that clothing can have in generating an ‘everyday’ aesthetic pleasure and sense of fun for older women and the ways in which this may be connected with self-expression, self-actualisation and identity has often been neglected. For all the women interviewed as part of this project, clothing was clearly an important and conscious form of self-expression. For Bridget, this was primarily through her choice of bright (and not necessarily normatively ‘matching’) colours and her rejection of the ‘beige’ that she regards as most commonly associated with older women: ‘Why do so many older people wear beige? You know? … And maybe beige is much more fading into a background thing rather than making statements’. To some extent, Bridget’s insistence on always wearing vivid colours may be interpreted as a strategy for claiming personal visibility (Lövgren 2014) and equally as a display of her continuing (and even increased) engagement with the world: ‘I’ve noticed this more and more now as I’ve got older, ‘cause it’s easier. I … verbalise to people much more openly about life and things. So on the buses or on the tubes, I’ll talk to people quite openly now, whereas I might not have done [so before]’. The normative

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ 135 expectation for ageing women to become invisible – particularly sexually invisible (see Twigg 2013) – was resisted by all our informants. Liz’s interest in making her own clothes, complete with matching hats and peplums (short, gathered, slightly flared strips of fabric attached at the waist of a woman’s blouse, skirt or dress) and Hinda’s concern with always having a bit of ‘panache’ in what she wears demonstrate the role of clothing as an expression of individuality and to some extent therefore the ways in which dress can act as a sign or ‘flare’ of their unique ways of being in the world. As Bridget asserts: ‘I’m a bit of a show off, you see? A statement person. And I don’t fade into backgrounds’. This characteristic is as true of her sartorial style as it is of her personality. Similarly, Liz defiantly commented on her distinct style of dress: ‘I mean what the hell does it matter now? Does it? Not at all’. For Liz, her ageing seems to be associated with an increasing disregard for social convention which in turn results in an ability to experiment more with her clothing. This reflects observations by Berman (1988, 1989) who notes that ‘a sense of individuation’ can emerge in the creative productions of older adults. For all the women interviewed, clothing was a means of continually creating and expressing themselves, a signal that they remain vitally involved with the world on their own terms and are still able to exercise choice and agency. This echoes observations by Yarnal et al. (2011, p. 59) concerning the intense enjoyment that some older women derive from experimenting with their clothed identities and perhaps also challenges the notion that women are always merely targets of the fashion system (see Schiermer 2010): the women we interviewed actively and consciously ‘use’ their clothing to convey aspects of themselves. Thus, for Liz, her clothing, most of which she now makes herself, is one manifestation of her eccentricity, as she reflects: ‘Well, I suppose I’m mildly eccentric’. For Bridget, her habits of dress demonstrate both her attention-seeking character and her tendency to view life from perspectives that are slightly ‘aslant’. Hinda similarly enjoys the attention that her clothing can sometimes bring: ‘It was quite pleasant. People stopping and saying, “How do you get your hair to stick up?” Or, …, “Where did you get your shoes?” So, someone stopped me and they didn’t know what to say to me, so they just said, “I like your necklace.” Erm, but I think they were interested in my age. It didn’t happen when I was younger, I have to say’. Here, it seems that Hinda is able to challenge the putative invisibility of older women by her ‘look’ and above all by wearing noticeable clothes which can provoke comments from strangers. In addition, these garments embody an important aspect of her personality: ‘I take risks to a certain extent and I think I am quite a risk taker, so I think my clothes might say that’. Hinda’s observation about the way in which her dress might be ‘read’ captures the complex way in which clothing serves as more than an outer carapace and is closely related to identity and the conscious expression of facets of our identity (Davis 1992; Entwistle 2000). The pleasure taken in actively finding and wearing clothes and the aesthetic appreciation given by certain clothes was evident for all the women and was captured in the notion of ‘fun’. This is a concept that has been discussed in

136 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila some detail in relation to older women and their dress habits (Lövgren 2014) as it refers both to the pleasure of wearing a garment and to the way in which a piece of clothing itself may be described. As also outlined by Lövgren (2014), all the women we interviewed reflected on the fun to be had from wearing and curating their clothing. However, each woman’s interpretation of ‘fun’ in relation to their clothes had a different emphasis. For Liz, for instance, this was primarily a means of describing a particular detail – thus she comments on the buttons that she made and a hat that she designed as ‘fun’; she also justifies keeping a purple velvet suit that she hasn’t worn ‘for ages’ because it too is ‘fun’. The concept is a characteristic of her clothing style. Although this is not the case for Hinda, she too clearly enjoyed the possibility that her dress had the potential to be playful and fun as evidenced in her large badge collection: ‘See, and then I pick them out and they have to make the statement of the day (laughter)’. For Bridget, ‘fun’ was associated with the serendipity involved in finding clothing in charity shops: ‘It’s just, it’s a lot of fun, of course. It’s play really, isn’t it?’ Thus the ‘fun’ of clothing for these women included certain idiosyncratic details (badges or a hat) or the entertainment and satisfaction to be had from finding clothes unexpectedly. The notion that the fun of clothing is also linked with a sense of ‘play’ is interesting in relation to the overarching question of creativity. The idea that playfulness is a prerequisite of creativity, the association between fun, play and creativity and the complexities of ‘play’ have been discussed elsewhere (e.g. Capps 2012; Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Bateson 2015; Lieberman 2014); however, the notion that the value and role of clothing might also be associated with ‘play’ and that the playfulness of clothing a form of creative expression was apparent from our interviews. The three women we interviewed all demonstrated that their dress provided an opportunity for a certain playfulness, whether by providing opportunities to be slightly subversive (Hinda’s badges all have political messages on them and she enjoys surprising people with them; she also talked with relish about how she could ‘shock’ people by wearing motorcycle boots) or as inherent to the act of making or finding clothing (for Bridget and Liz). Indeed, the profound enjoyment of looking for clothes, particularly by favourite designers, was also noted by Hinda (although, unlike Bridget, not in charity shops). For all the women, their pleasure in clothes cannot be separated from the creative activity of either making or finding them and is consciously connected with a sense of play.

Dress as a multi-faceted creative practice The role of dress as a means of articulating a creative response to the world and also as a creative process in and of itself was apparent for all the women interviewed but perhaps most evident in the case of Liz, who in her later life has taken to making her own clothing. Liz’s garments are characterised by quirky and even slightly unconventional touches such as peplums, slashed sleeves, matching hats and bags that could not be easily found in high-street shops. Her interest in sourcing the fabric and the ways in which the fabric itself can inspire

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ 137 her to make particular items might usefully, we wish to argue, be considered a creative practice: But I got something that I call my lichen fabric, … which is light and we suggest it’s got green in it, which it has. Well, I’ll show it to you. It’s a dark background and the lichen. …, and that’s because I just saw it, in one of these shops, you know, and I thought, “Oh, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I love that stuff”. Here, Liz emphasises the excitement and happenstance of finding material for which she does not necessarily have an immediate use. The exhilaration of making a ‘find’ and the sensual pleasure that she takes in the colour and feel of the fabric that will then lead to the making of new clothes appears to us to constitute a creative and imaginative process. The promise of the fabrics, which are replete with possibility, and the sense that at some indeterminate future point they may be fashioned into something original are part of the activity of making: ‘And then if I see something, even if it’s not what I thought I was looking for, I think, “Oh, I think I might have some of that, and do something at some point”’. The making process is also replete with challenges. Liz mentioned the difficulty of working with certain fabrics (tweed, velvet, some silks) and the technical skill required in some cases (when creating a slashed sleeve effect). However, finding solutions to these problems is clearly satisfying: ‘Yeah, you know, you just work out a way, fiddle around and, yeah’. Drawing on recent scholarship on creative activity and later life (Duhamel 2016, p. 1095), we see a clear manifestation of creativity in this ‘fiddling’ – a process through which an innovative solution is sought and eventually found. Thus, for Liz, dress is not simply about what is worn; rather, the making of clothes is an ongoing process of creation (when we arrived to interview her, her tailor’s dummy was swathed in fabric) and one that has connections with her other cultural activities – her poetry group and her interest in theatre. The value and overlap between all these forms of creative activity is identified by Liz in the following terms: ‘It makes you think in a different way’. In other words, creativity very widely defined may open up new perspectives and is associated with divergent ways of thinking (Csikszentmihalyi 1996). Bridget also made explicit links between the diverse creative strands of her life and her clothing practice. Pondering aspects of her biography – her marriage to an architect and her life experience of being always surrounded by painters, her current work as a gardener, the writing she has done about Fiji and her engagement with clothing – she notes: ‘[T]he artistic, the creative bit in me, that’s how it’s come out’. Through her unique style of dress, Bridget is able to show that she is a creative individual – not necessarily through the creation of anything tangible but certainly in terms of her ongoing expression of self and her attitude to life. These are important aspects of the creative impulse in later life (Duhamel 2016; Kastenbaum 1991). When talking about creativity, she memorably notes: ‘I’ve taken it in my life, probably. It’s my, just,

138 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila an aspect of myself that is shown, but it hasn’t been worked at’. The impression is that a creative approach to life is something that she has almost ingested, that it is ‘natural’ to her and hasn’t been worked at, and that her clothing is an extension of this – as she later clarifies: ‘It’s expressed … in terms of what you wear’. Although, initially, Hinda was reluctant to define herself as a creative individual, this shifted as she was prompted to consider ‘everyday’ forms of creativity that she engages in, including knitting, gardening, her interest in décor and colour, her life-long interest in antiques and her cultural activity. Indeed, all the women mentioned their interest in art – for Bridget, this extended to her fascination with a ‘sculptural’ style of dress – and for both Liz and Hinda theatregoing is an integral part of their lives. Their lives all gain meaning, they claim, by being creatively engaged, and their relationship with what they wear, how it is found/made and how it is worn, is part of the process. These claims reveal interesting things about the power of the narrative of the ‘creative individual’. Hinda in particular seems to have internalised the idea of the kind of person a ‘creative individual’ is supposed to be and therefore initially rejects this as a possible definition of herself. It is also noteworthy that all these women, despite their rebellion against some social norms, nevertheless conform to many such norms. Their creative activities are markedly gendered, and it is, indeed, possible to view their resistance as nonetheless an ‘appropriately female’ response to social expectations. They exercise their creativity in a limited space rather than claiming the spaces of (male) ‘genius’ (Nochlin 1971). The importance of colour was repeatedly mentioned in the interviews and was connected with both the haptic pleasure derived from clothing and its role in creative expression. Colours are of course ascribed different cultural meanings: historically, drab and muted colours have been associated with old age (Twigg 2013; Lövgren 2014). Both Liz and Bridget were keen to emphasise their continuing use of bright colours, so Liz noted the ‘fabulous’ reds and ‘beautiful’ greens in her preferred clothing and her ‘enjoyment’ of purples, and Bridget drew attention to her bold use of blocks of brilliant colour. This was in contrast with Hinda who tends to wear darker colours but who also emphasised her fascination with colour in other contexts (especially interior décor). Clothing offers these women a possibility for experimenting with colour which may be interpreted as a means of communicating aspects of the self – for Liz and Bridget it seems to be a claim for visibility and a certain defiance of age norms. For instance, as noted by Lövgren (2014, p. 162), red has long had cultural connotations of both youth and flamboyant sexuality. Yet red constitutes an important part of Liz and Bridget’s wardrobes. The associations between colour and the creative expression of self are outlined by Bridget: ‘It’s also to do with … I think … what suits your being, your aspect. Isn’t it? Colour’. Colour, then, for these women is not merely a question of matching appropriate shades together but is (or can be) an expression of a person’s being. Dress for these women may thus be regarded as a key marker of their creativity, signalling their continuing curiosity about the world, their concern to be part of it, and also constituting a practical and gender-appropriate way for them

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ 139 to be creative and purposeful. Dress offers opportunities for imaginative engagement with both social environment and quotidian life. It is a means of expression and socialisation, a way to negotiate age, and is full of possibilities that are related to finding and making items of clothing. At the same time, dress is a multi-faceted creative practice, combining visual, haptic, cognitive and emotional elements: thinking differently, doing differently, making differently.

The effect of time: restraint and resistance While creativity in dress was central to these women’s self-perception, their styles also expressed many more or less subtle forms of normative conformity. It is here that we discuss the limits to individual expression and creativity, the interstitial character of the social and material spaces that dress inhabits. Temporal restraints – current fashion, the ageing body, life situation – took various forms in our informants’ dress practices. Bridget and Liz were both sensitive to the ways in which the eras that they had lived through had influenced their dress: ‘Like now I wouldn’t wear a long dress to go down the street shopping. Whereas before, yeah’, said Bridget. ‘So that’s a cultural, that’s a, what is it? A, a time change in our – so that’s, that’s interesting isn’t it? Because that is fashion’. Although earlier in the interview Bridget denied that she is overtly affected by trends in fashion, making a sharp distinction between ‘fashion’ and ‘style’, here she acknowledges that cultural shifts have indeed influenced her clothing and what she considers appropriate to wear in certain situations. The inevitable link between dress and era is also noted by Liz, as she ponders the changing length of skirts: ‘Erm, so we’ve gone through some interesting periods. I mean, we’ve been up to here, down to there [in length of the hem]’. Later, discussing one of her favourite skirts, Liz explicitly locates it within a time-frame: ‘This is when skirts began to get long in the, erm, early 70s’. When asked to consider their relationship to their clothing, the women began to see it in general terms as symbolic of the times they have lived through and also specifically as a means of chronicling their own lives. So Bridget, when asked about whether her use of colour has altered over time (she now tends to wear bright blocks of plain colour), is prompted to reflect on the wider social context that might have also conditioned her choices: ‘It’s difficult to know, ‘cause in the hippy era, when my friend, who was very good at making clothes, he used to make all my clothes out of bedspreads and curtains and things. I mean those were more patterned, weren’t they, in that time?’ Whilst the women were prompted to examine some of the ways in which time periods have inevitably influenced their dress sense, they all simultaneously asserted that their engagement with their clothing has been characterised primarily by a sense of continuity, despite fluctuations in fashion. As Bridget observes about her shopping practices: ‘I can’t remember when I last went into a retail shop. … Everything I buy from, for my clothes and most of my furnishings, are from charity shops. And that’s been most of my life actually, so it isn’t a new thing’. Similarly, Hinda notes: ‘so I’ve always thought plain is

140 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila better. … even, you know, ‘cause those blouses I, the ones I said I travel with, erm, I’ve had them for years’. She also stressed that she has always worn comfortable, low heeled – but nonetheless stylish – shoes: ‘I mean, I never wore heels. Good thing, it’s paid off. And I have the same – I buy the shoes at the same place always’. Although Liz only started making her own clothing in her sixties, her longterm interest in dress was evident. As Bridget somewhat meditatively observed: ‘Maybe one does continue’. The insistence on continuity in their clothing seems linked with an emphasis on the maintenance of a stable identity – an inner self that is understood as constant despite the inevitability of ageing. Despite their resistance to age-appropriate dress and normative expectations, the women nonetheless did acknowledge that they had altered or adjusted their dress to some extent as a result of their ageing. This subtle process of adjustment perhaps reflects the women’s awareness that their clothes encode and reflect meanings about age and the need to some extent to be ‘age-ordered’ (Twigg 2015, p. 60). After all, deciding what to wear involves being alert to the external gaze and possible judgements associated with such gaze and as outlined by Twigg (2013, p. 53), there remains a pressure on older women to be ‘careful’ in sartorial terms. For instance, Hinda notes that her clothes have perhaps become ‘a little bit more sombre’ as she has aged, in contrast to both Liz and Bridget who emphasised their increasing love of colour. Perhaps most notably, Bridget reveals the almost unconscious process of age-adjustment as she queries her own assumptions in an iterative manner that is like an inner dialogue: Yeah, I mean certainly I wouldn’t wear a bikini now. Would I ever have done, though? I think I did once. Yes, I suppose there are just … I wouldn’t wear heels, but then I never have. Oh yes, I suppose I did when I was in my early twenties, yeah. Yeah, so I would – yes there are adjustments. Hmm. The societal requirement for older women to dress ‘appropriately’ has been discussed extensively elsewhere (Fairhurst 1998; Holland 2004; Twigg 2013), and Bridget’s reflections exemplify the way in which these norms are internalised. For Hinda, her ageing appearance (specifically, an increasingly lined face) has influenced her ability to wear jewellery: ‘But, I think as you get older your, it’s a mistake, you know, to be too fussy, with jewellery, because your whole face has got fussier, with wrinkles and things so you don’t really want to reflect it somehow’. Thus, clothing and accessories are carefully chosen so that they do not draw attention to specific features of the ageing body. The negative visceral responses that some ageing women express about their own facial appearances have been discussed elsewhere (Hurd-Clarke 2011) and may be interpreted as the internalisation of ageism. Whilst none of the women is using clothing to appear younger, neither do they want to wear clothes that draw attention to their age. There is a requirement for some (but crucially not too much) congruence between age and dress. Indeed, the extent to which dress forms part of a complex micro social order

‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’ 141 (Twigg 2013, p. 15) that requires careful negotiation is thus evident. This supports research by Klepp and Storm-Mathisen (2005; Storm-Mathisen and Klepp 2006) who have explored some of the ways in which dress can accompany women’s life transitions – the nuanced alterations in apparel and the complex interactions between dress, body and fashion that may occur with age. It is notable that none of the women expressed overtly negative feelings about the ageing of their bodies and the need to use clothing as a form of disguise. This is in contrast to some earlier research exploring the strategic use of clothing by older women (Clarke, Griffin andand Mahila 2009) and older women’s relationship to style and dress (Lövgren 2016). The women interviewed all resisted the idea that they wore clothing specifically designed for older women: Liz refuses to do so ‘because I don’t think you need to, er, kowtow to what is generally thought of as suitable for somebody in their seventies’. Nevertheless, they are all concerned to dress in ways that are age-appropriate, however idiosyncratically this is interpreted. Thus, although the women did not want to wear clothing that is identifiable as ‘suitable’ for older age groups, neither were they explicitly using dress as a means of contravening age norms (as discussed by Twigg 2013, 2015). The requirement to avoid age-stigmatised clothing and yet to be age-appropriate has been interpreted in Foucauldian terms as one of the ways in which ageing bodies are disciplined, ordered and made subject to cultural norms (Black et al. 2013). For the women that we interviewed, then, clothing seems to be inherently associated with temporality. The intrinsic relationship between clothing and time is evident at an individual and personal level as a means of marking life transitions whilst also demonstrating continuities and containing important elements of personal life-history. Clothing also represents epochal time due to the inevitable ongoing changes in trends and fashions. As Twigg notes (2013, p. 77), clothes embody time and also make time visible, yet this very temporality, in terms both of changing fashions and of changing bodies, is subject to social norms and conformity. Therefore, the creativity, joy and pleasure our informants expressed and very visibly experienced in respect of their fashion choices was always restrained by a number of factors. Similarly, as creativity is never purely individual (Becker 2004), creativity is also never fully free. Quite the contrary, in fact: everyday creativity in terms of dress practices is very much constrained by internalised narratives about what and who is creative in the first place and about how the female ageing body should be adorned and presented.

Conclusion It has been our goal in this chapter to explore some well-established narratives about creativity and old age and to investigate ways in which these might be challenged. It is clear that whilst the women we discuss here are resistant to certain social expectations related to their age, they nevertheless conform to levels of age-ordering and certain gendered ideas of appropriate creative activity: they exercise their creative acts, their life-long creative processes, within

142 Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Mari Almila constraints that impose limits and boundaries they either can or cannot cross. Creativity, we find, is an enormous resource for these women, whether in respect of dress or as it is expressed through other creative activities. These creative activities and practices are highly meaningful for the women: they are part of their ongoing process of self-actualisation and self-making, and they also give experiences of pleasure and enjoyment for these individuals. Yet their dress practices are also about managing the changing demands set upon them – the demand that they age appropriately, actively and creatively. The insights gleaned from these three older women have informed our understanding of creativity as something that should not solely be understood as ‘big-C’ creativity – that is, as a phenomenon associated with originality, genius and remarkable contributions to public life (Beghetto and Kaufmann 2007). Creativity cannot be captured within any single narrative, but is better understood as a distributed phenomenon that occurs across various domains of human experience (Csikszentmihalyi 1996). Above all, and as cogently outlined by Bellass et al. (2018), the importance of focussing on how creativity emerges, on the everyday contexts that may influence creative acts and creativity as a daily process, is evident in connection with the dress practices of these older women. Thus, within the context of this exploration, everyday creativity is an ongoing process and intentional practice that is social, relational and temporal. We consider dress to be a lens of analysis that can potentially illuminate a variety of forms of everyday creativity in later life. Dress is a unique practice in that everyone must be involved in it, although individuals engage with their dress with varying degrees of enthusiasm. While we have here discussed women who pay great attention to their dress and hold significant amounts of different kinds of capital (Bourdieu 1984) in terms of dress, it is clear that they all have great capacity to find desirable garments suitable for their financial situation, and they invest time in these activities. As outlined above, dress is a multi-faceted form of creative practice, bringing together the cognitive, visual, haptic, material and emotional. While this can be said of other forms of creative practice, too, dress in its everydayness is an important form of self-actualisation. It is, indeed, a way of telling one’s story, writing oneself in the public realm, a form a narrative practice that is re-created day after day.

Note 1 These names are pseudonyms, chosen by the interviewees.

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10 Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher

Introduction Visual images are omnipresent within our daily lives. Visual culture has gained prominence in the twenty-first century due to technological and digital developments, the prominence of consumer culture and an increase in and proliferation of contemporary media. In this context, the visual increasingly permeates significant aspects of our everyday lives, social identities, lifestyles, communications and societies (Pink 2001); it has therefore become ever more present within people’s social worlds as they grow older. The importance of the visual is further associated with the emergence of cultural gerontology (Twigg and Martin 2015a, 2015b). Whilst the Cultural Turn may have come quite late to ageing studies – due to a prior focus on medicine, social welfare and policy issues – in the last decade cultural perspectives have increasingly influenced the field, with new theorising, new methodologies and new subject areas evident (Twigg and Martin 2015a, 2015b). The focus on creativity and ageing, which is central to this volume, can be seen as a key dimension within these developments (Amigoni and McMullan 2015; de Medeiros 2017). For de Medeiros (2017), ‘creativity offers liberation from the framework of decline’ (p. 202) and not only challenges predominant biomedical discourses but also opens up new ways for people in mid-to-later life to perceive and experience their everyday lives. As the social sciences and the arts and humanities have gradually drawn together, a movement underpinned by the evidence of increasing quantities of interdisciplinary research, so fuller, richer and more diverse accounts have emerged of lived experience as people grow older (Twigg and Martin 2015a, 2015b). This has included the ways in which people in mid-to-later life meaningfully engage with being creative – understood as both doing creative work and being involved in cultural and participatory arts (de Medeiros 2017). Alongside these developments, there has been an increasing interest in novel and creative methodologies for understanding everyday lives (Kara 2015; Elliott and Culhane 2017; Mannay et al. 2017). This has included the increasing use of visual methods in ageing studies (Martin 2015; Pilcher et al. 2016). In this chapter we draw on data from the research study ‘Photographing Everyday

146 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher Life: Ageing, Lived Experiences, Time and Space’, which was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). In order to render the everyday lives of people in mid-to-later life visible, our project deployed visual methods (participant-produced photographic diaries) and in-depth interviews (photo elicitation). The focus of our project was to explore the significance of the ordinary and the mundane and to explore the meanings, lived experiences, practical activities, routines and social contexts in which people in mid-to-later life live their daily lives. Our approach aimed to make visible the ordinary and everyday as well as to explore the disruptions, vulnerabilities, complexities, fluidity and changing nature of ageing so that important insights might be gained and understandings enhanced. The visual images of daily life portrayed in the photographic diaries enabled us to see the lived experiences of people aged 50 years and over who have different daily routines. Although the focus of the research was not on direct creativity, it is apparent that within the participant-produced photographic diaries narratives of the relationship between creativity and everyday life are very evident. Recognising that definitions of creativity can be ambiguous and elusive (de Medeiros 2017), we aim in this chapter to highlight some of the ways in which people in mid-to-later life engage with creativity, and we seek to explore the use of a ‘creative’ visual research methodology as a means to elicit insights into the lived experiences of the quotidian. Specifically, we will explore the use of visual diaries as a creative means of making visible aspects of ageing, materiality and everyday life, the diverse ways in which participants visually represented and portrayed creativity in their daily lives, and the creative dimensions of dissemination that emerge when social science data are negotiated by way of the development of a participatory photographic exhibition, an art form more usually considered the terrain of the arts and humanities.

The project There has been an undoubted ‘creative’ turn in the social sciences, with more of the field’s researchers debating the merits of incorporating research methods drawn from the arts and humanities into the research process, primarily as a means of enabling participants to convey the meanings of their lived experience in a fuller sense. Mannay et al. (2017), for example, have utilised a method known as ‘sandboxing’ – building a sand ‘scene’, using a tray filled with sand and a set of objects – together with collaging and ‘thought bubbles’, as a means of enabling women to communicate meanings about their experiences during pregnancy. Yet it can be difficult for researchers to adopt such ‘creative’ methods within their research, particularly, as Kara notes (2015, p. 8), because ‘[t]raditional [social science] research methods have been around for so long, and are so pervasive, that they can seem to be “right” and “natural”’. A creative approach can involve ‘challenging accepted ways of seeing and doing things, defining problems as well as solving them’ (Kara 2015, p. 12). The creative layering of novel research methods can not only facilitate participation of

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 147 people who may not ordinarily engage with academic research (Pilcher et al. 2016) but can also facilitate new ways for participants to tell their stories in ways that are meaningful for them. Our ‘creative’ research project involved a diverse sample of 62 participants, who took photographs of their different daily routines to create a visual diary over the course of one week. These images were then explored within a photo elicitation interview. There 42 women and 20 men aged 50 years and over (actual age range 52 to 81 years) involved in the study, some of whom were retired, in paid employment, undertaking voluntary work or carrying out a mixture of these roles. We sampled participants in the South of England through a variety of organisations aimed at people in mid-to-later life as well as a range of workplaces and leisure centres and social groups. There were 4471 images in total produced by participants across the project; interviews lasted for an average of around 46 minutes. The first stage of the research involved a researcher meeting with a participant to explain more about the project, hand over a digital camera and give appropriate support and guidance on how to use the camera. Participants then took photographs that depicted aspects of their daily lives for one week. In this sense the photographs act as a ‘visual diary’ of a participant’s life and their daily routines across a single week. This was a participatory approach in the sense that participants were in control of the cameras and they could decide what to photograph (or not). The second stage of the research involved a researcher meeting the participants (usually in their home, office or a quiet meeting room) to engage in a photo-elicitation interview. The photographs were loaded onto a laptop computer at the start of each interview and were used as a resource to facilitate conversations. The photographs provided a reference point to focus and ‘prompt’ discussion during in-depth interviews in which we explored meanings, activities, roles, relationships, space and time, as well as participants’ reasons for taking the photographs and the context of image production. In our analysis of the intersection of the photographs and textual data, we utilised Atlas.ti software since it enables the incorporation and comparison of visual and textual data. We coded and thematically analysed both the photographs and textual data to explore aspects of daily lives, time and space. Ethical approval was gained from the Brunel University London College of Health and Life Sciences Ethics Committee. We addressed ethical concerns of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality. All interview participants were told of our research intentions, both verbally and in a participant information sheet, and gave their explicit written consent to partake in the study through a consent form. In order to minimise potential ethical problems with utilising photography as a method, participants were given the right to consent to the images being used for academic research (that is, for analysis only) and those for publication purposes and were also briefed to obtain consent, wherever possible, where other persons were present in an image they took. Participants were asked to sign photo reproduction rights forms to negotiate copyright of the images. All identifying information in relation to the participants has been

148 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher changed both in the images, and through the use of pseudonyms, to enhance anonymity and protection of privacy.

Photographing Everyday Lives The use of a creative method, participant-led photography and photo elicitation made visible experiences, perceptions and meanings of everyday life in mid-to-later life. Our analysis showed that five interconnected but distinct themes emerged: (1) Time and Routines, (2) Public and Private Space, (3) Health, Risk and the Body, (4) Connectivity and Relationships and (5) Work, Volunteering and Leisure. In particular, the research elicited insights into the daily lives of people from their own perspectives and allowed participants to reflect on their own routines, use of space, interactions with family and friends, and meanings associated with their daily activities. 1 Time and Routines Time was central to the routines of the participants in which certain activities can be seen to take place on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Daily practices were predominantly structured around the care of the body, safety and security of the home and caring for pets, as well as upon work and leisure routines and family activities. There were certain practices that occurred on a daily basis, often at the same time and in the same place. The morning routine was especially strongly established, with many photographic diaries starting with a hot drink, such as a cup of tea or coffee:

Figure 10.1 Visual Diary image

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 149 These daily activities were described as being similar over many years and, for many of the participants, continued through changes of work and retirement. However, changes to circumstances, such as divorce, moving home and widowhood tended to result in adjustments to the daily routines. Thus, James noted that we usually have a cup of tea in bed in the morning now we’ve retired but seeing as we always have coffee for breakfast … and we haven’t had a coffee machine [till now], and haven’t had one, and because we’re retired there’s not so much money. So we have to think about it more carefully, but that was one of our expenses a couple of years ago and it’s a very simple coffee machine, but it makes decent coffee and that’s an important part of the day or the week. The visual diaries highlighted changes and absences in everyday routines due to the absence of people and pets, changing work identities and variations in the spaces where the participant lived or spent their working and leisure time. The possibility of future absences was also reflected upon: for example, a photograph of a ‘for sale’ sign outside of her house indicated that one participant was considering moving to a new home. Weekly and monthly patterns were often structured around specific events – in particular, around leisure and work activities, engagement with social groups and family events. Through observing the photographs in a weekly diary format as a narrative construction of their everyday life, we were also able to see changes and disruptions in routines during a given week; participants sometimes also commented on how their routines that week were not ‘typical’ of what they would ordinarily be doing on a particular day. This would include organised day trips, visitors staying, special occasions like weddings, unexpected occurrences such as visits to the hospital, dentist and doctors, and noteworthy events associated with work, leisure and voluntary activities. 2 Public and Private Space The visual portrayal of public and private space was another significant element in the visual diaries, emphasising distinctions between private space (e.g. the home) and public space (e.g. work, social spaces, parks, shops). The portrayal of space was nuanced, interconnected and complex: for example, more photographs were present of ‘public’ areas in a home (e.g. lounge, kitchen) than private areas (e.g. bedroom); photographs of certain spaces reflected dimensions that are normatively constructed as both public and private (e.g. gardens, some work spaces); and there were multiple images of participants moving between public and private spaces (showing proximity to transport networks or regular patterns of travel). The amount of space and place available to participants was another significant element in the images and was interconnected with the narratives and

150 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher

Figure 10.2 Visual Diary image

meanings they associated with social relationships and everyday activities. For example, some participants who lived in relatively small accommodation such as one-bedroom flats and/or had limited access to a garden would describe how they felt both restricted within their place and would highlighted the ways in which space influenced their daily activities. One effect of limited space was the way objects changed in purpose as the participants underwent their daily activities: ROBERT: That’s the futon. INTERVIEWER: So doubling up as a little table, coffee table now. ROBERT: Yes. Well we slept on that for 28 years actually. I mean

we’ve never

had a bedroom. My son has a bedroom. The meaning and purpose of space and place can therefore be seen as contextual and the use of objects becomes in a certain way creative as required. Moreover, the wider environmental, physical and social context, such as the weather, the amount of local traffic at different times and the type of locality the participants lived in would substantially influence their routines and their engagement with activities. For example, Annabel described how she was reluctant to go out at weekends as: But no, I’d rather be out and about obviously, you know, sort of, but, but as I say, no, I hate weekends because we don’t go out at weekends.

ANNABEL:

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 151 INTERVIEWER: But why is that? ANNABEL: Very rarely. Traffic. As

soon as you go out of our road onto the main road, it’s bumper to bumper traffic. I live very near DIY stores. They’re also the rubbish, where people take their rubbish. The cars are absolutely bumper to bumper as soon as you get out. And then when you go out, you’ve got to pay, if you got to go somewhere, you’ve got to pay to park, you know, so mostly the weekends, no, we’re at home.

The locality and the type and amount of space that the participants could use and control therefore impacted on their daily lives and their sense of well-being and noticeably restricted their creative possibilities. The sensory and material experience of space was also significant and included aspects of the type of space, the atmosphere and ambience, for example, daily routines would be talked about in relation to the atmosphere and environment, that included heat and light: MARY: Out there, yes. In JUDITH: If the weather is

the conservatory. It’s nice and light. I watch the birds. nice, we have lunch outside.

Some participants were also noticeably uncomfortable when photographing certain areas and people, such as work places and colleagues, or taking photographs in some public places. They thus reflected a complex engagement with space, drawing and re-drawing the boundaries and the meanings of space, sometimes within the same interview or even within a discussion of the same photograph. This suggests that the embodied performance, the ‘doing’ of age and ageing, and the spaces and places themselves, together with images of these contexts, have no ‘fixed’ meaning (Massey 1994), but rather that meanings are made and re-made in the moments that spaces are both visually depicted and reflected upon. To this extent it could be claimed that the research captured the way in which the participants engaged in creative acts of meaning making and negotiation. 3 Health, Risk and the Body Health practices are performed, understood and embodied within the context of the daily lives of people as they grow older. The visual images of daily life portrayed in the photographic diaries enabled us to see the lived experiences of health, risk and the ageing body. It was evident that everyday objects and technologies were portrayed in the photographs to signify the dimensions of the participants’ narratives of health, well-being and risk. The objects and technologies represented in the images also illustrated the participants’ embodied performances of habitual and daily health practices. The visual images were further explored and reflected upon during the photo-elicitation interviews as the participants talked about their everyday health practices. The analysis highlighted the role of objects and of technologies associated with food practices and the ways in which the participants would draw on wider discourses of health promotion and risk in their narratives. This includes,

152 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher

Figure 10.3 Visual Diary image

for example, the material and visual portrayal of diets as ‘healthy’. Thomas noted his breakfast choices as follows: Yes. Trying to show the health option. I always have orange juice and I always have fruit on the breakfast cereal of some description or another. You know, that’s what happens to be on today, which was grapes and there’s also a couple of little tablets … . Yes. One’s a vitamin and one’s sort of waterworks tablets which is a prevention from prostate.

THOMAS:

The embodied performance and visual representations of being ‘active’ as people grow older is signified by everyday objects such as shoes, clothes and sports equipment. The incorporation of objects and technologies into routine health practices of daily life, such as the taking of medication and supplements as well as bodily self-surveillance techniques, for example, in relation to bodily weight and to chronic conditions formed important contributions to the diaries. Through these details, important narratives of health and well-being were elicited from the everyday objects and technologies represented. These narratives further drew on and connected to wider discourses of health promotion, risk and activity and thus also of opportunity. The value of the project lies in the recognition of the value of creative practice in opening up routines, meanings and connections between practices that ‘frailty’ narratives may keep separate.

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 153 4 Connectivity and Relationships Exploring the routines, meanings and patterns that underpin everyday life has also enabled us to make visible how people build, maintain and experience their social and virtual connections. The importance of connectivity, of connections with family, partners, friends and the locality, as well as wider inter/ national communities was apparent: indeed, this connectivity, in blending technology, routine and opportunity, emerged as a source of forms of creativity. These connections were maintained or created virtually (social networking, emails, Skype) and in shared space and/or time (telephone, living together, visits) and were interspersed throughout the daily lives of the participants. There was also an increase in the amount and frequency of digital and networked technologies that influenced the context of social relationships and meanings and experiences of time and space. This included the use of Skype, emails and texts as well as computers, laptops, smart phones and tablets, each of which could become a source of reflection – as the accounts of Hannah and Dorothy suggest: And also I realised how much the thread of the day, because I sort of observed you know, for a week before of the kind of, sort of life, it was quite a reflective thing really to see what my week was. And I realised how much of it also revolved round the computer, which we’ve set up upstairs. We have a kind of bedroom office in terms of e-mailing and with the phone next to it, keeping in touch with people. So I suppose somewhere in the day I’d spend at least an hour on the computer, either sending or replying to e-mails or looking up e-mails and there’s a great sort of teetering pile of stuff that is either to be read or dealt with. DOROTHY: I use Skype quite a lot to keep in touch with my family. One of my sons lives in Qatar and they don’t have a phone line or postal service, so we talk on Skype, or I talk to my grandchildren who live in England: I can also use the video with them and see them on the screen. HANNAH:

Social connectivity and relationships for the participants involves many varied and diverse activities, including regular coffee mornings with neighbours, talking on the telephone, walking clubs, exercise classes, dog walking in the locality, participating in social groups, voluntary work and sharing meals: Every month we go for lunch with U3A [University of the Third Age] … . Different places. The, the lunch club [um] organises and susses the places out and then we just go and enjoy the meal and good company. That’s it, some more people from the lunch. That’s me having lunch and a glass of wine, I hasten to add, with the lunch. Because I went into Abingdon on the bus. INTERVIEWER: So it looks like you quite enjoy going out for meals? IRENE: I do. Yes. It’s nice to have company. When you live on your own its good to have company. To eat with someone else instead of eating on your own. IRENE:

154 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher

Figure 10.4 Visual Diary image

Despite the increase in digital technologies, the significance of embodied copresence, of being in the same shared space and time was prominent within the visual diaries: the meaning of being in immediate and direct connection with others as we grow older cannot be underestimated. 5 Work, Volunteering and Leisure The ways in which work (paid and unpaid), leisure and volunteering activities were structured in relation to the use of participants’ time and space, their daily routines and their social identities was significant. The momentum of the visual diaries would depend on whether the participant’s day involved paid work outside the home, working at home, volunteering roles and/or leisure activities. The boundaries around work and leisure appeared fluid, and meanings were often dependent on context that sometimes changed and shifted across the visual diaries or even in relation to the same photograph. For example, an activity such as gardening had many meanings and contexts that ranged from a form of creativity, blending leisure and the sculpting of beauty that could be portrayed as fun and enjoyable. At the same time, gardening could also be viewed as hard ‘work’ in which tasks were described as momentous and arduous, and as a long-term project that needed skill and planning. For other participants, gardening was viewed as a volunteering activity when it takes place within specified social spaces, such as for a local church or local

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 155

Figure 10.5 Visual Diary image

charity, and at times as part of paid employment if the participant was also remunerated for their gardening. Time, space and context, and the enjoyment (or not) of the task, were therefore often pivotal in grounding meanings for participants in respect to their work, leisure and volunteering routines. Consequently, the research points to the way in which an activity such as gardening can be made meaningful in relation to the spectrum of bases that the concept of ‘creativity’ traverses – from aesthetic pleasure to hard work and discipline to the service of others. Aspects of creativity also came to the forefront in relation to work, volunteering and leisure. Many participants described creative activities as part of their daily lives that included sewing, embroidery, knitting, cooking, music, art, gardening, dance, writing and photography. Some of these activities were undertaken alone within the home and garden, with the indication of the activity often represented in the visual diaries by objects and technologies, such as a piano, guitar, a piece of embroidery, art materials, baking or a knitting pattern. At the same time these creative activities were negotiated in the wider context of daily routines and relationships, as for instance Annabel attests: Yes, and I do a bit of knitting but he does get involved, because he’s a big part of my life obviously, my partner. I’m doing a bit of knitting, but I don’t get on there very quick … on very quick with what I’m doing because he’s a chatterbox, and then I lose concentration and then I get fed up and put me wool down again [laughs].

156 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher

Figure 10.6 Visual Diary image

The purpose of such creative activities was sometimes as part of voluntary work, including, for example, charity sales, objects created or performances given for charities or local social groups, local attractions, participating in social groups, such as art and photography groups and as part of the activities of the local church. These might involve making and decorating cakes, flower arranging, plant sales, gardening, photography and sewing and knitting and were done on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. For a couple of the participants, creativity was also competitive, as cakes and plants were created to be judged in a local show. The pleasure and engagement of these creative activities were highlighted and at times were significant to the participants’ social engagement with the community. Many participants also engaged in the creative arts in the role of the audience or observer; this included visits to the theatre, cinema, art galleries and historical areas, in which participants engaged with creative activities for sociality, pleasure and connectivity.

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life This dimension of our research has the potential to contribute to the emerging field of what Darren Henley has defined as ‘everyday creativity’ (Henley 2018, p. 73). This field, according to researchers at Harvard Business School, records and analyses the cumulative effect of everyday reflection, decision- and meaning-making that can contribute innovative solutions to problems and challenges

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 157 identified by communities (Amabile 2017) – in this instance, communities of older people. Our research, for which the participants created a visual diary, could be described as a process of creativity in the sense that the participants were given cameras and could make decisions about what to photograph (or not) about their everyday lives and therefore had control and creative freedom within the research process. It became evident that in the first 10 photographs of each visual diary a representation of a significant dimension of the participant’s own narrative and identity was being constructed and portrayed by way of a certain object or book of interest, a representation of an activity, a portrayal of being active and healthy, the role of being a parent or grandparent or a dimension of their paid or voluntary work. We have shown in a previous article how the participants found the creative nature of the research enjoyable and novel as well as appreciating the opportunity to reflect on the meanings of their everyday life and on issues of representation (see Pilcher et al. 2016). The research process therefore enabled the participants to be creative in constructing their own narrative, meaning and identity. The focus of the research was on everyday life, and our research has highlighted important aspects of creativity that come to the forefront when the focus of the analysis is on the routinized, the ordinary and mundane in daily life. As we have shown in this chapter, participants engaged with many creative activities as part of their daily lives, activities that were carried out alone or in social groups, at home or in the community and by taking opportunities to engage in the creative arts both locally and nationally. Creativity was, however, also interspersed with and integral to the daily and routine activities within the visual diaries. This included how the home and garden was presented, images of objects, the flowers and plants, the presentation of food and objects at mealtimes, the use of digital technologies to engage with arts and the colour coding used in a diary. Everyday objects and technologies were therefore central to daily routines of creativity. Our focus on creativity and the use of creative methods has foregrounded certain dimensions of ageing, materiality and embodiment in everyday life. The use of visual diaries has portrayed the role of ‘stuff’, ‘things’, dress, possessions, technologies, spaces and environments in the experiences and perceptions of ageing and everyday life (cf. Katz 2018). Participants negotiated and mediated their ageing identities and bodies around everyday objects and technologies within the context of daily routines and bodily practices. Discourses of creativity of various kinds were incorporated into embodied performances, activities of bodywork (cf. Gimlin 2007), social relationships and in everyday objects and technologies within habitual mundane practices. These material and visual narratives of creativity incorporated the senses, the atmosphere and the environment. In this context, the connection of materiality and the visual has offered novel perspectives through which to explore the embodied lives of older people, highlighting interconnections between the corporeality of ageing bodies and the socio-cultural and material context in the everyday lives of people as they grow older.

158 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher A key focus for our research is the promotion of impact and the enhancement of public engagement by communicating our research findings to multiple and diverse audiences. Towards the end of our project, we created and disseminated our key findings via an interactive photographic exhibition, in which we created a series of installations, mosaics, photographic images and digitised displays with the aim of portraying our research findings on daily life in an interactive, creative and engaging way. We also collected ideas, images, insights and feedback from audiences who interacted with the exhibition. The photographic exhibition has since been presented at a wide range of venues including Brunel University London, Uxbridge Library and the British Library and at a number of ageing and social science conferences. The use of a creative research process appears to be an effective way to enhance public engagement and the visibility of social science data via the methods of the arts and humanities. The exhibition could be described as a way to engage with and communicate with our participants who have spent time and energy and have contributed to social science research. Finally, the photographic diaries resulted in a database of visual images created by people in mid-to-later life that reflect the mundane, daily and ordinary lives of people as they grow older, living everyday lives that are nonetheless meaningful and creative, especially when they might be seen to be specifically resisting the gendered stereotypes that have come to ‘speak for’ the ageing body.

Figure 10.7 Photographing Everyday Life Exhibition (June 2013, Brunel University, London)

Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 159

Figure 10.8 Photographing Everyday Life Exhibition (June 2013, Brunel University, London)

Concluding remarks The emergence of cultural gerontology has facilitated novel and creative methods, a focus on meaning and lived experiences and a move away from predominant biomedical discourses of decline. In this context, our research has allowed us to explore the narratives and meanings of everyday life and to reveal the rhythms, the uses of time and space and the patterns that underlie the habitual and routinised everyday lives of people in mid-to-later life. In particular, we have been able to highlight the significance of creativity in the course of daily life. The use of a creative method has enabled us to visualise, reveal and portray insights into the everyday lives of people as they grow older. The meanings and experiences of creativity were moreover interspersed throughout the photographic diaries of the participants by way of the very everydayness of daily life. The interconnections of creativity, embodiment and the sensate and material nature of everyday life were also shown. In this context, our research has revealed the possibilities, nuances and complexities of creativity that form an ongoing and continual process in mid-to-later life. A focus on creativity has moreover led to narratives of everyday that show the potential and possibilities available to people in mid-to-later life.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council / ESRC [grant number RES-061-25-0459] in the United

160 Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher Kingdom. We would like to thank our research participants for the generosity of their extensive time taken to participate in this research. Pseudonyms are given in this paper. Thank you also to our advisory group for their support and guidance to Dr Veronika Williams, who worked on earlier parts of the project, and to Dr Christina Silver for her invaluable technical and analytical support.

Copyright of visual images Copyright for all the visual images published in this paper belongs to Dr Wendy Martin, Brunel University London, UK. Participants have provided written permission that the visual images can be published.

References Amabile, T. (2017) In pursuit of everyday creativity. Harvard Business School: Working Papers, 18–002: 1–7. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=52919. Amigoni, D. and G. McMullan (2015) ‘Late style’ and late-life creativity. In J. Twigg and W. Martin (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. London: Routledge. de Medeiros, K. (2017) The Short Guide to Aging and Gerontology. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Elliott, D. and D. Culhane (Eds) (2017) A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gimlin, D. (2007) What is ‘body work’? A review of the literature. Sociology Compass 1 (1): 353–370. Henley, D. (2018) Creativity: Why it Matters. London: Elliott and Thompson. Kara, H. (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Katz, S. (Ed.) (2018) Ageing in Everyday Life. Materialities and Embodiments. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Mannay, D., J. Creaghan, D. Gallagher, R. Marzella, S. Mason, M. Morgan and A. Grant (2017) Negotiating closed doors and constraining deadlines: The potential of visual ethnography to effectually explore spaces of motherhood and mothering. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, online ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0891241617744858. Martin, W. (2015) Visual methods in ageing research. In J. Twigg and W. Martin (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (1994) Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pilcher, K., W. Martin and V. Williams (2016) Issues of collaboration, representation, meaning and emotions: Utilising participant-led visual diaries to capture the everyday lives of people in mid to later life. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 19 (6): 677–692. Pink, S. (2001) Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage. Twigg, J. (2000) Bathing: The Body and Community Care. London: Routledge. Twigg, J. and W. Martin (2015a) The challenge of cultural gerontology. The Gerontologist 55(3): 353–359. Twigg, J. and W. Martin, W. (Eds) (2015b) Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. London: Routledge.

11 Self, civic engagement and late-life creativity Angela Glendenning

The gods, old as night, don’t trouble us. Poor weeping Venus! Her pubic hairs are grey, and her magic love girdle has lost its spring. Neptune wonders where he put his trident. Mars is gaga – illusory vultures on the wing. Pluto exhumed, blinks. My kind of world, he thinks. Kidnapping and rape, like my Front Page exploits adroitly brutal – but he looks out of sorts when other unmanned gods shake their heads tut tut, respond boastingly, boringly anecdotal. Diana has done a bunk, fearing astronauts. Saturn, Time on his hands, stares at nothing and nothing stares back. Glum Bacchus talks ad nauseam of cirrhosis and small bald Cupid, fiddling with arrows, can’t recall which side the heart is. All the gods have become enfeebled, Mere playthings for poets. Few, doze or daft, frolic on Parnassian clover. True, sometimes summer light lies in a room – but only a bearded profile in a cloud floats over.

‘The Old Gods’, by Dannie Abse

In 1975 Keele University’s Department of Adult Education and the Beth Johnson Foundation collaborated on series of 40 weekend inter-disciplinary conferences on the quality of life of older people. I must have attended the first conference because I have never forgotten an anecdote told by Sidney Jones. It was about a woman of seventy-plus who experienced a late and totally unexpected flowering as an art metal worker. I have been looking forward ever since to discover for myself some latent talent for creativity…. I am still waiting! Another recollection is a weekend conference for American and English social workers. By way of introducing ourselves, we were invited to speak about our names. One American disliked his name because it was a slave name; another was called ‘John,’ which is a slang word for lavatory; another wanted to retrieve a family name which had been jettisoned when his father was newly

162 Angela Glendenning arrived in America from Eastern Europe. Until then I had not realized how fortunate I am to feel at home with my name, my family and my birth county of Devon. I have, however, always carried a sense of inferiority about my lack of what is commonly regarded as creativity. I have no hobbies. I cannot sew, knit, paint, act, make music or do crafts. What I am good at is going an extra mile to support the underdog, the neglected, the damaged and the deprived and for 25 years I worked with offenders. When I retired my team gave me a T-shirt. On the front it read ‘Let’s Get On’ and on the back, ‘And Go the Second Mile’. Apparently this was what I invariably said at the end of a team meeting. A memory which resonates is a course I attended in the 1970s on race relations. At the plenary session I asked, ‘But what can I do?’, and the lecturer replied, ‘Stay in the struggle, Angela. Stay in the struggle’. But where was it? Only later did I discover that the struggle was on my doorstep in Stoke-onTrent, and on my retirement my main pre-occupation became and remains race relations, and I discovered the richness of relationships with Muslims from a Pakistani and Bangladeshi and Indian background, with Sikhs and Afro-Caribbeans and, more recently, with our African newcomers, many of whom are asylum seekers, and folk from the Middle East. I became very involved with the Race Relations Council and for eight years I chaired a North Staffordshire multiagency partnership concerning racist incidents and crime and advocacy and support for victims. The partnership has now morphed into ‘Challenge North Staffs’ which deals with hate crime across the spectrum of race, gender, disability, religion and age. When I was approaching 70 my husband, Frank, suffered a series of strokes and became seriously incapacitated. I had ample time to prepare for his dying but I found myself unprepared for life without him. I was plodding along feeling pretty unsure of myself when my niece Sarah rang to tell me that she needed a kidney transplant. I had no hesitation in saying ‘Have one of mine’. A couple of months later I had no need to think about how I should live my life. I was going up and down to London for various tests to assess our compatibility, and in due course I found myself in hospital happy that I had been given this opportunity to offer Sarah a new lease of life. Most kidney transplants are successful. Ours belly flopped within the first 48 hours. Some two weeks after the failed operation, I returned home on a dreary January day wondering what to do with this experience. It didn’t feel as if my life could continue as if nothing had happened. This was when my Just 70 Challenge was born. I decided to raise money to support the North Staffordshire Kidney Patients Association and the Staffordshire Transplant Association and to buy a kidney dialysis machine for the Salma Dialysis Centre in Khartoum in Sudan. I had visited the Centre with a young Sudanese registrar who looked after Frank shortly before he died. They shared an interest in the quality of life of older people and Khalid supported me when Frank died and this was a way of repaying his kindness.

Self, civic engagement, late life creativity 163 My seven challenges involved running seven miles, walking seventy miles, swimming a mile, canoeing seven miles, cycling seventy miles, horse riding for seven miles and climbing seven tors – all within seven weeks so that they wouldn’t drag on. Just in case, I undertook some reserve challenges which included abseiling, wing walking, and swimming with sharks and in the Serpentine, and I took part in the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. In the course of the year I raised £30,000 and I was able to send two dialysis machines to the Salma Dialysis Centre because I got a good discount for paying cash! I had determined when Frank died to go through any door which was even a chink open and during my Just 70 year I enjoyed a host of new experiences and met a great variety of people. I got to know the founder and CEO of the African Children’s Educational Trust, and I have visited the trust in northern Ethiopia three times – and I was delighted to accept an invitation to become an honorary patron. A common thread running through all these endeavours is to build bridges and find pathways to enable people of different ethnicities to meet, to get to know one another and to feel comfortable together. In 2008 I was North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Citizen of the Year and I attended a reception at 10 Downing Street to celebrate Older People’s Day and a Queen’s Garden Party, an enormously enjoyable event for a committed republican even on the wettest day of the year! I’ve recently visited Iran twice, and last February I planted olive trees in Palestine to support farmers losing their land to the Israeli military occupation. On my return, I launched a North Staffordshire Olive Tree Campaign, and in October I will return to the West Bank to pick olives. Meanwhile, in the absence of children, I can boast of special friends from Rwanda and Palestine who keep tracks with how I am, and currently I am happy to offer accommodation to an asylum seeker from Congo who is without any means of support. But that’s another story. I also offer accommodation to actors from the New Vic Theatre, and their rent goes into what I call my charity kitty. I remain somewhat at a loss to know how I will pass the time when my energy wanes but I keep faith that there will still be doors ajar that I can push open. Researchers at the University of Essex concluded that neighbourhoods where there are thriving voluntary organisations have less crime, better schools and happier healthier people. To quote: ‘It seems that when we focus on the needs of others, we also reap benefits ourselves. It is a virtuous circle. Happier communities lead to more voluntary work which leads to happier communities’. For me, this is what it means to me to be creative and it re-affirms my identity and renews my commitment. What about Sarah? Two years ago she received a kidney from her friend Sue, and although a transplant patient is never completely out of the woods Sarah now lives a full life.

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Part IV

Narrating dementia

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12 A critical narrative on late-life creativity and dementia Integrating citizenship, embodiment and relationality Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich Introduction Mrs. Rosen [the pianist] started playing the piano once all of the residents were settled. Edna was singing along very loudly, holding onto a rolled up magazine and using it to hit the arm of her chair to the beat of the music. Florence was singing along – not the words but she was perfectly in tune singing ‘La, la, la’. Anna was there and she was tapping her fingers on her walker. Frances was tapping her hands in unison on her lap, swaying from one side of the chair to the other. She raised her chin and burrowed her eyebrows as she struggled to reach the high notes. Molly rested her elbows on the arms of her wheelchair and orchestrated the music with an imaginary baton. Dody was sitting forward in her seat, her knees were swaying in unison and she was clapping her hands to the music. Jacob closed his eyes and tilted his head from side to side as he listened to the music. Sam clapped his hands and tapped his feet on the pedals of his wheelchair. Suddenly Edna got up and asked Florence, who was seated next to her, to dance. Florence squinted her face and said ‘Nah’. Edna then asked Ethel who was seated just next to Florence and she too said ‘No’. With her legs already moving to the music Edna waved her hands in the air as she shuffled from side to side without a partner. A male health care practitioner quickly joined her on the dance floor. Their hands clasped and Edna immediately released her right hand and twirled around under his arm, returning to the position of facing him. They held hands and moved in towards each other (almost touching chests), pushing their arms out to the side, and then pulling away from each other, still holding hands and allowing their arms to stretch out in front of them. Edna also swung her hips from side to side, accentuating the movement by turning her right toe inward as she swung her right hip and then the same with her left side. They made eye contact with each other and they smiled and laughed as they danced.

This ethnographic observation of residents of a nursing home attending a piano concert is rich with expressions of their creativity. Yet, when we consider conventional narratives of creativity, song and dance, the kind expressed here would not be included because of the narrowness with which these narratives construct creativity. This is particularly concerning given that reports of creativity in dementia suggest that it is not a rare phenomenon (Kontos 2003;

168 Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich Cuddy and Duffin 2005; Oppenheimer 2005; Basting 2009; Kontos and Grigorovich 2018; Kontos and Grigorovich submitted). For example, consider Henry Dryer, whose musical engagement features in the documentary ‘Alive Inside’ (Rossato-Bennett 2012). Henry resides in a long-term care home. He rarely speaks more than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and is observed by staff as spending most of his days slumped over the tray attached to his wheelchair with his arms folded. A health care practitioner approaches Henry with headphones attached to an iPod with his favourite music. When Henry hears the music he begins to shuffle his feet, rocks his folded arms back and forth with his eyes open wide; he is totally animated by the music. Once the headphones are removed his animation does not cease. He is quite voluble; when asked what his favourite music was when he was young, he responds ‘Cab Calloway’ and breaks into Calloway-style scat talking. This is followed by a soulful rendition of his favourite Calloway song, ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’. Given the wide reports of creativity in the context of dementia, it is curious that this phenomenon has been overlooked in scholarly writing on late style. Our purpose here is to challenge conventional narratives of late-life creativity. A definition of the very phenomenon we wish to redefine seems fitting here. We conceptualize creativity as a relational process of aesthetic self-expression (e. g. dance, song, painting) that exists between individuals and the world. It need not exceed ‘normal’ capabilities and life-situations, and it can manifest as mundane aesthetic expressions such as those captured in the ethnographic observation above. Finally, creativity for us does not hinge on cognitive processes and thus is a capability that inheres in persons living with dementia. This conceptualization is notably different from the two grand and opposing scholarly narratives of late style. The first is that late style is a ‘rupture’ in either style or content signaling ‘liberating personal renewal’ (Hutcheon and Hutcheon 2012). The second is that of continuity of style, which is interpreted either as an artist ‘being in the fullness of his [sic] powers’ and thus representing a final unifying synthesis of a career (e.g. the ‘swan song’) or as incapability of innovation at a later stage in life (Hutcheon and Hutcheon 2012). As Hutcheon and Hutcheon have argued (2012), late style is less a manifestation of artistic creativity than it is a ‘discursive product of art history’. Furthermore, the construction of late style is an oversimplified and universalizing conception of late-life creativity that assumes a similarity between older artists that transcends the boundaries of culture, location and chronology (Hutcheon and Hutcheon 2012). Hutcheon and Hutcheon further critique the concept of late style for its exclusive focus on the works of élite male professional artists and its consequent neglect of creativity in the context of everyday life, as well as in the context of illness and/or disability. Thus we concur with Amigoni and McMullan (2015) that there is a need to broaden the ‘genius’ narrative of latelife creativity by way of explorations of a wider range of older adults across a broader set of styles and modes of expression. To these critiques we add a further limitation of narratives of late style – the dominance of cognitive science as an explanatory mechanism of creativity,

Late-life creativity and dementia: narrative

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which effectively elides consideration of how the body itself can be a source of creativity (Kontos 2003, 2012a), something of particular importance in the context of dementia where the body becomes the primary means for engaging with the world (Kontos 2004, 2012b, 2012a). This elision has concerning implications not only for understanding late-life creativity but supporting it in the context of dementia care. Hence, there is a pressing need for cross-disciplinary engagement between late style narratives, embodiment and dementia, citizenship/human rights and ethics. Our aim in this chapter is to initiate this engagement by exploring the implications of a relational model of citizenship for understanding and supporting creativity in the context of dementia, specifically engagement with music and dance.

The turn to the arts in dementia care The dominant model of dementia care is the ‘acute cure’ model of biomedicine (Good 1994), which emphasizes pharmacological treatment of the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia. In this approach, the person living with dementia is reduced to his/her neuropathology (Behuniak 2011; Cuijpers and van Lente 2015), and care practices are restricted to attending to bodily needs within a unidirectional, provider-as-expert model of care (Nolan et al. 2002; Daly and Szebehely 2012). As a result, dementia care is reduced to a concern with attending to basic bodily needs and the management of ‘challenging behaviours’ using psychotropic medication (Daly and Szebehely 2012; Lucas et al. 2014). Persons living with dementia are presumed to be incapable of purposeful and meaningful communication and the pursuit of life-enhancing relationships and activities (Dupuis et al. 2012; Kontos 2012a; Mitchell et al. 2013). This is evident when we consider the aesthetic deprivation in long-term care homes (National Care Forum 2011; Moss and O’Neill 2014), where there are very few opportunities to pursue meaningful activities and relationships. The medical culture of dementia care is related to a particular cultural imaginary (Gatens 1996) or to a collective representation of dementia as a total erasure of self (Herskovitz 1995; Vidal 2009; Katz 2013; Kontos and Martin 2013). The construction of persons with dementia as ‘unagentic’ and ‘failed’ ageing subjects is itself part of a larger stigmatizing ‘decline narrative’ (Gullette 1997, 2004) that is supported by the biomedicalisation of aging. This imaginary is evident in the metaphors and images in policy and popular culture that represent dementia as ‘the funeral without end’, ‘the loss of self’ or ‘a living death’ (Behuniak 2011; Kontos 2012a; Mitchell et al. 2013). Overreliance on medication in dementia care has received international critique as there is mounting evidence that use of psychotropic medications is associated with significant harm and deleterious consequences (Schneider et al. 2006; Simoni-Wastila et al. 2009). Further, this model of care overlooks how the actions of persons living with dementia are not always symptomatic of dementia itself but may instead indicate purposeful and meaningful communication, such as a response to pain or over-stimulation (Kitwood 1997;

170 Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich Kovach et al. 2006; Rader et al. 2006). Non-pharmacological approaches are now recommended as an alternative to psychotropic medication (Moniz-Cook et al. 2001; Fossey et al. 2006). The standard non-pharmacological approach is behavioural therapy, which entails identifying behavioural ‘triggers’ and modifying care plans accordingly. For example, rather than forced showering that can cause distress, in-bed towel baths are introduced as an alternative (Douglas et al. 2004; Rader et al. 2006). Arts-based programmes have also been adopted as a non-pharmacological means to improve ‘behaviour’, cognition and emotional states (Hannemann 2006; Ehresman 2014; Petrovsky et al. 2015). The positive impact of such programmes has been demonstrated in research (Cohen-Mansfield et al. 2007; Beard 2011; Price and Tinker 2014). The instrumental use of the arts to generate social and behavioural changes (Sylvester 1996; Hannemann 2006) and improve ‘hedonic’ conceptions of quality of life (Jennings 2009, p. 425) is now a cornerstone of dementia care. Arts-based programmes in long-term care are designed and implemented as ‘maintenance entertainment’, that is, to ‘keep people happy’, but it has been noted that too often ‘there is not a fresh engagement that happens each time that allows for surprise’ (Basting 2009, p. 105). Consequently arts-based programmes fail to be creatively challenging (Basting 2009; de Medeiros and Basting 2013). This sets a very low ethical standard for dementia care since it fails to cultivate a relational environment that fully supports the capacity of individuals living with dementia for creativity, imagination and other positive human potentialities (Grigorovich and Kontos 2016; Kontos et al. 2016; Miller and Kontos 2016; Kontos et al. 2017; Kontos and Grigorovich 2018; Kontos and Grigorovich submitted). Other benefits of engaging in artistic activities have been identified, including empowerment, communication and meaningful self-expression, and sociability (de Medeiros and Basting 2013; Price and Tinker 2014; Guzmán et al. 2016b; Hill 2016). However, these are typically considered side benefits and not the primary intention of implementing arts programmes (de Medeiros and Basting 2013; DeNora and Ansdell 2014; Price and Tinker 2014; Hill 2016). Neither research nor practice addresses the value of creativity in and of itself; the enrichment that it brings to human lives is obscured by treating the Arts exclusively as a means to a therapeutic end (i.e. improve ‘behaviour’, cognition, and emotional states). The consequence of the narrow and instrumental use of the arts in dementia care is that it has ‘crystallised the “frailties” of physical and cognitive impairment into an “unsuccessful” or “failed” late life’ (Grenier et al. 2017, p. 319). That is, despite the enormous emancipatory power of the arts, their restriction to being a prescribed therapeutic effectively reinforces the view that people with dementia have ‘less’ agency, with the implication that their lives are both marginal to society and less valued. Music therapy is the most common form of art therapy employed in longterm care (Beard 2011; Petrovsky et al. 2015). Definitions of music therapy vary, and such programmes range widely from passive forms of musical engagement (e.g. listening to recorded or live music) to programmes that

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involve participants in singing or playing of instruments. Common music therapy programmes are sing-alongs to music selected by a music therapist with opportunity for participants to listen to music, to sing and to engage with musical instruments such as egg shakers and tambourines (Ray and Mittelman 2015). According to the World Federation of Music Therapy, such programmes aim to ‘optimize … quality of life and improve … physical, social, communicative, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual health and wellbeing’ (World Federation of Music Therapy 2011).Their emphasis in the context of dementia care is the application of music as a ‘treatment’ to ameliorate ‘emotional, behavioural, social or cognitive (e.g. thinking and remembering) pro. blems’ (Vasionyte and Madison 2013; Chang et al. 2015; van der Steen et al. 2017). The ultimate goal of research on music and dementia is for music therapy to achieve the status of evidence-based medicine (Ahn and Ashida 2012). Dance is similarly implemented in long-term care homes as a therapeutic, specifically in that it combines the physical benefits of exercise with psychosocial therapeutic benefits. For example, dance therapy in the United States and dance movement psychotherapy in the United Kingdom use dance as a psychotherapeutic and rehabilitative treatment modality for individuals with a range of conditions, especially those for whom verbal communication is difficult (Earhart 2009; Franco et al. 2016; Payne et al. 2016; Karkou and Meekums 2017). Dance therapists interweave dance and psychotherapy based on the premise that movement reflects patterns of cognitive reflection and emotion and that remediating posture or autonomic nervous system activity will influence neurological processes thought to be implicated in mood, perception, sensory experience, cognition and well-being (Payne et al. 2016; Karkou and Meekums 2017). Dance therapy has been found to significantly improve neuropsychiatric symptoms and cognitive and physical functioning of persons living with dementia (Ho et al. 2015; Guzmán et al. 2016a). Dominant approaches to understanding creative engagement in music and dance in the context of life with dementia have focused on cortical structures and neural substrates as the generative mechanism of such creativity (Hsieh et al. 2011; Batson et al. 2012; Cuddy et al. 2015; Kshtriya et al. 2015; Peck et al. 2016; Karkou and Meekums 2017). The implicit assumption is that creativity is based on cognitive abilities and processes including object recognition and working memory (Jung et al. 2010; Shi et al. 2017). For example, understandings of musicality and dementia hinge on the ‘cortical sparing’ theory, wherein the neural mechanisms related to such creativity are thought to be less impaired or spared by neurodegeneration (Cuddy and Duffin 2005; Earhart 2009; Hsieh et al. 2011; Johnson et al. 2011; Graham et al. 2013; Kshtriya et al. 2015). Even with dance, which is a highly embodied form of creative expression, there is a movement towards cognitive science and cognitive and neural processes as an explanatory framework (Batson et al. 2012; Fischman 2016; Payne et al. 2016; Müller et al. 2017). Understandings of music and dance implicit in these accounts derive from a presumed dichotomy between mind and body and a belief in the inherent

172 Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich inferiority of bodily-constituted knowledge (Bowman 2004). There has been some engagement with embodiment discourse by music and dance scholars, specifically with reference to embodied cognition, which ascribes a physically constitutive role to the body (Sedlmeier et al. 2011; Warburton 2011; Batson et al. 2012; Perlovsky 2015; Payne et al. 2016). Embodied cognition moves beyond conceptualizing the mind as directing the body in a top-down structure towards understanding mental processes as being distributed throughout the body in an elaborate network of interconnections (Rosch et al. 1991; Iyer 2002; Schiavio et al. 2014). A key tenet of this theory is that mental processes are stimulated with movement (Rosch et al. 1991; Batson et al. 2012) or with other creative expression (Hannemann 2006; Chakravarty 2011; Sedlmeier et al. 2011; Schiavio et al. 2014; Schiavio and Altenmüller 2015). While embodied cognition grants a dynamism to the body, that dynamism is conceptualized solely in relation to cognitive processes (Iyer 2002; Schiavio et al. 2014). Thus, corporeality as a source of agency has largely been neglected in accounts of music and dance. We argue that understanding dance and musical expression of persons living with dementia requires engagement with critical gerontology’s subfield of embodiment and dementia (Kontos and Martin 2013). Particularly important is the theory of ‘embodied selfhood’ (Kontos 2012b, 2012a; Kontos and Martin 2013) that recognizes primordial and socio-cultural dispositions of the body as pre-reflective sources of self-expression, interdependence and reciprocal engagement. The significance of this for narratives of creativity is that it grants to the body itself, separate and apart from cognition, intentionality and dynamism that persists regardless of even severe cognitive impairment (Kontos 2004, 2006). The turn to embodiment discourse broadens the dominant scholarly narratives of late style by introducing embodied selfhood as a generative mechanism of creativity. This theoretical framework can account for creativity in the context of dementia, something that has not yet been considered in narratives of late style. Yet the significance of this extends beyond the enrichment of scholarly understanding of the mechanisms of creativity. It broadens the discourse on late style by resisting the universalizing manner in which it has functioned and accommodating change, diversity and complexity of an artist’s entire ‘posthumous reputation’ (Hutcheon and Hutcheon 2012). This is evident when we consider what this sensate and relational perspective on selfhood has contributed to the debate about Willem de Kooning’s late paintings (Kontos 2003). As Kontos argues, thinking about the body as a source of creativity allows us to see how despite de Kooning’s dementia, and despite the revolutionary change in his style from earlier works, he continued to produce exuberant, carefree art, full of life. His ‘eighties paintings’ ‘stand as a refutation of closure and an affirmation of discovery and ingenuity’ (p. 167). The broader, and arguably more significant implication of this embodied perspective on creative and intention is the moral imperative it carries to support fully creativity (e.g. music and dance) in the context of dementia.

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While our primary focus here is on dance and music, this argument applies equally well to supporting other forms of creativity in dementia. For example, creative self-expression with paint is often restricted to art therapy, where adult colouring books and ‘paint by number’ are common in care homes (Hattori et al. 2011) despite the fact that people living with dementia can engage in unstructured painting with increasing development of skills (Miller and Johansson 2016). Another example is storytelling programmes intended to impact the ‘behaviours of those living with dementia’ (Billington et al. 2013, p. 166), which involve persons with dementia listening to a story read aloud by a health care practitioner followed by questions about it (Holm et al. 2005; Billington et al. 2013). Participants in these programmes are not engaged in constructing the stories themselves, and in this sense the programmes fall short of fully supporting the creative potential of the participants. This is particularly egregious given that it has been shown that persons living with dementia can construct rich and imaginative stories in group storytelling programmes designed for life enrichment (Basting 2009; Fritsch et al. 2009). To ensure that music and dance, and more broadly other forms of creativity, are supported beyond the therapeutic goal of improving ‘behaviour’, cognition, and emotional states, requires engagement with the fields of citizenship and human rights as these fields focus on social entitlements and state responsibility to support and acknowledge citizens’ participation in their own everyday existence (Turner 2006; Somers and Roberts 2008). Insights from these respective fields have been integrated in a model of relational citizenship (Kontos et al. 2016; Miller and Kontos 2016; Kontos et al. 2017; Kontos and Grigorovich 2018; Kontos and Grigorovich submitted) that we explicate here.

A relational model of citizenship A citizenship lens focuses on fair and equitable treatment of individuals living with dementia and their relationships with the state and its institutions (Bartlett and O’Connor 2010). Such focus is deemed critical given that the ‘rules, laws and policies of the country or jurisdiction in which a person lives’ (Bartlett and O’Connor 2010, p. 30) influence the experiences and opportunities associated with the health and social care a person with dementia receives (Reid et al. 2001; Kontos et al. 2016; Miller and Kontos 2016; Kontos et al. 2017). In the context of dementia studies, social citizenship can be defined as follows: A relationship, practice or status, in which a person with dementia is entitled to experience freedom from discrimination, and to have opportunities to grow and participate in life to the fullest extent possible. It involves justice, recognition of social positions and the upholding of personhood, rights and a fluid degree of responsibility for shaping events at a personal and societal level. (Bartlett and O’Connor 2010, p. 37)

174 Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich The model of relational citizenship extends the model of social citizenship by drawing on the theory of embodied selfhood (Kontos 2012b, 2012a; Kontos and Martin 2013) to more inclusively grant citizenship entitlements to persons living with dementia in long-term residential care (Kontos et al. 2016; Miller and Kontos 2016; Kontos et al. 2017). Embodied selfhood takes its theoretical bearings from Merleau-Ponty’s reconceptualization of perception (1962) and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (1977, 1990). This advances a notion of selfhood that considers both the prereflective intentionality of the body and its natural (pre-social) engagement with the world (the body’s power of natural expression), as well as the ongoing socio-cultural relationship between the pre-reflective body and the world (history, culture, power and discourse). Embodied selfhood highlights our intrinsic corporeality of being-in-the world, which sustains and animates self-expression and is always intertwined with a shared world (Kontos 2012b). In this sense, embodied selfhood is inherently relational. This importantly challenges assumptions of existential loss with dementia by treating the body as itself having creative and intentional capacity for self-expression, interdependence and reciprocal engagement. Thus, even in the face of cognitive impairment, agency persists (Kontos 2012b, 2012a; Kontos and Martin 2013). Given that embodied selfhood and relationality are fundamental to the human condition, it is essential that they be supported through socio-political institutions and organizational practices at the local level of citizenship. This entails the mobilization of structures and resources to nurture and facilitate opportunities for persons living with dementia to engage with music and dance in their everyday life. It is a new kind of ethic that goes well beyond custodianship and remediation to the promoting of human flourishing (Jennings 2009; DeNora and Ansdell 2014; Carlson 2015). Flourishing in this context occurs when embodied selfhood is supported in and through the creation of enabling environments and relational practices – or corporeal-ethical spaces – that support embodied forms of communication and meaningful engagement (Macpherson 2016). This will require introducing educational initiatives to raise awareness about the nature and extent of creativity in dementia. Central to these initiatives would be to counteract deeply seated assumptions about capacity that foster practices that limit creative self-expression by persons living with dementia to a therapeutic end. There are some innovative dance programmes already offered to persons living with dementia, such as the ‘Movement to Music’ programme that is offered by teachers from Canada’s National Ballet School and was developed in partnership with Baycrest Health Sciences (Canada’s National Ballet School 2016). This programme does not target clinical outcomes but rather offers an opportunity to develop dance skills and to dance for artistic engagement and life enrichment. There are also innovative musical engagement programmes such as the BUDI Symphony project (Bournemouth University Dementia Institute 2015). This programme offers persons living with dementia an opportunity to learn or relearn how to play musical instruments alongside

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professional orchestral musicians, and to perform with them. Such programmes are innovative in that they challenge the commonly held perception that persons living with dementia are incapable of growth and development and lack interest in pursuing new creative endeavours (Sterin 2002; Basting 2009; Swaffer 2015). However, such programmes are rare, and opportunities to engage in music and dance in ways that are creatively challenging and support continuous learning are not systematically offered to persons with dementia. A greater breadth of opportunities to engage in music and dance can also be provided by diffusing the responsibility for enabling the creative and emotional enrichment of care settings to ensure that individuals’ capacity for creative selfexpression is supported and nurtured in all aspects of everyday life (Genoe and Dupuis 2014; Moss and O’Neill 2014). This would entail the creation and adoption of a new ethical standard for carers – a new moral imagination – that necessitates the development of relational skills and practices that nurture embodied selfhood.

Conclusion We are calling for a rethinking of dominant approaches to understanding the generative mechanisms of emergence or conservation of creativity in the context of dementia. Contra the cortical structures thesis, we argue that creativity in the face of neurological impairment is a testimony to the body’s potentiality for innovation and creative action, and more generally, to the continuity of our being. As we have argued, such intelligibility not only adds a new dimension to narratives of late style but, in a more profound sense, sets an important ethical standard for supporting and nurturing creativity in persons living with dementia in everyday life. A relational model of citizenship offers an important contribution to the broader critique of ‘leisure as therapy’ (Genoe and Dupuis 2014) by giving the critical discourse on arts and leisure a political advocacy platform. It is our hope that the relational model of citizenship will offer the vital stimulus for critical investigation and support regarding late-life creativity among humanities scholars, artists, social scientists, medical researchers and policymakers.

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13 ‘The artistry of it all’ Narrating The Tempest, dementia and the mapping of identity in a Manchester extra-care housing scheme Liz Postlethwaite Outline This chapter outlines the way in which differing approaches to narrative and performance can be used to explore and share the lives and experiences of older people living with dementia. Through the exploration of a co-created performance project, we demonstrate how theatre and performance can facilitate in the sharing and understanding of the lived experiences of the people who participate. We describe how we used The Tempest by William Shakespeare as a starting point, making drama and story an anchor for the investigation of ideas of identity and personhood – the text chosen because it was felt to have a particularly wide scope and resonance in terms of theme, narrative and character. We also outline how our work took specific inspiration from the Mantle of the Expert work of Dorothy Heathcote and from the work of Anne Basting, whilst also suggesting the distinctiveness of our own approach to making and sharing in collaboration with older people living with dementia.

Small Things Creative Projects – an introduction Small Things Creative Projects is a social enterprise based in Manchester, UK. Since our founding in 2009, we have been interested in exploring ways in which people can engage and share through creativity. We are particularly inspired by the way that creative engagement can fuel learning, change and development: our work uses this approach to make space for thinking and togetherness. Over recent years we have had a particular focus on collaboration with older people, specifically those living with dementia, in the belief that creative engagement can be a powerful way to spark participation and selfexpression in this context. This aspect of our work is eloquently expressed by a carer who supported a series of creative workshops in a care home and who reflected: ‘I’ve learned that you should never give up on anyone. It’s reminded me that there is always memory, personhood, response. It’s been quite incredible’. Although we work across multiple art forms, theatre and performance are the foundation for all of our work. It is our belief that theatre and performance have a particular potency as a vehicle through which to tell and to

‘The artistry of it all’ 183 share stories in a way that has been outlined by the Brazilian theatre maker Augusto Boal: Theatre has nothing to do with physical buildings or other physical constructions. Theatre – or theatricality – is the capacity, the human property, which allows man to observe himself in action, in activity. The selfknowledge thus acquired allows him to be the subject (the one who acts). It allows him to imagine variations of his action, to study alternatives. Man can see himself in the act of seeing, in the act of acting, in the act of feeling, the act of thinking. Feel himself feeling, think himself thinking. (Boal 1995, p. 13) Our practice leads us to observe that the multidisciplinary nature of performance means that it is particularly accessible, with multiple points of access that appeal to a wide range of people who participate as either creators or observers, although it should also be acknowledged that the free participatory nature of our work means that the lines between creator and observer are frequently blurred and flexible. It is common that those who take part may also observe, and vice versa, and that this open approach can also lead to observation which is itself creative. As a company, we are also particularly interested in theatre because of its inherently communal nature and in the way that this community of participation has a particular resonance to inspire and instigate social and personal change. Consequently, for us, theatre’s meaning and purpose as an art form is centred on this quality, which in turn offers important civic and social consequences. As Canadian theatre maker and academic Darren O’Donnell observes, ‘theatre’s relevance as a democratic forum lies in its potential as a participatory forum’ (2006, p. 22). This sense of the communal also brings with it powerful acts and processes of collaboration which serve to connect people in rich ways that are increasingly difficult to find in other areas of contemporary society. It is these connections that we are particularly keen to explore: they are the foundations of the social purpose, social capital and civic engagement that are fundamental to our health and wellbeing in communities and as individuals. This is an idea explored in depth by McKnight and Block in their idea of ‘abundant communities’ which can be brought about by the art of connectivity. They observe that ‘making connections is a skill often underused, undeveloped, or unrecognised. But it is a natural skill. [… T]he key to becoming a competent community, then, is simply a matter of intention’ (2010, p. 32). It is this social abundance that Small Things Creative Projects is mostly interested in from an artistic perspective. On the most basic level, if we accept abundance as the idea of the creation of communities that are able to fulfil all of our needs both physically and emotionally, and if we accept that creativity is a means of forging meaning and understanding, then it is our belief and experience that theatre and performance is a particularly rich catalyst in its cultivation. Furthermore, engaging creatively allows us to connect in ways that

184 Liz Postlethwaite are richer than normal everyday experiences and, as McKnight and Block describe, it allows us to discover ‘the gifts and talents needed to provide for our prosperity and peace of mind’ (2010). But why is theatre so effective at stimulating this kind of richly connected creativity? The theatre maker and actor Mike Alfreds observes that, ‘crucially’, theatre is ‘a live medium. Everything to do with theatre must exploit that’ (2007, p. 342). This highlights theatre’s uniqueness as an art form in its capacity to be flexible and responsive in a way that is much harder to achieve in other mediums. Flexibility and ‘liveness’ are inherent in all theatre in a way that is perhaps not true in other art forms: for this reason, we would argue that theatre naturally veers towards an element of spontaneity and improvisation, which is particularly exciting and rich in potential. When, as we are, you are creating and using theatre with non-professional performers, this responsive fluidity is particularly valuable. Taking these as the reasons why we decide to use theatre as a starting point, there are also specific features of how we use theatre through our creative process in relation to our work with older people. Most of our work brings together professionals and non-professionals in the act of creation, with art being viewed as a process rather than being object-focused. Working in this way can be especially innovative, often generating outcomes that may not have been deemed possible at the outset. Darren O’Donnell crystalizes the social possibilities arising from this kind of creativity by linking it to drama and ritual through discussion of an American project called ‘The Rules of the Game’. This scheme brought together two Mexican soccer teams to play together whilst, simultaneously on the same court, two American basketball teams competed, creating a metaphor for the difficulty of two different cultures occupying the same space and time. O’Donnell noted the way in which this ‘work demonstrated and even ritualises that certain things considered unfeasible can actually happen’ (2006, p. 35). With Richard Gregory from British performance company Quarantine, we are especially interested in art that ‘admits the most uncertain aspects of humanity’ (2013). In all of our work we are not afraid to look closely at human conditions such as vulnerability, delicacy, and sensitivity. These bring with them powerful emotions which have huge potential as vehicles for communal learning and exploration. It should also be added that the piece of work that we discuss here contributes to a much wider movement: from classic plays about age such as Shakespeare’s King Lear to Pina Bausch’s dance work with older performers in Kontakthof and to Anne Basting’s work with people living with dementia (Basting 2009), our work sits within a rich theatrical context and much of this inspiration is writ-large in the work that we initiate and create.

The Island The Island was created over a 3-month period at Shore Green, an extra-care housing scheme in Wythenshawe, Manchester, which was designed especially

‘The artistry of it all’ 185 to help people living with dementia to live independently. This was a scheme with which we had worked several times before, and it felt like the ideal location to explore and develop our work in collaboration with people living with dementia. This was because it was a setting where we had been well supported to work before both logistically and creatively, where we knew there was a diverse group of residents who were keen to get involved, and where there was an understanding and acceptance of the need to take risks and try new and unfamiliar things in order for a project of this kind to work. The project was self-initiated by the company and supported financially by Arts Council England. As an artist-led company, we felt that there were several different aspects of the project as it emerged that we wished to explore, which we then intended to share in some kind of performance as a culmination of the project. Firstly, we wanted to investigate the nature of creative collaboration with people living with dementia when working towards a sharing/performance of work. Previously our work in this area had been successful but had focused on process and participation. Now we wanted to see if the skills we had already developed and the qualities that made them work were also applicable in a process which was geared very much towards a tangible, created outcome. Furthermore, we were interested in how participants might engage in this process in the absence of adequate short term memory, especially as we felt that this might bring with it very specific challenges in respect of the ethics of participation and consent as the making developed and the final piece began to reveal itself. We found the keeping of a reflective journal to be valuable for exploring these kinds of challenge from our perspective as practitioners and facilitators, and alongside the journal we worked to create a clear process of engagement, explaining what was likely to be involved so that key partners (older people, their families and care-home staff) could make informed decisions about if and how they would like to participate. Early on in the process it was observed within the project journal: Power … . How do we read what people do and the meaning of it? How do we explore issues of power and creativity in this context? It has been observed by commentators that the playfulness of theatre can be particularly engaging for people living with dementia who may be less inhibited than they once were (Benson 2009). However, this spontaneous, free participation also brings challenges in terms of agency, ownership and revelation that have to be managed with sensitivity. Within the wider project of participatory theatrical research of which we are a part, there are obvious parallels with Anne Basting’s work on The Penelope Project (Basting, Towey and Rose 2016) which took a similar creative approach in a care home in the United States. However, on a practical level we felt that the processes and ideas of Dorothy Heathcote in her ‘Mantle of the Expert Approach’ (Heathcote and Bolton 1995) were more akin to our own methodology. Whilst we had little beyond passing knowledge of The Penelope Project during our project, the

186 Liz Postlethwaite dramatic teaching approaches that Heathcote developed were reflected directly in our own practice within The Island. In this work, Heathcote explored in depth how the children that she was working with experienced and received knowledge and new experiences, with a particular awareness of the ways in which theatrical elements such as improvisation and role play appear key to this process. In Heathcote’s view, there was a challenge in the breaking down of a subject into constituent parts in order to share or teach it, since this moves the focus from learning to the act of the intellectual categorisation of knowledge, and in the questions of ‘expertise’ to which this gives rise. It was her feeling that a creative approach, particularly using drama and performance, might provide ‘a centre for all knowledge … . Thus interconnectedness between one aspect and the whole is unquestionable. There is a sense in which an aspect IS the whole and vice versa’ (Heathcote and Bolton 1995, p. 32). As regards The Island and indeed all of our work with people living with dementia, it is imaginative engagement in all aspects that serves as the centre of the creative process, and it is the skill of our artist facilitators that shapes and cultivates this process in a meaningful and accessible way. Following Heathcote, this meant that it was our aspiration that the source material we used should be ‘active, urgent, purposeful’ and that it was there to be ‘operated on, not merely taken in’. Heathcote’s methods thus enabled our work to aim to be transformative in every respect (Heathcote and Bolton 1995, p. 33). For example, within The Island project, a map that our designer created of the landscape of The Tempest was a starting point that inspired creative exploration and character development, one that was extended and redesigned by participants in many different ways both physically and emotionally. This item was one among many that were visited and revisited on multiple occasions as to do so felt pertinent and appropriate, serving as a key to the experience and the journey as a whole. Another decision central to the creation of The Island was how to make a piece of performance that would be simultaneously about and not about the people with whom we were working. In one respect, we wanted the piece to be wholly and fully about our collaborators, but we also wanted to create a space where people could explore their identities by moving beyond their dementia diagnosis. We wanted it to be possible for people to celebrate capacity rather than loss and for the process to explore the scope and breadth of each person whilst also retaining a sense of safety through informed disclosure. It is for this reason that we decided to take an existing and well known story and to use it as a vehicle and starting point. In doing this, we believed that our collaborators would be enabled to create more freely in a space which would be both imaginative and anonymous; where they could reveal dimensions of themselves whilst also revealing nothing at all. In that respect it also became easier to move beyond stereotypical images and understandings of age and ageing which can bring challenges and dangers if they are afforded too much focus or if the nature of the focus is too negative or preoccupied (Basting 2009, p. 25–33). As Mike Alfreds reminds us: ‘The need to tell and be told stories seems as essential to our existence as breathing. Stories transcend time

‘The artistry of it all’ 187 and space, travelling down generations and across borders, cutting through the otherness of cultures and languages’ (2013, p. 5). Similarly Bertolt Brecht observed the way that story is central to theatrical performance, providing audience and artist with ‘all the material that they can discuss, criticize, alter’ (Brecht and Willet 1957, p. 200). Our own choice to use story as a stimulus to explore a wider subject matter not directly or obviously linked to the narrative of The Tempest thus sat recognisably within well-established theatrical forms. Thinking about how we chose the story we were going to use as a foundation for our project it is interesting to look back to the journal created as a reflection of the process as it developed. At the early stage that we decided to use The Tempest by William Shakespeare as a starting point the journal reflects upon the concept of the island which is central to the play as: a world that is unmapped … a world where things are unknown and mysterious and as a space of possibility and potential. Reflecting upon this we were drawn to The Tempest by its exploration of heightened de-familiarisation, change and becoming, and the fact that it is often taken to be Shakespeare’s last play which is in itself a powerful example of ‘late style’. Our journal also observed a central aspect of the play as an exploration of different ways of being – different makes us consider our own way of being in the world. It was our feeling that as creative stimuli these narrative features afforded great richness to explore our own identities, particularly for those in our group living with dementia who may feel especially rich resonances when observing themes of change, newness and being. We also observed as integral to the play the sense of who a person is, and what happens when they stop being that person, which seemed to have real potential in relation to this project. We felt there were four main elements of The Tempest that offered particular interest as starting points for our project. First, we felt the importance of the play’s emphasis on power, particularly in terms of how people behave and how others read the meaning of their behaviour, which suggested to us that we should build an awareness of power structures into our sensitivities when exploring notions of creativity in the context of dementia. Second, we felt we could directly relate the ambiguous island of the play to the space of an extracare scheme house. Third, we felt the poetic language of the play could complement and encourage the richness of language that often accompanies the

188 Liz Postlethwaite development of dementia. And fourth, we felt we could better understand the social categories through which we understand people in the real world by relating to the play’s characterisations, with a particular focus on the ways in which we categorise and perceive those living with dementia: this had particular resonance in the context of our location given that an individual living with dementia is frequently felt to have transformed, at least in part, into someone different (Kitwood 1997, p. 31–2).

Structure and process The project was divided into two distinct phases, to be followed by the performances. First, there was a series of weekly workshops, each an hour long, facilitated by a small team of professional artists, taking place over 15 weeks. Second, there was a two-week residency following the weekly sessions, which saw our creative team – that consisted of one director, two performers, one performer musician and one project assistant – take up residence at Shore Green. Workshops: Taking place within shared social spaces at Shore Green, the weekly workshops were open to anybody who lived on site who wanted to come along. They were intended as a forum to explore The Tempest, with each session using a range of resources and activities to investigate ideas and to create new work in response to the offered source material. The approach we took was always focused on creating a safe and imaginative creative space where there was no right or wrong and where participants were actively supported in engaging and creating in the ways that they found most appropriate. It was

Figure 13.1 Turning the care home setting into a Tempest-themed island

‘The artistry of it all’ 189 observed that this approach was particularly successful in enabling people to ‘express themselves in a creative way that encapsulated their personal values and unique experiences’ (Burke and Zeilig 2016, p. 9). Each session took a different theme. Earlier workshops took open and general themes, and later sessions moved towards a tighter focus that reflected the interests and curiosities that had emerged in previous sessions. For example, the first session was focused on the sea and the second on islands, but by session six we were making detailed observations of the character of Miranda from The Tempest, and in session nine we were exploring notions of magic in the play. While many other arts/dementia interventions tend to follow a formal and replicable structure – such as Anne Basting’s TimeSlips project that uses images as a stimulus to create poetry – we sought an approach that was more flexible and reflective. This flexibility was certainly made possible by the central role of artist in the project, who determined the broad shape and direction of sessions in response to dialogue and engagement with the older people who were taking part (Burke and Zeilig 2016). Alongside this responsive planning process, it should also be noted that, although we began each session with a theme and a loose structural plan, activities and approaches frequently changed within a session in response to the needs and interests of the group at that particular moment in time. While observing a session to be used as a case study within her own research, Dr Lucy Burke observed that ‘[t]his dialogue between participants (artists, facilitators and residents) and the attentiveness and reflexivity of the workshop facilitators is arguably central to the ethos of the project and its aim to capture and express the individuality of its participants’.

Figure 13.2 Informal conversation and dialogue was central to the success of the project.

190 Liz Postlethwaite Another important aspect of the process was the way in which people accessed the narrative of The Tempest. It was apparent from very early on that this happened in three main forms, all of which needed to be supported and facilitated. First, in-the-moment responses to elements of the story with direct triggers of personal memory or experience; second, in-the-moment responses to the story, complemented by memories of the story from experiences of it in other times in their life, e.g. having read it at school; third, sensory response, drawing on emotional and tactile reactions. Thus, when exploring the theme of the sea, one member of the group immediately recognised elements of the text that we introduced and personal connections between reading the play at school and other materials that she associated with it, particularly a short story by George Bernard Shaw that she knew and loved. Another member of the group took elements of the stimulus to reveal her personal experiences of travel over the sea from Dublin to England: ‘I was from Dublin. I came here on a boat with my husband Paddy. He was the reader … He would read anything’. A third member of the group responded in a much more sensory and emotional way, creating a beautiful drawing of water and verbally painting a rich, poetic picture of the sea: ‘It all differs from summer to winter / The water coming up and down / Up and down / Covering and uncovering everything’. This multi-faceted approach to participation and response aligns with established research on the necessity of maintaining suitable breadth of access and response within care through engagement by adopting a person-centred approach (Kitwood 1997, p. 55). Drawing on this work further, we knew that striving to facilitate diverse, meaningful responses which could be shared and celebrated on equal terms was fundamental to our project at all stages from development to performance, especially in the light of our view, underpinned by performance theory, that theatre is a genuine tool for social change and transformation (Boal 1992). In addition to our desire to create a process and a performance that was accessible, we also wanted to think of ways that our collective workshops’ experiences could be ‘remembered’ or touched upon between sessions. In our journal we noted ‘[t]he importance of ongoing narrative and engagement … exploring how creative process can become fundamental to place and to everyday life’. The way we decided to do this was with the creation of short, cartoon style booklets after each session. These contained source material and responses and contributions by the resident participants inspired by this material. These booklets were left in the shared spaces, and people were encouraged to take them back to their flats to peruse should they choose to. We saw an example of the recollection and connectivity that these booklets supported when we revealed a puppet in one of our sessions that had featured in an earlier workshop and booklet. A participant who was thought to have extremely limited short term memory exclaimed that it was a coincidence that we had this puppet as they had a book in which it also featured. They then proceeded to find the relevant booklet in the lounge and share it with the facilitators and the rest of the group. The

‘The artistry of it all’ 191

Figure 13.3 Visual minutes of each workshop using simple comic book-style apps helped participants revisit and recall the work under creation

puppets of Miranda and Prospero (two of the main characters in The Tempest), that we introduced in our sixth session and which were the source of this memory prompt, were key in increasing recall and connectivity. It is recognised that props of all kinds can be powerful tools and anchors for people living with dementia (James 2008, p. 147–150), and this was certainly true of our puppets. Each time Miranda was introduced, people immediately engaged with her as an item that prompted a variety of responses: they enjoyed holding her, animating her, mirroring her actions and talking about her story. One member of the group with almost no verbal communication indicated the similarity in appearance between Miranda and one of our facilitators and mimed binoculars in an exercise about activities that she may enjoy in a way that showed she may have experienced joy in looking out to sea. One of the project facilitators, Sarah Hunter, also reflected in her journal upon the richness of the introduction of the Miranda puppet: The introduction of Miranda was well received and I thought some interesting things came out in the writing of her story. I liked that everyone seemed to agree that there was a conflict in her relationships with Prospero (scenes between them – a father and a daughter – would be nice to enact in future weeks once we have started to animate the puppets with the sticks). I thought it was interesting that a few people felt she was quite a lonely character, as this echoed conversations in earlier weeks about the best islands being the ones that are easily accessible and therefore easy to

192 Liz Postlethwaite leave. I enjoyed the idea of Miranda as a feisty female character (who gets in trouble for always fiddling, having messy hair and messy clothes … etc …), and with so many women in the group this strong female role might be interesting to explore further or to bring out in the final piece. Residency: Our two-week residency took place immediately after our workshops were finished. It focused upon the creation of a final piece of work that would be shared as the culmination of the project, but it was also a residency that needed to remain open, accessible and responsive to the Shore Green residents. The base for the residency was to be the communal lounge at Shore Green and the guest flat that was normally made available for friends and family who were visiting residents. In structuring the residency, we had considered a range of different possibilities ranging from a totally remote process where rehearsals would take place at another location and then a ‘show’ would be shared at Shore Green to an on-site process where all aspects would be accessible and open. In the event, the way we worked sat somewhere between these poles: we based ourselves on site but we worked between public and private spaces as appropriate. We fell into a routine where at least half of each day involved working directly with residents and the other half was a balance between work in a private space and offering complementary activity for residents either in the lounge or in their own flats. In anticipation of the residency Sarah Hunter made the following observations in her journal:

Figure 13.4 Puppets came to play a crucial part in the development and performance of the work created

‘The artistry of it all’ 193 Looking forward to the residential the next two weeks – the residents seem to retain more and more each week so it will be interesting to see if / how their engagement with the project changes when we are there on a daily basis. With a bit of support I think everyone will enjoy watching bits of the rehearsals – M and B I think will enjoy the actors and the playfulness of devising and I think L and C will enjoy watching the space change / seeing the design side of things (I noticed this week that C pays a lot of attention to how things work, for example, explaining to L how images were photographed then projected onto the wall.) It will also be good to have a range of activities on hand that people can join with in the background if they ‘drop-in’ and there are not things to watch. I like Lois’s (designer) idea of rose / flower garlands and I know there’s some sewing activity planned too. C told me on Wednesday that she likes to sew and knit – she used to knit jumpers for the kids – so I wonder if some knitting / crocheting can be involved too. Even before we arrived at this stage of the project a key area of reflection was the way in which the resident participants would take part in the final performances. At a very early stage we had decided that there were ethical challenges in asking people living with dementia to perform in a traditional sense within the project. Although other practitioners such as Anne Basting have worked successfully on performances that feature people living with dementia as performers, these people have tended to be at the early stages of dementia (Basting 2009, p. 87). Most of the people we were working with had much later-stage dementia, which made performance techniques such as Basting’s quite problematic. In addition to this, as Basting has observed, the other big challenge for us was how authentically to share the work that we were creating in a way that meant that in-the-moment experience could be replicated and shared at a later date, given that ‘with memory loss and dementia, repeating or even expressing one’s thoughts is the quintessential challenge’ (Basting 2009, p. 87). It was for this reason that we decided to structure our performances in such a way that the actors served as facilitators, and all audience members, with or without dementia, engaged and participated as equals. Taking these various factors into consideration, we developed a structure for the piece early on in the rehearsals that was loosely based upon the character of Miranda. Beginning with her being washed up on the beach of The Island that we had created in our collective imaginations, the narrative took us, and her, through the four seasons: the puppet that had featured during our workshops was central to this process. Rather than formally scripting performance, we created a narrative structure that felt closer in many ways to a musical score than to a script. Everything within the piece was created or chosen by the group and was framed in a way that traced a loose arc of Miranda’s journey whilst also following a rich, sensory, familiar natural journey which observed the four seasons on the island. The piece contained recordings of text and poetry created by the group and read by them, extracts from The Tempest that they had

194 Liz Postlethwaite enjoyed and also recorded, projections of art they had created and images they liked, and music that they had chosen or enjoyed. It also featured games and exercises that had been popular and key in our workshops and that would be enacted and facilitated by our puppets and actors whilst engaging all audience members, who we imagined closely gathered around the action in the lounge at Shore Green, sitting comfortably on couches and armchairs but very much part of the action. Thus, for example, at the beginning of the performances the sounds of a storm could be heard. Using sheets of blue fabric to create the sea, the facilitators helped the audience create waves, bouncing Miranda over the water until she was washed up on the beach, at which point the sound of the storm faded away so that only the soft lapping of waves could be heard. It was from this that a recording emerged of a resident participant reading a prelude written by the group during one of our workshops: Washed ashore, safe from the storm A girl who likes nice dresses Like a piece of driftwood As light as a feather Somewhere unexpected and far from love. Performance: The final piece was performed three times on the last day of the residency. It took place in the lounge at Shore Green and was open to all residents, staff, and invited family and friends. The lounge was a small, familiar space, and the audience gathered around on three sides with a large screen for

Figure 13.5 Creating the storm as part of the project’s final performances

‘The artistry of it all’ 195 projection on the fourth side of the space. We chose to have a single row of seats so that all members of the audience had the same relationship with what was happening on the stage. A member of the audience observed in their feedback that ‘it was a very small space and could potentially have been too crowded if there had been more people, but then again it was intimate, which created a feeling that we were part of a performance, so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing’. The performance was supported by an exhibition within the same space sharing information about our process and work that it had not been possible to include within the performance. This included books of poetry which had been created throughout the project: these were also given to each participant as a memento of the project, and participants were delighted to see the work that they had created in print. The whole event had a celebratory mood, and it was satisfying to observe the resident participants host guests who had come to watch with a real sense of ownership, confidence and pride. One of the project facilitators noted in their journal: The performance day was a highlight because I loved seeing the different ways that the residents interacted with the work and how comfortable they felt doing this, even in the presence of an audience. From B narrating the play to her sister and cousin, to A’s generous focus and enthusiasm, to M’s delight at receiving a leaf from Miranda, to K enjoying animating Miranda in the sea, to M confidently telling everyone who asked her afterwards how much she had enjoyed it, to L enjoying the artistry of it all – it was wonderful to see that the residents obviously felt a real connection to the work. On all these various levels they recognized it as theirs and that felt important and like testament to how much they had enjoyed and invested in the project throughout. Another audience member observed: I loved being able to see the process that had been gone through in creating the piece. I liked the writers being involved in the performance and their interaction with the puppets. I felt that the ingredients that made up the performance were of high quality, giving the kind of message that quality and high standards for working with people living with dementia really matter.

Conclusion Although this project was necessarily experimental in many ways – and there were certainly some kinks to be ironed out – it provided a context with real opportunities for the residents to be genuine collaborators in the making of work. They felt ownership and confidence, and the final piece that was created clearly reflected each participant in very different and meaningful ways. As Tom Kitwood observes:

196 Liz Postlethwaite To be a person is to live in a world where meanings are shared. In all but a few cases our instincts are of an ‘open’ kind – made complete and filled out with meaning in a cultural setting. Interaction is not a matter of simply responding to signals, but of grasping the meaning conveyed by others; it involves reflection, anticipation, expectation and creativity. (1997, p. 87) The way project was structured during the company’s time at Shore Green was, we feel, successful. Building from once a week to twice a week visits and then to the two-week residency worked well, enabling us to build a relationship with the residents and to support their involvement in the project. We were happy to see that as time went on the residents not only began to recognise the company but were often waiting and looking forward to the session when we arrived. As a company we learned a great deal about structure from working on this project, especially towards the end of the two-week residency when having a clear structure suddenly became very important as a way to create a supportive environment for the residents, one in which they could express and explore their own ideas both individually and as part of a group. It was a valuable reminder that providing parameters and putting a structure in place is not always creatively limiting but, on the contrary, can open up space for creative input and genuine collaboration.

References Alfreds, M. (2007) Different Every Night: Freeing the Actor. London: Nick Hern Books. Alfreds, M. (2013) Then What Happens? Storytelling and Adapting for the Theatre. London: Nick Hern Books. Basting, A. (2009) Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Basting, A., M. Towey and E. Rose (2016) The Penelope Project: An Arts Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press. Benson, S. (2009) Ladder to the Moon: Interactive theatre in care settings. Journal of Dementia Care 17(4): 20–23. Boal, A. (1995) Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. London: Routledge. Boal, A. (1992) Games for Actors and Non-Actors. London: Routledge. Brecht, B. and J. Willet (1957/1984) Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen. Burke, L. and H. Zeilig (2016) Privileging the Play: Creating theatre with people living with dementia. In J. Keady, L-C Hydén, A. Johnson and C. Swarbrick (Eds), Social Research Methods in Dementia Studies: Inclusion and Innovation. London: Routledge. Gregory, R. (2013) You Are Just Not Going Fast Enough. Opening Address at Noordezon Performing Arts Festival, Groningen, August. http://qtine.com/resources/article s-interviews/you-are-just-not-going-fast-enough-richard-gregorys-opening-address-a t-noorderzon-performing-arts-festival-groningen-august-2013/ (published online August 2013). Heathcote, D. and G. Bolton (1995) Drama for Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

‘The artistry of it all’ 197 James, O. (2008) Contented Dementia: 24-hour Wraparound Care for Lifelong Well-Being. London: Vermilion. Kitwood, J. (1997) Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Buckingham: Open University Press. McKnight, J. and P. Block (2010) The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. O’Donnell, D. (2006) Social Acupuncture: A Guide to Suicide, Performance and Utopia. Toronto, ON: Coach House Books.

14 Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s as a case study in late-life creativity Martina Zimmermann

This chapter resists the idea that dementia patients lose their creativity. It understands creativity to be a way to negotiate cognitive decline, seeing it expressed in (1) how patients construct continuity in the biographical disruption caused by their diagnosis; (2) patients’ narrative choices which acknowledge their cognitive challenge but assert their identity and selfhood throughout; and (3) the ways in which patients negotiate with science and scientific discourse related to dementia. Terry Pratchett’s documentary is in certain ways characteristic of the creativity of dementia patients: it critically reflects on cognitive decline but remains positive, and this positivity is foregrounded through the skilful editing and presenting of materials in the documentary. Mindful of Pratchett’s celebrity status and of how the typical ‘late period’ is classically defined, in the following discussion I understand the expected life-span from diagnosis as a variation on the seven-or-so-year duration of the ‘late period’. As a neuropharmacologist by training, I pay particular attention to the discussion of science in dementia narratives, revealing it as an element that enables a creative negotiation (positive or negative) with the disease and the proximity of death the condition imposes. One of the first patient narratives to hold my attention was Thomas DeBaggio’s Losing My Mind.1 DeBaggio fills entire pages with quotations from the National Institute on Aging ‘Progress Report on Alzheimer’s Disease’ and ‘The Johns Hopkins White Papers’. He also cites from medical journals and offers extracts from his own neuropsychological evaluation. These passages spell out the decline and loss of Alzheimer’s disease patients; they both colour and mirror DeBaggio’s perception of loss. And when DeBaggio’s citations from scientific and medical literature become less and less frequent, they are replaced by material published by or for caregivers, which, like the medical passages, are similarly centred around aspects of loss. DeBaggio’s move progressively to replace passages from medico-scientific literature with extracts from caregiver manuals underlines his perception that caregiver discourse strongly relies on the medico-scientific account of the condition. But citations from either of these categories appear far less often in the second half of the narrative. DeBaggio’s story itself fills the pages. His telling comes in an exceedingly articulate style and a strategic composition of short sections belonging to three intertwining

Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s 199 narrative strands. For DeBaggio, losing the ability to perform on a high linguistic level equals death, and living out his eloquence is his way of giving meaning to his illness. His articulacy opposes the anticipated loss of acuity and agency as dementia progresses – a negative narrative which, for him, is encapsulated in scientific discourse.2 DeBaggio’s narrative construction creatively challenges current cultural notions of patients’ lack of selfhood as well as ideas of set traditional storylines. However, in relation to dementia, creativity usually holds a different meaning. For example, in her work on art therapy for individuals with dementia, Ruth Abraham describes this kind of therapy as ‘a powerful medium because it bypasses the dominant verbal aspects of brain function’. In particular, she argues that, ‘in spite of deterioration and advancing limitations, the dementia patient is nevertheless a person with an interior subjective world’ (Abraham 2005, p. 1). Similarly, in a recent practical guide on creativity and communication in dementia, John Killick and Claire Craig assert that [t]he occurrence of creativity is always to be welcomed, especially in people with dementia, where the possibilities for underachieving, for undermining, are endless and occurrences of it depressingly frequent. (Killick and Craig 2012, p. 13) These definitions – taken from the boundaries of clinical practice, gerontology and performing arts – all refer to creativity as a communication possibility for the patient at a time when cognitive challenge has already significantly impaired purposeful verbal articulation. They confine the creative outlet of a dementia patient to an underprivileged space that apparently cannot reconcile the everyday needs of the patient with the realm in which ideas of late-life creativity have prevailed to date – that of older artists and their critics. I take this volume’s focus on late-life creativity as an invitation here to consider patients who are fully able verbally to articulate themselves – patients who achieved celebrity status and garnered critical acclaim. Losing My Mind made Thomas DeBaggio a celebrity. He spoke on National Public Radio and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Until his death in 2011, he was a tireless advocate for the rights and needs of dementia patients. His narrative was a powerful tool with which he could instigate a counterdiscourse in response to the seemingly science-led conceptualisation of patients’ low performance and passivity (see Zimmermann 2011). It gave DeBaggio a platform on which, as Killick and Craig would say, to put something of his inner self into the outer world; but in doing so he produced a work of art open to the critical reception of others (Killick and Craig 2012, p. 17). I thus define creativity in this context as denoting a patient’s skill, first, to create continuity in biographical disruption and, second, to devise narrative strategies that acknowledge cognitive challenge while ascertaining continued agency and unbroken selfhood. At the same time, I share with Karan Jutlla (see Chapter 15 in this volume) an understanding of creativity as a therapeutic process, one

200 Martina Zimmermann through which not only caregivers but also patients give coherency and meaning to their experience. But it would be wrong to assume that the creative articulation of dementia patients, as in DeBaggio’s case, particularly comes to life in resistance to medico-scientific discourse. The role of science and scientific discourse is entirely different in Terry Pratchett’s two hour-long, two-part television documentary, which aired on BBC in February 2009. In what follows, I will consider the ways in which Living with Alzheimer’s both reflects and embodies a creative process and choice in late life: on the one hand, in Pratchett’s ingenious way of negotiating with cognitive decline in his move, as a fantasy writer, to produce a documentary rather than write an illness narrative; and, on the other, in the role of scientific research in his production. Pratchett’s case – and dementia more generally – lends itself excellently to probing ideas of late-life creativity. As McMullan (McMullan 2007; see also Chapter 5 in this volume) has pointed out, the concept of late style is usually deployed by critics who, with the benefit of retrospection, appraise an artist’s works produced during the last seven or so years of his or her life. A diagnosis with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type does allow for such a seven-year appraisal during the artist’s lifetime, given that from diagnosis to death the patient usually has five to ten years to live. Moreover, this is a period during which the artist him or herself, perhaps more than in disease-free ageing, is acutely aware of the late phase in his or her life. This awareness of premature ageing and dying perhaps unexpectedly brings an additional sense of freedom to the creative process, as was the case for DeBaggio who, ‘[a]fter forty years of pussyfooting with words’, felt he finally had ‘a story of hell to tell’ (2002, p. 1). Pratchett’s diagnosis at the age of 59 made him an early-onset patient – and his late-life creativity that of one dying young. ‘My name is Terry Pratchett – at least I think it is’, runs Pratchett’s voiceover (including a comic pause) during the opening minute of the documentary, which shows the fantasy writer being enthusiastically received by his fans at the Birmingham Discworld Convention – a celebrity in the limelight whose voiceover then tells us of the creative output of a lifetime. No viewer is left in doubt about Pratchett’s celebrity status, his keen spirit and creative achievements. The documentary opens with what has been so that we understand what is being lost, and this loss is duly recorded. Ten minutes into the film, we accompany Pratchett to his specialist neurologist, who ‘will test [him] regularly to chart the progress of the disease’ (10:10). A similar assessment situation in the second part (II, 5:38) emphasises the aim of faithful recording. In these clips, we learn about Pratchett’s brain cell loss from the conversation between Pratchett and his specialist; we observe Pratchett struggling with copying pencil drawings; and we are told by him that this cognitive testing is ‘a terrible thing to do to a creative mind’ (II, 7:31). But how can the creative writer Pratchett credibly confront his cognitive decline when the story he has to tell runs counter to the role required of the accomplished presenter of a documentary?

Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s 201 Only twice is Pratchett shown as severely struggling with cognitive failure; and on both occasions this phenomenon is wrapped inside the success story of his writerly activities: first, during a book signing event, when he struggles to spell the names of his fans (41:00), and later at the Discworld convention, when he strives to read from his latest novel (53:53). Notably this latter scene appears explicitly chosen for documenting purposes, because it will feature again in the documentary’s second part (II, 3:19). In this scene, the camera captures Pratchett from a longer distance than usual, as if wanting to detach the viewer from Pratchett’s failure. Eventually, though, it turns to the audience who earlier had been cheering at his jokes, an audience that now sits in silent embarrassment – clearly representing everyone who fears cognitive loss. Yet the witty writer is shown as keeping the upper hand when asking the audience, ‘Are you in tears yet?’ and later when closing his reflective commentary with another joke. This distancing method works as a model for the way in which Pratchett appears to confront cognitive challenge throughout the documentary. It takes him 45 minutes to ‘face up to what is lying ahead’, as he puts it, as he finally shows up in a patient self-help group. And it is even later in the documentary – thirty-three minutes into its second part – that Pratchett visits a care home to get a ‘glimpse into the future’. But while these visits are pitched as big revelations, the filming shies away from the truth they spell out. The care home looks, in Pratchett’s words, ‘like a hotel for old people – there is nothing institutional about this’ (II, 34:00). And in the self-help group clip, only one shot hints at Pratchett’s future: a woman’s empty gaze directed to somewhere outside the visual field of the camera (47:09). When asked for a contribution, Pratchett refers to his confusion as a ‘Clapham Junction Day’ – the humorous expression deflecting attention from the illness process. Even more noteworthy, this scene is followed by a personal encounter between Pratchett and a patient (48:07). While Pratchett addresses the personal experience of illness in his capacity as presenter, he also does so by way of another dementia sufferer: his chosen patient is an author, academic and writer of books on quantum chemistry. Thus Pratchett can feature an accomplished interaction with a competent patient whose cognitive capabilities have little in common with what a dementia patient’s future is expected to look like. Instead, one of many nature shots – a few blades of grass swept by the wind against the background of a field of grain ready for harvest – hints at future decline (49:50). But there is more to Pratchett’s choice to let the camera tell a separate story. Living with Alzheimer’s is not an observational documentary. Each and every clip is subject to Pratchett’s scrutiny during the cutting process. In comparison with other productions about dementia, notably David Sieveking’s Vergiss mein nicht, in which a son follows his mother’s decline in dementia over an eighteen-month period, Pratchett as patient remains in control.3 His choice of features significantly shapes how we come away from this documentary. He can decide the balance between being the object of the medical gaze and featuring as a subjective explorer of scientific research whose representational effects significantly differ from what literary scholars have described

202 Martina Zimmermann as the biomedical sciences’ iatrogenic powers to devalue the patient (see Burke 2008). Obviously Pratchett is most convincingly in control as a writer. Again and again, the camera films Pratchett in his study in front of six large computer screens handling six programmes at a time (e.g., 4:04; 29:25; II, 2:26). And although the camera captures the occasional spelling mistake, the dominant impression is one of Pratchett at the height of his powers. From this perspective, we join Pratchett on what is pitched as a picaresque journey through the world of research, as the protagonist and his assistant travel by car, train and plane from one engagement and clip to the next. On their journey, they encounter neurologist specialists, a geneticist, neuroimaging experts, clinical scientists and, as already mentioned, patients and caregivers – all of whom introduce Pratchett, as much as the viewer, to different aspects of the condition. Twenty-two minutes into the film, the viewer, along with Pratchett, is shown around King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry by its then director Professor Simon Lovestone. In this feature, Pratchett powerfully popularises basic scientific research into Alzheimer’s disease, as he looks through microscopes, observes equipment in action and casually converses with laboratory staff. We are drawn into Pratchett’s fascination with the brain and by extension with those who unravel its mysteries. But in moving so close to what happens in the research laboratory, we (and Pratchett with us) are induced to believe that a cure is closer than it actually is, especially because Lovestone enthuses about the moment being ‘an exciting time in the battle against the disease’, as he informs us that ‘there are several potential drugs going through clinical trials as we speak’. Anne Hunsaker Hawkins has described the purpose of the battle myth in illness narratives as serving to ‘enhance the ill person’s sense of dignity, self-esteem, and active participation in therapy’ (Hawkins 1999, p. 66). But this myth also works for the scientist who is hard pressed to find a cure. The metaphor pictures the condition as beatable – or as Lovestone puts it: ‘We’re getting closer. We are really getting closer […]. This research will have impact for patients in the next five to ten years’ (26:06; 27:32). Reviewing this documentary nearly a decade after this exchange dismantles the self-saving power of the battle myth in relation to Alzheimer’s research: all clinical trials failed. But at the time of filming, Lovestone’s optimistic performance, along with the exemplification of how science in the making works, supported Pratchett’s upbeat perspective.4 And such reinforcing dynamics work for every science feature in the documentary, especially because Pratchett chooses scientific approaches that hold significant authority and truth value with the general public, while omitting their weaknesses in the representation on screen. For example, genetics research is highly valued in society, but there is no mention of the fact that only 2 per cent of Alzheimer’s cases are genetically caused (Van Dijck 1998, esp. pp. 119–148). Similarly, disease models are mentioned – but the viewer is shown happy fruit flies instead of politically incorrect mouse models. Although this choice fits with Pratchett’s lifelong anti-vivisectionist

Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s 203 conviction, it would befit an objective documentary to give space to rodent models, since they are where the lion’s share of public funding goes, and they carry pharmacological research on drug development for finding a cure – which is what drives societal interest in Alzheimer’s research. All in all, Pratchett pitches scientists as having the solution to Alzheimer’s at their fingertips. In particular, neuroimaging is introduced as being ‘very close to finding out what actually causes Alzheimer’s’ (II, 15:46). It is presented as exceeding imaginary powers – a super computer processing petabytes of data of ten thousand subjects; ‘to see what is going on inside the living brain of the patient’ (II, 17:00). Imaging methodologies are easily transported on screen and appeal to a viewer in a visually dominated world. They also convey control over the illness process – and suggest the imminence of a cure, as put here in the words of the geneticist Rudy Tanzi: Now to actually see direct evidence, to be able to actually watch the disease progress in a living person, is quite amazing. It gives us a way of tracking the rate and severity of the disease’s progression; of knowing, for the sake of applying drugs, who will get the disease sooner than later. (Tanzi and Parson 2000, p. 246) Pratchett himself appears to buy into this perceived control as he bookends the documentary with clips about recordings of his brain being taken. At all events, this perspective reinforces Pratchett’s optimism near the end of the documentary: ‘I am curiously left with an overwhelming sense of optimism […]. I am absolutely certain that Alzheimer’s disease is going to be detained’ (II, 56:00). With these examples in mind, we may conclude that Pratchett relies on science to fashion himself as an upbeat discussion partner. The road movie narrative is clearly a creative, ingenious choice. Short features (most of them between 5 and 7 minutes long) match the patient’s short attention span and can leave Pratchett the accomplished celebrity presenter and interviewer, who – as he tells us twice – ‘feel[s] like the Duke of Edinburgh’ (25:12; II, 33:00). What is more, the ways in which Pratchett presents science and deflects attention from the deeper implications of his condition in healthcare clips can easily induce us to describe his documentary as a narrative of triumph. This is particularly true since the sequence of clips ensures that fascinating science features are folded around the few snippets which seemingly broach Alzheimer’s as a dissolution of the self. In other clips, science appears in a commentary after Pratchett’s cognitive defeat at the Discworld Convention, after his visit to the care home and in the wake of his cognitive assessment. However, the duration of the representation of science on screen is no longer than the time we spend with Pratchett in personal reflection. These periods of reflection distance Pratchett’s documentary from the criticism Kathlyn Conway makes of superficial narratives of triumph. ‘From a position of authority outside the actual experience’, Conway explains, such narratives of triumph ‘look back and offer

204 Martina Zimmermann this conclusion: if one battles hard and maintains a positive attitude, everything will work out’ (Conway 2007, p. 1). For Conway, the quality of an illness narrative comes with the acknowledgement that the illness experience is ‘a soul-wrenching encounter with loss, limitations, and the reality of death’ (p. 2). Pratchett does not keep reflection for the end. Reflection is part of the creative production process, and the insights conveyed are coloured by a lifetime of writing social criticism in fantasy guise. Pratchett is not only on a journey through different science laboratories and healthcare settings, from which he returns with knowledge that he can use for the creation of a documentary; he is also on a journey through his illness experience, from which he returns enriched and wiser. His documentary can be understood, as can, say, Wendy Martin’s visual diaries (see Chapter 9 above), in the terms outlined by Killick and Craig as ‘the employment of an external medium for the purpose of what is essentially a private conversation’ (Killick and Craig 2012, p. 19). Pratchett has gained the insight that, in the face of the continued uncertainty of scientists, his quality of life comes down to his personal attitude towards the disease. With ten minutes to go, he can assert: ‘It is necessary to get back and get on with my life as an author’ (II, 49:00). It is Pratchett the author of fantasy fiction who finds continuity in his illness experience and transports this continuity in his documentary, who can develop a different way of looking at the condition because of his life-long creative work as a fantasy writer and who, as a celebrity, can expound these views much more freely and effectively in a TV documentary than through his life-long medium of choice. Pratchett has always considered the meaning and purpose of his fantasy writing to be in line with G. K. Chesterton’s view of the genre’s possibilities: To take what is normal and everyday and usual and unregarded, and turn it around and show it to the audience from a different direction, so that they look at it once again with new eyes. (Pratchett 2014b, pp. 333–355, 334) Alzheimer’s disease, for Pratchett, is a different perspective on life’s reality, an extension of fantasy fiction into real life. Very early on, Pratchett explains that Alzheimer’s creates a kind of Discworld fantasy in real life. In particular, he states that ‘as the author of the Discworld series over the last twenty-five years I have hallucinated gently for a living’ (01:57); and with reference to auditory and visual hallucinations he explains that ‘it’s hard to tell what’s the disease and what’s just me’, because ‘half blind, obsessed, forgetful – I am like that pretty much all of the time’ (09:06). In short, Pratchett pitches his illness experience as a continuation of both his writerly activity and his writerly self beyond the autobiographical and narrative level; and this perceived continuity extends to the visual, as the presenter Pratchett keeps up his life-long staged persona, dressed in black and with the obligatory Fedora hat.5 More precisely, as an undisputed celebrity, Pratchett now popularises Alzheimer’s disease instead of

Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s 205 Discworld novels. And although Pratchett tells us that he doesn’t want to be ‘Terry Pratchett the Alzheimer’s sufferer’ (20:29), it is clearly his celebrity status that opens doors to TV productions and radio interviews and gains us access to science laboratories, a status whose wider implications Pratchett has shown himself acutely aware of at all times.6 That said, to picture Alzheimer’s disease as the demon (19:43) is perhaps an obvious self-saving strategy – comparable with DeBaggio’s death-sentence metaphor. The same is true for Pratchett’s assertion in relation to the patient’s hallucinations that caregivers have to share the ‘fantasy universe’ of the patient (II, 35:00). But also many images of Pratchett’s journey through the maze of science resonate with those created around his fantasy heroes if we think about super computers being steeped in a rainbow of colours, of Pratchett’s profile with an animation of his brain cells firing, of Pratchett shown wearing a futuristic helmet, or of the viewer being sucked into a tunnel of bright white light like Pratchett’s protagonists on their time travels. I do not argue that Pratchett expressly creates continuity with his fantasy characters in the documentary. But it is not only Discworld fans who will appreciate Pratchett’s reference to the character of Death in his creation. Pratchett tells us that Death is loved by his readers, because he does not stay: Possibly the most loved character in the series of fantasy books I write is Death. Because Death in the Discworld series is not cruel. It’s life that kills you obviously. It is amazing how many people have written that they took the book up to their aunt in the hospice who loved the character of Death. (II, 36:39) Pratchett’s boon is what his readers recognise in the Discworld character of Death: we are not afraid of death; rather, we are afraid of our life being cut short if we have not lived it by the day to achieve our goals. For Pratchett, creativity late in life becomes a way of dealing with the awareness of his mortality earlier than biologically expected. With this awareness comes the freedom to choose a different medium. The different medium and genre enable him to admit the weakness that comes with cognitive decline, while giving him a much more effective platform for his social criticism. The creative process involved in the production of his documentary becomes a search for the meaning of life by way of identifying what gives continuity to this life within illness-imposed biographical disruption. Death is not a period in life, but its endpoint. Pratchett sums this up with his final sentence in the documentary: ‘I would like to get the book finished first’ (II, 58:13). Another five Discworld novels appeared after this documentary. To create lifetime continuity Terry Pratchett gives up the book as the medium of a lifetime, while DeBaggio returns to the medium he craved all his life. Both tell their stories in snippets or clips; both mix the creative with the objective; both exercise their life-long talent for storytelling. For both, this

206 Martina Zimmermann activity depends on a profound understanding of their identity, past and present, as their narratives are embedded in their life histories. And while scientific discourse plays profoundly different roles in these two works – DeBaggio develops his story as a counter-narrative to what he considers the scientifically dominant narrative of loss, whereas Pratchett uses science to maintain his identity as an accomplished celebrity – both use science to stage themselves as consummate narrators. The motivation of both patients is similar. Achieving substantial outreach; doing anything, as Pratchett puts it, ‘to stave off this bloody awful incurable disease’ (II, 0:30). They both articulate their fears about losing themselves and acknowledge the reality of death. They both remain true to themselves – and negotiating with scientific discourse is part of the way they creatively express themselves near the end of life.

Notes 1 DeBaggio (2002). I presented an earlier version of this paper on a ‘Narratives and Pharmacology’ panel at the British Society for Literature and Science conference in Bristol, 6–8 April 2017. 2 For a fuller analysis of DeBaggio’s narrative, see Zimmermann (2017b, esp. pp. 87– 88) and Zimmermann (2017a, Chapter 4). 3 For a detailed analysis of Sieveking, see Zimmermann (2017a, pp. 123–127). 4 At the time of filming, Lovestone headed the Alzheimer’s Research Trust (today Alzheimer’s Research UK). Pratchett had donated $1 Million to the ART and introduced Lovestone as ‘one of the people who decide who gets my money’ (22:50). In reverse, Alzheimer’s Research UK supported the production of Pratchett’s documentary – a platform on which specific research concepts could be advertised as worthy of funding investment. On the dynamics between science research and public engagement, see the wonderful Latour (1987). 5 On pre-narrative and post-autobiographical identity construction, see, for example, Basting (2009) and Brockmeier (2015). 6 Consider, for example, Pratchett (2014a, pp. 311–318, 313).

References Abraham, R. (2005) When Words Have Lost Their Meaning: Alzheimer’s Patients Communicate Through Art. Westport, CT: Praeger. Basting, A. (2009) Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Brockmeier, J. (2015) Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process. New York: Oxford University Press. Burke, L. (2008) ‘The country of my disease’: Genes and genealogy in Alzheimer’s lifewriting. Journal of Literary Disability 2: 63–74. Conway, K. (2007) Illness and the Limits of Expression. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. DeBaggio, T. (2002) Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s. New York: The Free Press. Hawkins, A. H. (1999) Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s 207 Killick, J. and C. Craig (2012) Creativity and Communication in Persons with Dementia. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. McMullan, G. (2007) Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing: Authorship in the Proximity of Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pratchett, T. (2009) Living with Alzheimer’s. Directed C. Russell. Glasgow: IWC Media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmejLjxFmCQ; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tTgqocgY5Ww (both accessed 22 April 2018). Pratchett, T. (2014a) I’m slipping away a bit at a time … and all I can do is watch it happen. Daily Mail, 7 October 2008; reprinted in: A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction. London: Corgi Books, 2015 [2014]. 311–318. Pratchett, T. (2014b) The Richard Dimbleby lecture: Shaking hands with death. Royal Society of Medicine, 1 February 2010. Broadcast on BBC1, with revisions to indicate that Tony Robinson would be reading the main text; reprinted in A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction. London: Corgi Books, 2015 [2014]. 333–355. Sieveking, D. (2012) Vergiss mein nicht: Wie meine Mutter ihr Gedächtnis verlor und meine Eltern die Liebe neu entdeckten. [Forget me not. How my mother lost her memory and my parents rediscovered their love.] Berlin: Farbfilm Verleih. Tanzi, R. E. and A. B. Parson (2000) Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer’s Disease. New York: Basic Books. Van Dijck, J. (1998) Imagenation: Popular Images of Genetics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zimmermann, M. (2011) Dementia in life-writing: Our health-care system in the words of the sufferer. Neurological Sciences 32: 1233–1238. Zimmermann, M. (2017a) The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zimmermann, M. (2017b) Alzheimer’s disease metaphors as mirror and lens to the stigma of dementia. Literature and Medicine 35(1): 71–97.

15 Narratives as talking therapy Research with Sikh carers of a family member with dementia in Wolverhampton Karan Jutlla

Definitions of creativity vary widely but it is clear that, for many therapists, creative activity is viewed as a valuable element in old age care. Often, however, creative therapy is treated instrumentally in care or treatment, and little time is given for reflection on the part of carer or patient. Yet it is arguable that creativity is also a key element in those moments where we are able to reflect upon our journey and give true meaning to our experiences – that is, in the narratives we tell about our experiences of care and/or caring. With the aim to understand experiences across the life course, the research described in this chapter addresses the impact of migration experiences on the processes of caring for a person with dementia in the Sikh community in Wolverhampton. Twenty-four narrative interviews were carried out with twelve Sikh carers of a family member with dementia. Though the findings of this research have contributed to both scholarship and practice within the field of dementia, the benefits of ‘narrative therapy’ – a process by which someone is given the space and the time to tell their story – as a therapeutic intervention is yet to be told. The chapter draws on data from my research to provide an insight not only into the benefits of ‘narrative therapy’ for carers of a family member with dementia but also for a community that, due to certain cultural norms and barriers, is not encouraged to talk openly or is often not heard. If creativity in later life is an ‘activity,’ as it is viewed by therapists, then the very act of telling a story that has been untold is powerful, for it not only gives coherency and meaning to an experience but lets an individual know that they are valued – and, crucially, this is as true for the carer as it is for the person receiving care.

Introduction According to current estimates, there are 850,000 people living with dementia in the United Kingdom (UK): this figure is predicted to increase to over one million by 2025 and over two million by 2051 (Alzheimer’s Society 2014). Approximately two thirds of people with dementia live in the community and one third live in a care home (Knapp et al. 2007). According to Whitman (2010, p. 17), a carer can be defined not only as a professional but also as somebody who provides ‘unpaid care by looking after an ill, frail or disabled

Narratives as talking therapy 209 family member, friend or partner’. There is currently an overwhelming amount of literature that attests to the psychological, social, physical and financial costs faced by such carers who are living with and caring for an older person who has dementia. Common challenges include high levels of stress, depressive symptoms, social isolation and poor physical health (La Fontaine et al. 2016). Though such challenges are common to all carers of a family member with dementia, there are additional challenges faced by those who experience cultural and language barriers within services (Jutlla and Moreland 2007; Seabrooke and Milne 2004). The number of people with dementia from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups is expected to rise significantly as the BAME population ages. Current estimates predict almost 25,000 people with dementia from BAME communities in England and Wales (APPG 2013). This number is expected to rise to nearly 50,000 by 2026 and over 172,000 people by 2051. This is nearly a seven-fold increase in 40 years and compares with just over a two-fold increase in the numbers of people with dementia across the whole UK population in the same time period (AAPG 2013). Previous research has identified cultural assumptions that Asian families will ‘look after their own’ (APPG 2013; Department of Health 1998). This, along with a general lack of understanding and awareness about dementia in such communities, has led to a failure by services to reach out to such communities and ensure that support is in place (APPG 2013). Consequently, many Asian family members caring for a person with dementia remain ‘hidden’ and only present themselves to services when in crisis situations (Jutlla 2013; Moriarty et al. 2011). Research undertaken by the author with the Sikh community in Wolverhampton sought to develop an in-depth understanding of their experiences of caring for a family member with dementia (Jutlla 2011). Sikhs represent the largest minority ethnic group in Wolverhampton, forming the second highest percentage of Sikh residents in England (Wolverhampton City Council 2013). Their ethnicity means that they are often subject to some degree of marginalisation from the rest of society (Singh and Tatla 2006). In addition to being part of a minority ethnic group, those caring for a family member with dementia usually face additional marginalisation as well as isolation. Consequently, it was considered important that research was conducted with Sikh carers traditionally excluded or marginalised from research. Because previous research with Asian carers of people with dementia focused primarily on their experiences of services, the research focused on the impact of migration experiences on the experience of caring for a person with dementia. Given the lack of research in this area, it was critical that the research method provided opportunities for the participants to talk in a relatively unstructured way about their experiences and for the analysis to be based directly in the participant’s experiences and perspectives. The research tool consequently had to allow for an in-depth understanding of participant experiences, including their derivation from social phenomena such as migration and language difference. A biographical approach – that is, understanding experiences across one’s life course – employing narrative interviews, has been noted as particularly

210 Karan Jutlla useful for trying to reach such groups and understanding their experiences (Andrews et al. 2008) and was consequently chosen as the method of data collection for the research. This chapter takes the analysis of narrative as its methodology for research, and it illustrates the benefits of this approach via three case examples taken from the author’s doctoral research. The case examples have been purposefully selected to represent the different backgrounds of the participants including two older migrant participants (one female and one male) and one British-born participant (female). Observations from the author’s reflective diary at the time of the research are also presented to highlight the importance of narratives as talking therapy for carers of people with dementia who are also part of a migrant community living in the UK.

Narratives and storytelling There are many definitions of, and distinctions between, stories and narratives, and the act of telling a story need not involve verbalising thoughts (Payne 2000). A story can be told in several ways including the use of art, drama, song, music and dance – all of which are creative ways to communicate and give meaning to the emotions one feels. The use of narratives as a ‘talking therapy’ is becoming increasingly recognised as a way of helping people ‘who are feeling distressed by difficult events in their lives’ (Mental Health Foundation 2017). Often used in counselling, narrative therapy is sometimes known as ‘involving “re-authoring” or “re-storying” conversations. As these descriptions suggest, stories are central to an understanding of narrative ways of working’ (Morgan 2000, p. 2). In the context of research, a narrative interview ‘envisages a setting which encourages and stimulates interviewees to tell a story about some significant event in the informant’s life’ (Bauer 1996, p. 2). They involve doing research with ‘first-person accounts of experience’ (Riessman 1993, p. 13). The importance of narratives for the individual is that they foster an unfolding of the self and help us centre and integrate ourselves by gaining a clearer understanding of our experiences, our feelings about them and their meaning for us. The stories we tell of our lives bring order to our experiences and help us view our lives both subjectively and objectively at the same time while assisting us in forming our identities (Atkinson 2002, p. 122). In one of the few narrative interview studies of migrants, Gardner (2002) researched the life course and life histories of Bengali elders in London. Gardner notes that narrative interviews tend to be successful with people in the later stages of the life course as they enable participants to be more reflective and to contextualise their lives. Gardner too suggests that migration experiences are never uniform, for the meanings given to such experiences are constructed and reconstructed by the individual within their social interactions. Narratives are therefore powerful tools ‘in indicating the diverse elements that constitute identity, and the ways in which identities shift and are contested within the same individual’ (Gardner 2002, p. 29). Migration narratives entail telling

Narratives as talking therapy 211 stories of where individuals have come from and where they plan to go since they (migrants), perhaps more than others, need to give coherence and meaning to their experiences. In addition to this, narratives, like migration, are always characterised by movement, both within their internal form (from their start to their finish), and in the ways in which they are told (Gardner 2002, p. 29). This is also true of carers, particularly those who are caring for a family member with dementia who experience memory difficulties and often go back in time to different points of their lives. For example, migrants living with a dementia that involves memory difficulties will often revert to their country of origin in their mind’s eye, causing great challenges for those caring for them who are living in the present day. The symptoms associated with dementia are unique to each individual and dependent upon the part of the brain that is damaged. Symptoms are often inconsistent and presented sporadically, and the difficulties experienced by carers have been well documented.

Research with Sikh carers: Methods and methodology Twenty-four narrative interviews were carried out with twelve Sikh carers of a family member with dementia. Each participant had two interviews covering the following topics: Interview 1: The time they first noticed symptoms of dementia until the present. Interview 2: Participant experiences prior to their migration and reasons for their migration (or, for those who are British born or migrated during childhood, the migration history of their family) and participant post-migration experiences in the UK up until the time when they first began to notice symptoms of dementia in the person who they are caring for (or the personal histories of those British born and/or British educated, up until the time when they first began to notice symptoms of dementia in the person who they are caring for). Given the demanding nature of the caring role, covering all of the above in one interview seemed both audacious and potentially very tiring for both the participants and the researcher. It is also recommended that researchers return to participants for follow-up interviews to clarify any unclear issues from their previous interview (Wengraf 2006). In narrative interviews, it is important to keep interviewer intervention at a minimum in order not overly to structure or break the flow of the narratives being told by the participant, though there may still be instances where interviewer intervention is required to prompt or encourage people to talk (Riessman 1993). Each interview began with one question, and a topic guide was developed to ensure that various elements were covered so as to answer the research questions. Interviews were audio-recorded to ensure that there was minimal disruption from the taking of notes. Rather, the researcher was able to focus on the elements that were not captured by the audio recorder such as

212 Karan Jutlla facial expressions and body language. The researcher also kept a reflective journal to capture initial thoughts and feelings immediately post-interview. In addition to encouraging self-evaluation and minimising interviewer bias, the reflective journal, it turned out, unintentionally captured the impact and importance of narratives as talking therapy for the participants. From the journal and raw interview data, the author has drawn together three case studies that illustrate the importance of narratives as talking therapy for a hitherto neglected but growing part of the community. Seven interviews took place in Punjabi (spousal carers) whilst the remaining five took place in English with occasional phrases in Punjabi (intergenerational carers). All Punjabi interviews were translated into English by the researcher whose second language is Punjabi. Excerpts were selected to be translated by an independent professional interpreter. Both versions were compared to ensure that the researcher’s translations were correct. An independent bilingual peer support group was used to make sure that cultural meanings had not been lost in translation from Punjabi to English.

Case examples Harbans Kaur At the time of the interview, Harbans Kaur did not know her exact age but knew that she was over 70 years old. She was born in a village which is now part of Pakistan but belonged to India at the time of her birth. At the age of 14, she was married into a village which was, and still is, part of the Punjab. Harbans Kaur returned to her maternal home for 4 years when her husband migrated to Wolverhampton for an employment opportunity. Once he was financially ready to set up home, he sent for Harbans Kaur and their son and daughter. They subsequently had two more sons in the UK. Harbans Kaur had never had a paid job since moving to Wolverhampton. Her first language is Punjabi, and she could not speak or understand English. At the time of her interview, Harbans Kaur and her husband had been living together, alone, for 8 years. Their children all lived away from home but were in very close proximity. She had been caring for her husband, who had a diagnosis of vascular dementia, for approximately 4 years. Her youngest son was the registered carer as he was the person who dealt with his father’s paperwork, medications and so on. Harbans Kaur was thus a hidden carer as she was not known to services. Formal support from services included regular visits from the Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) to give medication and advice. She did, however, have informal support from her two eldest sons. Harbans Kaur participated in two narrative interviews. Her first interview began with the following question: Tell me about when you first started noticing symptoms of dementia. For example, memory loss or unusual behaviour in your husband and how the

Narratives as talking therapy 213 care-giving commenced, up until the present … . Talk me through it from the start, up until now … . Tell me what happened. Harbans Kaur’s immediate response to this question was: We used to have one of those old fridges, something broke and it was leaking gas, the gas got into my ears. When I couldn’t hear, we went to the doctors. The doctors at the hospital checked my ears and they said it’s nothing, nothing. So, I stayed like this for ages. Firstly, they don’t care and secondly, you have to take someone with you who can speak English, which is difficult. Though she raised some important points about language barriers in engaging with social and medical services, it was striking to see that Harbans Kaur delved into a conversation about herself – evidencing a clear need for her to express the current issues she was experiencing. Once she summed these up, Harbans Kaur was asked about her husband’s condition again and how she first found out about it. She began to tell their story with minimal intervention needed. References were made to her coping mechanisms with his condition, highlighting the importance of talking as therapy: I knit as well [she laughs]. My time passes so much doing that. Look, I’m knitting this [she shows me a cardigan close to being finished]. I always leave this here next to me and when I feel like it, I do it. When I’m just sitting at home I start doing this – I knit. If no one is going to talk to you what else can you do? He [husband] doesn’t talk to me; he just sits quietly. I pass time like this. Her second interview took pace one week later with the starting question: ‘As you are aware, today’s interview is about your life history. Tell me about your life in India before you came to the UK … . Start from your earliest memory.’ As recorded in my field notes, there was a long silence before Harbans Kaur said, ‘where I was married, I lived there.’ Another prolonged silence prompted the researcher to ask, ‘where were you born?’ This prompted Harbans into a narrative about her life history. As is to be expected with narrative interviews, many areas were covered but, once again, elements of her narrative made reference to ‘talking’: ‘my son got ill and I didn’t have the things I needed in the house. The things I am telling you now, I have never told anyone. There was never enough food in the house …’. Her story continued, and she naturally moved into the time she came to Wolverhampton to join her husband. She stated: At first, I felt really uncomfortable. He [husband] used to go to the market and take the children with him. I used to sit at home and cry. I didn’t know anyone here. There weren’t many Asian women here – I don’t

214 Karan Jutlla remember any when I came. How were you supposed to like it here? Always inside, always inside. I never worked outside. But I got used to it slowly. Harbans Kaur shared many memories that were emotional. At times she laughed; at other times she cried. Her interview was moving as I discovered, as the researcher, the isolation and loneliness that results for some people from migration. She celebrated her country of birth in her narrative and equally acknowledged that the UK is the best place to grow old due to the health services available for older people. She concluded her interview by highlighting the importance of research with elderly people who live on their own, claiming the world to be a ‘bad place, full of fools and dangerous people who don’t think that there is an elderly couple living on their own’. She brought her interview to an end some 2 hours later stating: You can finish now, I’ve told you everything that I can remember. I had treatment for my ears today, by the way [she laughs], and a nice talk too. Thank you for coming to see me again. It was nice. Harbans Kaur’s experiences of isolation and loneliness were similar to those of other older migrant women who took part in the research. They shared amongst themselves common stories of arriving in the UK with little in terms of social capital and of remaining in the house. However, even though older migrant men created and participated in a migrant community upon arrival, they too emphasised the benefits of ‘talking.’ The example here is Boota Singh. Boota Singh At the time of his interview, Boota Singh was an 83-year-old man. He was born in a village in the Punjab in India. At the age of 22, he migrated to Singapore for an employment opportunity. He lived there for 5 years whilst working as a chef. Boota Singh then returned to the Punjab to get married and, shortly after, he migrated directly to Wolverhampton, again for an employment opportunity. Four years later he sent for his wife to join him in Wolverhampton. Boota Singh was thus twice a migrant. He had lived in Wolverhampton for 51 years and had always worked in foundries on the production line. He is now retired. Boota Singh’s first language is Punjabi: he understands very basic English but cannot speak it. He cared for his wife who, although she had been unwell for 15 years, had been living with dementia for the last 5. He also had a son who had mental health problems who, although he had his own flat, often stayed with his parents. His other children, one son and two daughters, were married and lived separately from Boota Singh and his wife. He was receiving formal support from services to assist with the care for his wife and had little support from family members or friends. Formal support services included

Narratives as talking therapy 215 formal carers to help with his wife’s personal hygiene, the use of day care three days a week for his wife, and regular visits from the CPN. In a way familiar from Harbans Kaur’s interview, Boota Singh outlined the difficulties of not having anyone to talk to: All anyone wants is a moment of happiness. When you’ve had so much pain, this is what happens – you become trapped in your own thoughts and this is how your time passes. At night, when you wake up from sleeping, your thoughts automatically go there. Then you can’t go back to sleep and your head starts spinning with thoughts, your tiredness goes and you can’t wait to get up. This is what I do. What else can I do? This is how time passes. It’s not like I have anyone to talk to. (Interview 1) A shared theme amongst the migrant participants was this sense of loss of community, expressed by Boota Singh in the following words: Loads of our people [Asians] live close by but, Asians, you know, don’t help you. They just watch the fun and laugh. Nobody is anybody’s; no one does anything for anyone. No one asks you how you are, and hears you talk, without an ulterior motive. He concluded his first interview by stating: It’s really good you’re doing this. If you don’t ask, then who will? When I was told about what you’re doing, I thought, that’s good because it’s difficult: if I don’t look after her, then she will go into a hospital screaming and that’s not good for her. Thank you for listening to me. It feels good to talk without being worried you will be judged. Thank you. In his second interview, Boota Singh had no problem starting his narrative about his earliest memories in childhood. He became animated talking about his memories of the Punjab and later of Singapore. He talked passionately about how hard he worked and how much he enjoyed the open air and heat of his home country. He talked heavily about how his time is now a time that has passed by – a time when ‘people looked out for one another, they would give without wanting anything in return. They helped with food, gave supplies if you needed it. They stuck together’. This sense of loss of community was a strong theme throughout the migrant participants’ narratives; there was a sense that they were living in a metaphorical space that no longer exists. Consequently, loneliness and isolation was a common theme amongst the migrant participants. Yet, interestingly, loneliness and isolation were also expressed by the younger, British-born participants, although for different reasons. A pressure to conform to the roles and responsibilities of the community made these

216 Karan Jutlla participants feel that they could not talk to people about the difficulties they were facing. The example here is Ram Piari. Ram Piari Ram Piari was 44 years old at the time of her interview. She was born in Essex and moved to Wolverhampton for her arranged marriage when she was 24 years old. She has resided there ever since. Ram Piari’s father migrated to the UK in 1955 for better employment opportunities and, shortly afterwards, sent for his wife and daughter (Ram Piari’s elder sister). Ram Piari has one sister and one younger brother. Post-marriage, she had always resided with her motherin-law and father-in-law. She has one son who lived away at university and two daughters who lived at home. Ram was in part-time employment at the time of her interview. She cared for her father-in-law who had dementia and had needed care for the past 10 years. Ram Piari’s husband was the registered carer; prior to this recent arrangement, Ram Piari’s mother-in-law had been the registered carer: Ram Piari was thus a hidden carer. Her father-in-law was receiving formal support from services including formal carers to assist with personal hygiene and regular visits from the CPN. Although Ram Piari was receiving some informal support from family members, she did not consider their support to be helpful to their situation. Ram Piari again emphasised the importance of having someone to talk to. However, unlike the older participants, her employment meant that she could reach out to people outside the family and the community: and that’s the other issue I got … I can’t … I can discuss it [father-in-law’s dementia] with my husband but I feel like I’m talking about his dad at the end of the day. How can I talk about it? I’m inflicting pain on him. So there are a lot of things that I can’t talk to other people about … like in the community. That’s why I talk to … well, I’ve spoken to a colleague at work – a) she’s an ex-nurse and b) if there’s two of you sitting there, you tend to off-load. She’s the one who actually saw your article and she thought, oh well, perhaps this might help her in some way. Interestingly, even though she had peers to speak to at work, she expressed a sense similar to the home-bound interviewees of isolation and loneliness and of fear of being judged by the Asian community. When speaking about her father-in-law’s dementia and what is to come, she stated: With us as being Indians or Asians … it’s like the besthi (shame) if you turn around and say that I can’t cope with looking after this person any more. If we turned around and it got to the stage where dad needed feeding, washing, medication and bedpans and whatever else, I don’t think my husband could do it and to tell you the truth … I don’t know if I can do

Narratives as talking therapy 217 it. So it would mean putting him in a home. And it would be the besthi (shame) of that. People would actually point their finger and say look, look what so and so’s son did – threw him out the house. And I think that is a community attitude. Whereas I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen in the white population; I’m sure things like that would happen but people are more objective. They would turn around and say well, actually, yeah, perhaps it was too much responsibility for that one son or daughter-in-law to look after them, and probably he’s getting better treatment now than he would have been at home, but our community just really pressurises us. Consequently, Ram Piari felt that ‘whenever it comes to someone in the family, or in the community, you just stay quiet’. In addition to feeling judged, Ram Piari also explains the consequences of language difference and the fact that there is no word for dementia in Punjabi: ‘I mean, it’s very hard to explain: it’s like if you try and translate it into Punjabi and you say [five-second pause] ‘edha dhamak ney chaldah,’ you’re saying ‘his brain isn’t working’, but culturally the term is an insult, isn’t it?’ Once again, Ram Piari’s experience of becoming a carer brought with it a loss of connections and support from within the community. She emphasizes the myth that Asians ‘look after their own’: Nobody is going to come forward to volunteer their help. Although we say as Indians, you know, we’ve got this relation and that relation and we all live in one big happy family, when it comes down to needing family, it doesn’t actually happen. Like the other British-born participants, she also stated that with my in-laws, he came here in 1954 and she came here in 1961. They’ve come with the same attitudes and they haven’t moved on. You go to India and people of their generation have moved on. These people have still got those attitudes from 40, 50 years ago … you know, to keep things hidden and don’t bring shame to the family. My parents are the same. It was no surprise that, as the interview proceeded, Ram Piari too expressed her gratitude for the opportunity to talk: People ask you ‘how’s your dad?’ and you say ‘oh, well, you know, he’s not too good.’ And they say ‘oh, give him my best.’ And I walk off and think – if you really wanted to know I could be talking for four hours … […] … okay, so they can’t do anything about it. But sometimes, it’s just good to talk … […] … Which is really why I’m grateful to be here, speaking to you.

218 Karan Jutlla

Personal reflections The case studies cited above provide examples of participants making direct references to the importance of talking and their appreciation of the opportunity to do so. However, the stories told by the participants are far deeper than verbalised thoughts. The very process of talking freely led to the creation of narratives about sensitive topics never mentioned before. The interview was the participants’ haven – the place where they could express all that they are feeling without the fear of being judged. With each interview came a sense of relief from the participants that was not captured by the audio recorder. In my reflective commentary following Ram Piari’s final interview, I noted: Yesterday was indeed a very moving and touching interview. I must admit, I’m finding it difficult to find the words to explain what I felt and still feel after the interview. I remember sitting there taken aback from the ‘deepfulness’ of the interview. Ram Piari unravelled parts of her past that she had not really talked about before. As much as it breaks my heart to write this, she was abused as a child, has suffered postnatal depression and has even attempted suicide once. This interview was her counselling session where I was the ear that listened. I do believe that sometimes it helps to talk to a complete outsider about their problems because there is no risk of any repercussions or being judged. Taking part in this research provided a context for people to offload without their identity being revealed. Ram Piari cried in her interview when she talked about the abuse. Although she didn’t go into any great depth, the pain in her face and eyes was something that the Dictaphone could not capture. But it is in my head. My eyes wanted to fill with water because I was ‘into’ what she was saying – I could feel everything. I controlled my emotions and at the time took some deeps breaths and sat and listened with a very concerned face. I had to keep reminding myself of the situation that we were in – that I am a researcher and I am not there to intervene and/or provide solutions – but to just listen. That’s what I really appreciate about narrative interviews – they allow people to talk and have freedom of thought. I wasn’t in a situation where I needed to interrupt or change the subject because I needed to move on to the next question. I just allowed her to talk. It was her interview. It was her story. She finally regained ownership. Through the very act of telling a story, participants could give meaning to their experiences and make sense of them. Having time to reflect between interviews gave them time to put their experiences into context, leading to statements such as ‘perhaps that’s why [that] happened’ and ‘I can see now why …’. As a novice researcher, I did not envisage the amount of good that would come from employing narrative interviews – the hugs that participants gave you for listening, the look of appreciation in their eyes, the sense of relief from offloading and, most of all, their gentle smiles for realising through telling their

Narratives as talking therapy 219 own stories that they are doing incredibly well. As is clear from the interviews, caring for a person with dementia is a very challenging and tiring experience. An opportunity first of all to discuss and offload these experiences (interview 1), followed by an opportunity to talk about their own life history (interview 2), allowed participants to reidentify with themselves. Consequently, they could celebrate and share untold stories, particularly about migration, and provide insight into migrant communities living in the UK. Though their hardships were reflected in their stories, the happiness derived from someone wanting to know their stories was reflected in the researcher’s personal journey – for alongside their narratives ran the researcher’s personal narrative of the data collection process.

Concluding comments This research into Sikh carers of a family member with dementia has highlighted the problems of the cultural myth that Asian families will ‘look after their own’ (APPG 2013; Jutlla 2011; Department of Health 1998). This, together with the Sikh cultural norm of not discussing issues outside the family, has meant that many carers have remained hidden from social services. This research supports previous research that suggests there is a need for services to reach out to such communities and to ensure support is in place. Given the expected increase over the next several decades in the numbers of people from BAME communities living with dementia, it is highly important that interventions are developed that are both useful and effective for such communities. This chapter has drawn on data from the author’s doctoral research to provide an insight into the benefits of ‘narrative therapy’ not only for carers of a family member with dementia but also for a community that, due to its cultural norms and barriers, is not encouraged to talk openly or often is simply not heard. If creativity in later life is an ‘activity,’ then the very act of telling a story that has been untold is powerful. It not only gives coherence and meaning to an experience, but it lets individuals know that they are valued. Narratives as a ‘talking therapy’ are now recognised as a way of helping people ‘who are feeling distressed by difficult events in their lives’ (Mental Health Foundation 2017), which very clearly includes carers of people with dementia. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are evident in people from BAME communities – not just because they are caring for a person with dementia but also due to living in metaphorical spaces as a result of migration and conflicting cultural norms. The act of telling their story helps them not only to celebrate their lives but to reidentify with, and redefine, themselves as people. Based on this research, I argue that narrative therapy as an intervention is likely to prove incredibly beneficial for such communities.

References All Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia (2013) Dementia does not discriminate. London: APPG. Alzheimer’s Society (2014) Dementia UK: Update [report]. London: Alzheimer’s Society.

220 Karan Jutlla Andrews, M., C. Squire and M. Tambouke (2008) Doing Narrative Research. London: Sage. Atkinson, R. (2002) The life story interview. In Gubrium and Holstein (2002). 121– 140. Bauer, M. (1996) The narrative interview: Comments on a technique of qualitative data collection. Papers in Social Research Methods – Qualitative Series, Vol. 1. London: London School of Economics, Methodology Institute. Department of Health (1998) They Look After Their Own Don’t They? Inspection of Community Care Services for Black and Minority Ethnic Older People. London: Department of Health. Gardner, K. (2002) Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London. Oxford: Berg. Gubrium, J. F., and Holstein, J. A. (Eds) (2002) Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method. London: Sage. Jutlla, K., and N. Moreland (2007) Twice a Child III: The Experiences of Asian Carers of Older People with Dementia in Wolverhampton. West Midlands, UK: Fordementiaplus. Jutlla, K. (2011) Caring for a Person with Dementia: A qualitative Study of the Experiences of the Sikh Community in Wolverhampton. PhD thesis. Keele University, Staffordshire. Jutlla, K. (2013) Ethnicity and cultural diversity in dementia care: A review of the research. Journal of Dementia Care 21(2): 33–39. Knapp, M., M. Prince, E. Albanese, S. Banerjee, S. Dhanasiri, J. L. Fernández, C. Ferri, P. McCrone, T. Snell and R. Stewart (2007) Dementia UK: The Full Report. London: Alzheimer’s Society. La Fontaine, J., K. Jutlla, K. Read, D. Brooker and S. Evans (2016) The experiences, needs and outcomes for carers of people with dementia. Literature Review. [online]. Available from: http://www.thersas.org.uk/experiences-needs-outcomes-carers-peop le-dementia-literature-review-2016/. London: RSAS. Mental Health Foundation (2017) Talking Therapies. [online]. Available from: https:// www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/t/talking-therapies [Accessed 9 August 2017]. Morgan, A. (2000) What is Narrative Therapy. [online]. Dulwich Centre Publications. Available from: http://narrativetherapyworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ what-is-narrative-therapy-alice-morgan.pdf [Accessed 9 August 2017]. Moriarty, J., N. Sharif and J. Robinson (2011) Black and minority ethnic people with dementia and their access to support and services. Research Briefing. London: Social Care Institute for Excellence. Payne, M. (2000) Narrative Therapy: An Introduction for Counsellors. 2nd edition. London: Sage. Riessman, C. K. (1993) Narrative Analysis. London: Sage. Seabrooke, V., and A. Milne (2004) Culture and Care in Dementia: A Study of the Asian Community in Northwest Kent. London: The Mental Health Foundation. Singh, G., and D. S. Tatla (2006) Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community. London: Zed Books. Wengraf, T. (2006) Interviewing for Life-histories, Lived Situations and Personal Experiencing: The Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method (BNIM). London: London East Research Institute. Whitman, L. (2010) Telling Tales about Dementia: Experiences of Caring. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Wolverhampton City Council (2013) Research and Information Briefing: 2011 Census R4 Briefing V3. Wolverhampton: Wolverhampton City Council.

Part V

Old age, creativity and the late city

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16 ‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ Ian McKay and the conserving radicalism of the Gorton Visual Arts Group, public artists in later life John Miles Introduction: neighbourhood characteristics Whether unpicking the proposal of a generic ‘late style’ (McMullan and Smiles 2016) or questioning the inevitability of ‘revealed weaknesses of conception and execution’ in the work of older artists (Smiles 2016, p. 17), commentators on late-life creativity tend to focus on the experience of change and development across the individual life-course. In this chapter I consider the work of the Gorton Visual Arts Group (GVAG) and their lead artist, Ian McKay.1 In doing so I seek to externalise creativity and artistic practice, locating it first within the group members’ response to drastic changes in their neighbourhood over half a century and then within the evolving social engagements that result from their interventions. My account of creativity therefore draws on social and, to a degree, communal impulses and processes (Williams 1961), its relation to later life determined by the shared ground of biography, memory and the impact of formative events. Gorton is a former industrial district in east Manchester, UK, with a distinctive identity (GEC 2010; Carley 2012). I met the group there while researching government initiatives to encourage intergenerational contact (Miles 2014). GVAG has now been in existence for 11 years, and despite the intentions of its original sponsors it has always been made up primarily of older people. Ten of the original twenty members are still involved, the eldest now well over 90. Their repeated engagement with local schools has offered them a distinctive profile as elders within the neighbourhood’s changing demographic profile. Whether among their families, friends and neighbours or in their more public roles, group members draw on, maintain and review many of the values and experiences with which they grew up. The mutual support characteristic of childhoods lived in scarcity, of women’s home lives and of the industrial workplace is at the heart of this ethos. The generational – i.e. historical – identity of GVAG reflects the drastic changes experienced following the collapse of mining and heavy industry in the

224 John Miles locality from the 1960s. For its oldest residents the past is at the centre of the most powerful story about Gorton: There was plenty of work … . You had Beyer-Peacock the locomotive firm, Gorton Tank, Crossley Motors, [all] within a three-quarter mile of where I was born. English Steel, Mather and Platts, all of them big factories … . You’re talking skilled jobs then … for twenty thousand people … . And that area now? What is it now? It’s a wasteland. Absolutely nothing. Much of GVAG’s activity memorialises this loss, seeking the area’s reenchantment in an ongoing echo of the 20-year-old campaign to restore the derelict Franciscan Monastery (Griffin 2007; Fogg 2012; Hyland 2013). For several years this restoration – a ‘healing’ according to one of my respondents (Miles 2014) – brought a coherence to local regeneration, raising funds for youth and community work. A focus on the past (Miles 2014) tends to characterise the cultural narratives drawn on by many older residents active in the area’s small associations and networks (Grant 2009; Miles 2014). ‘Bonding capital’ (Putnam 2000) arises through the connectedness of people who know and trust each other. While these participants may try to re-enact an earlier ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1977; Taylor et al. 1996), such social capital is also proposed as a prerequisite for the development of ‘bridging capital’, which is articulated in the kinds of social action needed to establish connectedness across deeper social divisions (Putnam 2000; Larsen 2004). In 2001 the population of Gorton North ward was 95 per cent white; now black and minority ethnic communities comprise almost half the total (MCC 2011). The ward has higher proportions of pensioners and children (more than 50 per cent of them in poverty) than does Manchester as a whole (MCC 2011). The challenge of preserving established patterns of association while adapting to engage newer settlers remains. A well-embedded group like GVAG offers scope for new social formations and alliances to emerge.

Art is for everyone A movement to make the arts more accessible took shape in the nineteenth century. Critics including Arnold (1869/2009) and Ruskin proposed that the appreciation of art should be open to the whole of society, making ‘high culture’ a public responsibility (a perspective evident still in the UK government’s decision in 2001 to make gallery and museum access free). Subsequently, a more radical tradition proposed a democratised artistic practice within a schema for social change (Williams 1961) – the term ‘community arts’ came into use around 1970 (Matarasso 2013), identified with ‘the culture as the common expression of a people, whose values emerge from below, and are not imposed from above’ (Hewison 2014, p. 34).

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 225 Despite this bottom-up orientation, community artists generally distinguish themselves from the voluntary activity of amateur artists (Hewison 2014). Indeed, since the 1990s, community arts has become increasingly co-opted within state-sponsored regeneration, community cohesion and public health initiatives, diversifying its practice in response to the challenge of the internet and the rise of the ‘creative industries’ (Matarasso 2013) while emphasising participation and benefiting through ‘art’ rather than from it (Basting 2009). Though they may often function as a palliative for corporate objectives (Matarasso 2013, p. 226), participatory practices can still address the shared concerns that mobilise people to improve where they live, and sometimes achieve high levels of involvement (Paterson 2017). In Britain, post-war cultural policy has often been dominated by themes of ‘nature and beauty’ (Hewison 1995, p. 22). Community-oriented public artists have tried to refocus this concern for place and heritage by bringing together environmental conservation with the commemoration of popular resistance (Dunn and Leeson 1997). A decade ago Leeson (2008) reviewed the changes since the 1980s. She identified those propositions from the earlier period that still retained their value – the benefits arising from radical work by artists and ‘the power of collaboration and collective action’. She welcomed both the fact that excellence and community are no longer viewed as ‘incompatible’ and the greater capacity for women and minority communities to take part and be heard (Leeson 2008). Within these processes artists working specifically with older people have been in a minority. One early exemplar aimed to reconcile the imperatives of participation and artistic practice by combining elements of reminiscence, lifelong learning and therapeutic intent for purposes of community renewal through theatre work (Schweitzer 2007). She established an enduring template which has proved influential beyond the field of performance. More dramatically, Loraine Leeson’s recent environmentally focused projects with the older men’s group The Geezers originated with their desire to reinvestigate the tidal flow of the Thames as a source of renewable energy (Leeson 2015). Her work with them involved a 3-year collaboration with academics, engineers and local school students and concluded with the testing of a water turbine opposite the House of Commons. Leeson’s collaborative approach to this project facilitated the engagement of technicians and designers alongside a cross-generational public. The project has reinforced her earlier point that a decline in radical intent among community artists over the last two decades has been partly compensated for by ‘a wider acceptance of the social value of art in the public domain’ (Leeson 2008).

The origin and evolution of Gorton Visual Arts Group The refurbishment of the Grade II-listed Gorton Monastery – a High Gothic ‘masterpiece’ designed by Edward Pugin and completed by volunteer contributions and labour in 1872 – triggered the setting-up of Gorton Visual Arts

226 John Miles Group.2 Appointed as its ‘artist in residence’ in 2006, lead artist Ian McKay took no fee but had access to a free studio in the former school the Monastery used as its community base. He established a group of around 20 members. Early projects included a Whit Walks banner for the Gorton 100 celebrations in 2009, wallpaper designs (‘Our Ouse’), woodcuts of the nearby Victoria Baths and a screen-print celebration of a much-loved local bus-route. At the heart of the group’s early achievement were two ambitious mosaics. The first, which documented the former Belle Vue amusement park, still frames the entrances to Gorton Market, new-built under the planning gain from the redevelopment of Hyde Road in 2008. The second, commemorating the locomotive engineering firm Beyer Peacock, was installed on two nearby sheltered blocks (GVAG 2010). More recent projects have concerned the nearby Bradford Colliery (GVAG 2013) and the local munitions industry during World War One (GVAG 2015). Reporting from the installation of the Belle Vue murals, Phil Griffin found it ‘difficult to match this relaxed band of people in their converted – not to say congested – classrooms with the scale and quality of the work they have produced’ (Griffin 2008). Weekly studio sessions at Gorton Visual Arts Group are industrious and convivial. Although the group has a fixed membership (now of around a dozen people) its inclusive practice underpins the involvement of learning disabled people and their sessional work with local community groups. Forced to leave its original premises in 2012 whilst incurring a debt to its landlords, GVAG has led a precarious existence and the group now meets weekly in the rundown former aviary in Debdale Park. There is a monthly committee meeting and a core group play important roles as informal ambassadors. At the annual Gorton Carnival, for example, the studio opens on the first Sunday in September. In 2015 McKay conducted a free screen-printing session there. Two members leafleted the procession to advertise it while three others ran a bric-a-brac stall which raised £50. McKay invited two members of the public to get involved in a forthcoming project; a local painter dropped in, and an official from a nearby church negotiated terms for a future workshop. At the 2017 event people of all ages worked alongside members on a mosaic commissioned for the Park’s lodge. Representatives from two schools new to GVAG showed an interest in future collaboration. Despite very bad weather the stall raised £104.

Something I wanted to do all my life The outlook and experience of one of GVAG’s key members are worth closer examination. For Marie Koudellas, meaningful involvement in the arts only became possible in later life: When it come to going to high school, there was no chance. Because of family circumstances you had to get out to work, to keep the younger children … And I’d always, always, wanted to paint, and one of our

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 227

Figure 16.1 Studio work on the batik picnic blankets in August 2017

teachers at school asked me if I would like to go to art school … And I didn’t even know what art school was. Didn’t know there was such a thing as art school. I went home and said to me to dad “I’m going to art school”. And he said “what so-and-so art school? That won’t keep these kids. You have to get out to work.” And my dad died when I was nineteen. So I had to look after the younger ones then. Joining GVAG had enabled Koudellas, born in 1932, to do what she described as ‘what I wanted to do all my life but haven't been able to’. She had lived a full life, supporting her learning disabled son Peter (also a GVAG foundermember), fighting to save the family house from demolition in the 1970s and later serving as a school governor, until, as she notes, I got to the age of 68, and decided to go to adult education. But to be honest I didn’t get a lot out of it. It was mainly just painting flowers, which I didn’t want. And then Ilma Scantlebury [a Gorton Monastery trustee] … set up a little art group with myself and some other ladies in a local centre … . And then she set this [GVAG] up with Ian here … . And I’ve been coming from day one. And that’s it, and I love it. I can’t wait for Monday to come. Her participation had thus been shaped as much by the social, historical and local context and by the productivity of GVAG and the camaraderie it created as through the acquisition and execution of an expressive skill. Her triumph at realising a long-deferred opportunity was palpable:

228 John Miles I get satisfaction for a start … . I’d had no connection with art, from being at school … . During the war I was at school, and so from then on I’ve been so busy with the family and – well, families, really when I come to think about it – I’ve run clubs for people with learning disabilities for years. I’ve been so involved with so many other things that I’ve never had chance to do any drawing, apart from drawing birds for our children … . I am getting a lot out of it. I feel that I’ve done what I should’ve done. But I do regret that I wasn’t … able to go on to art school or even to university to do a fine arts degree. Because I could’ve done so much more … But I’m still happy with what I’m doing now.

The working practice: narrative, technique and style GVAG is not what Koudellas would call ‘adult education’: it is more like a workplace than a class (GVAG 2010). From the outset McKay, who is locally born, saw the brief as a way of continuing his own work (Griffin 2008) by placing this project at the centre of his own practice. The group’s loyalty to the project has helped realise McKay’s collaborative approach in ways he did not foresee: The thing is they will turn their hands to anything. Kids, students aren’t necessarily like that. Our group gets on with it. I still can’t believe we got the Belle Vue mosaics finished on time. But we did. And that’s part of the commitment. (Griffin 2008) Speaking at the installation of the Belle Vue mosaics, McKay quoted RosenstockHuessy: ‘If you are always looking backwards you will lose the sight in one eye. If you never look back, you will lose the sight in both’.3 This retrospective cast underpins the symbiosis with the members who ‘will turn their hands to whatever Ian has dreamt up and raised the money for’ (Griffin 2008). The group may in fact best be understood as a collective of volunteers working within an artist’s studio (Sennett 2008). McKay spent 20 years in the commercial sector and came to his fine arts training late. His most complex briefs often relate to found objects or to members’ personal narratives. A great lover of the seaside, he has responded to the decline of the old resorts in his own work, its carefully filtered nostalgia reflecting the cultural connections between him and the group: If you live in an inner city area there’s a massive sense of freedom when you go to the seaside because obviously you’ve got – beach, sea, sky – space … . ‘Kite’ was written because of my personal experience with the group members at sea-side resorts, and how they behave. And quite often they do revert back to their childhood, and I’ve watched that and I’ve also watched their reaction when there’s young people on the beach, that’s

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 229 flying a kite or building a sand-castle. How they reminisce about their own experiences. These kites that the [group] are making are obviously very personal … . Such a simple object, a little bit of material and a couple of sticks and a piece of string, flying in the air. That sense of freedom. You’re unshackled. (GVAG 2016) McKay’s described his role in ‘Kite’ as prompting these narratives into visual form: It starts with the group members themselves. Writing a story. Picking out images from the story. The story will … determine an image. Now I will suggest it, go along that route and … encourage them to do some research … . I’ll help with that. I’ll do some – like, found imagery that fits in with that element of the story – but encourage them to do that as well. Then we’ll take it from there … . If narrative is important, so also is the choice of medium: I want ‘em to use a variety of … techniques to produce the imagery rather than just paint it. I want ‘em to screen-print it on or wood-cut … . I’d make us a list and say, there’s your list, there’s your alternatives. Don’t just all go for the same one – think about which one you’d like and go with that. So they’re all different. And then we’ll produce the kites. When there are no commissions, McKay operates a ‘rolling programme’ of training. During one such interlude he had invited the group into the park to explore the simplicity of paint … OK so we took ‘em in the park with cameras, some paper, sketch, some pens and pencils – more so the cameras. Because you can [then work from] landscape photographs. Oh yeah – colour studies. Give ‘em some paints. Pick colours – in the park. Mix the colour. Bang it down. Put an indication where it’s come from, bring it back – done this before, when I divided a given image, blew it up, divided it all up into segments [a project based on roofs in the city] … [Now] let’s formulate some colours, right? Five colours. That colour. That colour. Ask them to mix those colours. There’s your palette. Five colours there … . There you’ve got some colour – don’t look over your shoulder! Put the colours where you think they should go. You’re fighting against what you think … should be right. Fight against it. Go with it. Show me examples of paint what you know – Cezanne, Matisse – utilisation of colours … . Blank everybody [else]. Don’t look at whoever’s – how they are using the colour (same colour as you) – you focus on your own … . Just go for the colour.

230 John Miles This approach raises the question of style. ‘Park Life’ has since evolved to become a self-directed commission. Back in the studio, members had to reconcile their individual makings with a collective outcome, cutting up and reassembling individual pieces within McKay’s design. The results have appeared as mounted canvases, as shopping bags and, printed over with the verbal responses of local children, as lined picnic blankets (GVAG 2017). The canvases are distinctive. The example below (Figure16.2) responds to the reservoirs which dominate the east of the Park. The work of five members is dramatically aligned to make the most of the deliberately limited palette. The purple and red elements establish a horizon and work concertedly from the left to dominate the concluding panel. This movement can be seen to reject – without defeating – the more variegated impressionistic yellows and greens which shape the four sections to the left. By and large, the sky remains empty, enhancing the power of the beautifully executed panel fourth from the left, the one which most directly communicates reflection in water. The whole picture retains a palpable three-way tension: between that symbolism of fecundity turning to bleakness in the movement from left to right, in the rich and distinct character of the individual panels and in the overall evocation of above and below.4

Figure 16.2 One of the Park Life canvases mounted on the Aviary corridor wall at Debdale Park The members’ outlook: generation, expectation and experience

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 231 GVAG members have been purposeful and instrumental in helping to shape the group’s ethos. Early on, Marie Koudellas had found herself asserting the group’s collective purpose: I did have a few words with a lady … . I think, everybody should pull together when you’re doing something … . It shouldn’t be left just to one or two people to do things. Everybody should pull together. There again … I don’t think she wanted to do projects. She liked to do her own work – which she could do in her own house really. In this way GVAG members elect to be practitioner-citizens, enacting their own group discipline and supporting the studio management. But the work also calls for an exploratory, outgoing approach, and McKay’s ongoing, heavy time commitment is the price he pays for the initial prophetic strategy he adopted: ‘I’m gonna throw the kitchen sink at yer’. Although McKay, whose father and uncle both worked in industry locally, had relatively easy access to retraining, he has been sensitive to the social realities keenly felt by GVAG members, who recognize him as their vital intermediary. Koudellas had once thought the group worked because the members were of an age but her perception had changed, in part as a response to McKay’s influence: We’ve changed a little bit now … A lot of that is to do with Ian … because of his attitude … He’s got a good family, and he thinks the world of that family … And, so to him, anybody’s welcome. He’s one of those people that likes everybody. The second factor had been the involvement of younger people. Initially, on larger projects McKay had brought in specialists and students and his fine arttrained son Andrew has played an increasingly important role as support artist. Like many older Gorton residents, Marie has found the public behaviour of teenage children disturbing, but had now put some of her feelings of alarm aside: Going into the schools, I could see the difference. That not all children were like that, so that … made me feel better. Because I was getting a bit, ‘Ooh this world’s terrible!’ and, you know, like you do ‘What we going to see next?’ every time you open the paper. Like this looting that's gone on now. And I think perhaps if children meet older people more when they're young, they’ll perhaps be a little bit more respectful when they get a bit older. Although McKay sets the direction, he leaves many aspects of solidarity to the group. ‘I never pry’, he would say of the situations when group members unexpectedly withdraw. He had also disagreed with, but respected, the GVAG committee’s decision to pay off the group’s rent arrears. When members

232 John Miles represent the Group, they do so with an untutored authenticity. Speaking at a seminar on cultural development organised by the City Council in 2011, Koudellas explained that: the way to go about it, to my mind, is to go to places like ours, our group, that’s well established. See what we do, what people like us do. There’s not only us, there’s other groups, I know. See what we already do, and then take it from there. The social and expressive benefits of membership are intertwined. Elaine Davis had had to give up work after a heart attack, and then found the group important during a bereavement. She became involved after contributing photographs when GVAG made a banner for the Whit Walks, and she joined the group at McKay’s invitation following an induction class: ‘I really started to enjoy it – he has this way of bringing out the best in you’. She drew confidence from learning that others can make mistakes and found from local reactions that ‘other people become more supportive … . So it sort of grows into a community’. A mother of three who once managed amateur football teams with her husband, she had found time spent with her elders had altered her perceptions: ‘Life isn’t finished. It’s just the opposite. It’s enhanced by age – you find you’ve got more time, and you enjoy life more.’ While for Koudellas the group had meant the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, the mode for Davis has been more that of a life-review or voyage of self-discovery. She had even submitted a painting to a gallery show.

What group membership affords As artists, GVAG members are reticent about their practice. Deflecting a question about her skills and abilities, one told me how ‘they all worked on the same thing’, while another explained that ‘there’s those who are good at drawing – I’m not a particularly good drawer, though I can draw better than I could – but those who are good are always willing to help those who aren’t as good’. A former brick-layer was more comfortable explaining to me how the mosaics had been mounted than his feelings about making them. This reticence may reflect an ongoing sense of being outsiders to ‘art’5. But when members refer to ‘fun’,‘satisfaction’ and ‘confidence’, they also imply an awareness of accomplishment. While GVAG offers a framework within which to understand community arts from a non-professional point of view, it can be difficult to tease out the relationship between personal expressiveness and the more solidaristic components. McKay’s instructions often emphasise intuition and spontaneity more than habit and discipline, and his studio model focuses members on a common task rather than a common standard. This is an approach which carries some risk. The demanding Munitions project, for which the group worked with paint, textiles and lettering (GVAG 2015), produced a series of individuallydesigned banners. The overall result was a project of high ambition where

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 233 differences in interpretation, style and quality diminished the overall, ‘public’ impact. On the other hand, some of the individual work was vivid and dramatic, even mysterious, and represented women more prominently than in the early, male-dominated imagery from the big mosaics. By contrast, the Bradford Pit Project (GVAG 2013), exhibited in Beswick Library in 2013, an assemblage of woodcut material within McKay’s overall design, was a fully-realised studio collaboration, one that anticipated the methods discussed in relation to Figure 16.2 above. As lead artist, McKay’s vocation since completing his fine art training has been to organise and help realise the expressive labour of others. It is not farfetched to see in this the precept that ‘in each several profession, no master should be too proud to do its hardest work’ (Ruskin 1853/1997, p. 91) or to identify it with the way Antonio Stradivarius ‘was everywhere present … and occupied himself in the smallest details in the production of his violins’ (Sennett 2008, p. 76). As the ‘studio-master’, McKay’s way of addressing his members’ diverse capabilities echoes Ruskin’s concern to ‘take their thoughts as they give them’: Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without painful effort, and no more. Above all, demand no refinement of execution where there is no thought … . Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the practical purpose be answered … . (Ruskin 1853/1997, p. 89) Public art requires purpose and direction – an end product to be endorsed (or rejected) by its commissioners or the community for which it is intended. By adopting a levelling approach and aligning his own experimentalism with his expectations of the group McKay has been radical and energising: What I was throwing at people was something they’d not done before in terms of utilising materials. I wanted them to be as expressive as they possibly could. It wasn’t for people who preferred [watercolours or classes]. It wasn’t ever gonna give any certificates for passing so many sessions. It was gonna be this focus on projects and send ‘em out as one and work with a lot of people … . If his own inspiration can come from ‘seeing somebody applying materials that I’ve got no knowledge about’, GVAG members are expected to understand their own situation in a similar way – and extend this to their dealings with others in open workshops. I will discuss next how in a widening demonstration of reciprocity group members have sometimes to hold authority themselves.

Outreach: turning towards a community for all ages I think a lot of people have a preconception of older people – like they’re cranky and they don’t like young people because they hang on the streets and

234 John Miles cause trouble. They’re too loud. No …. What I’ve seen here it’s not the case – they’re very open-minded, and they’re keen to work with people … .

McKay has an idealist’s conviction, the outlook of someone trusting the best in himself and speaking for the best in others, who began from the values he expected to elicit within the group: when you do a project and everybody’s together, working as one, some people, and particularly people with learning difficulties – most members can see perhaps they need a bit more help…. So they carry ‘em through, and I think that’s always an aim of this group. He has always expected members to take on new responsibilities: ‘when we’ve worked with young people and other groups [such as asylum seekers] I’m always keen that the members themselves deliver that [support]’. He wanted GVAG ‘to develop new skills for the members but also for these to be shared’. Initially he aimed only to be present on the first session of an outreach project, but the aim for members ‘to deliver the new skills, not me’ has become more difficult to realise in practice. Members often attend public functions in smart black hoodies printed with the GVAG logo. The deliberate incongruity is exemplified by Rene Boyer, a tiny woman of 95 whose skill with paint McKay often extols. Here he casts the older woman in an iconic role, as resilient, shaming the faint-hearted: When we were visiting the schools [the Group] all have their hoodies on. Now, with respect, Rene in her black hoodie looks like ET. She does. And it’s massive on her … . And the kids – they see her in this big hoodie and she’s the first point of call, you know… One lad asked her ‘How did you do that?’ Meaning that heavy clumsy-looking thing with the big health and safety issues. Smashing up tiles. Big things. Clipping. ‘How did you do that?’ But she just said ‘With great difficulty. But we persevere. And you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.’ And you can see the kids going ‘Yeah – we could do that’. Other GVAG members have found themselves rather more exposed. Margaret Pattison and Rita Oakley took up an invitation to run a weekly knitting session at a primary school. Despite their lifelong experience of the craft, they had had to develop a spontaneous pedagogy and review their own attitudes and expectations: Some of them are quite advanced, aren’t they, these kiddies nowadays? And you lose touch with that. So you [mustn’t] look down on them. It’s the way you speak. You have to speak to them as well [so] that they understand you like an adult in a way, if you speak not talking down to them. And I think they felt they could talk to us. Because they were a bit

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 235 wary at first … [which is] ok. You can understand that. But then when they got used they were fine. Just treated us as normal. One or two members, notably Rita Oakley, described sometimes buttoning their lip in conversation with their grandchildren. Such reflective moral education is vital to the kind of trajectory Leeson has proposed for community public arts and if GVAG is to contribute overtly to the recovery of Putnam’s ‘binding capital’ within the cross-cultural linkages on which Gorton must now depend as it works through its new demographic reality. Elaine Davies describes the risk of stereotyping: You get children walking round with hoodies, and old people immediately go, ‘look at that crowd’. And they might be just meeting to have a game of football. They might be meeting to just go on their bikes. But they see a group of children – you know, teenagers on their bikes, and they might be ten, fifteen of them – and they automatically believe, ‘Oh you know, they’re up to no good’. So I think the education needs both sides.

Widening the options for the future Alongside members’ weekly subscriptions, outreach work has become the main source of the group’s limited income. In 2012 McKay began planning a new initiative, proposing a tapestry to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre. The group has already completed a pilot. Working with school students, they produced plaster casts of objects – such as a shoe or a mobile phone (see Figure 16.3) – which might be dropped now by a crowd fleeing in similar circumstances to the one which had gathered to hear Orator Hunt in St Peter’s Fields on 16 August 1819 (Marlow 1969). I spoke to members after a Peterloo anniversary event in 2013 and found them enthusiastic about the project and the cause: one or two had worn the ‘red Phrygian cap’ then favoured by early nineteenth-century women radicals (Epstein 2002). McKay intended the new project to have a clear regional focus, noting that: ‘If we ever get to produce this tapestry I want it to be divided quite easily so [the work] does go to [the Burys] … the Rochdales, the Stockports, the Saddleworths, the Salfords, the Boltons, the Wigans, wherever’. He had been researching prospective partners and attended a Heritage Lottery planning network for a while. He intended to bring in the Booth Centre and the Mustard Tree, local projects that ‘provide shelter for people who are homeless’. And he wanted ‘to involve ordinary people that come together and do a little bit of sewing and knitting’. Characteristically, he had found such groups in Gorton. A woman had come to a workshop ‘who runs several knitting groups. She was amazed to hear that the Heritage Lottery [project] would be funded and she wouldn’t have to scavenge for materials.’ Here the professionally-led model of community arts proposes an overlap with the field of amateur practice, expanding beyond the studio.

236 John Miles

Figure 16.3 ‘Chaos’ exhibited at Gorton Monastery in 2012

The systemic framework which underpins the Peterloo project would allow GVAG to ‘age’ in company with embroidery students and knitting groups and with communities from outside Gorton working in parallel to its own singular narrative. The regional focus and deliberate invocation of historical struggles offer an arena in which present concerns could be more clearly articulated. What are the contemporary resonances for GVAG – an association primarily of women, living in a poor neighbourhood repeatedly settled by political refugees – of a suffrage campaign that took place 200 years ago?

Conclusion The Gorton Visual Arts Group’s priorities and values reflect its members’ knowledge and experience of the skilled workplaces of the area’s past and of the mutual support working class people asserted within them. They contribute to an ethos of ‘conserving radicalism’, a term used to identify a global response among communities resisting destructive change and ‘imposed instability’ in the neo-liberal era (Blackwell and Seabrook 1993, p. 143). Much of the work of the Gorton Visual Arts Group can be said to affirm ‘the inescapable and inexpungable character of tradition, the burden and buoyancy of that which is transmitted from the past to the present’ (West 1995, p. 221). But they, like all of us, are then confronted with the way that ‘tradition can be both a

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 237 smothering and a liberating affair, depending on which traditions are being invoked, internalized and invented’ (West 1995, p. 221). But if their work articulates shared narratives, founded partly on direct recall, it has also always been based around a commitment to research and to dialogue. By further extending their collaborative approach, GVAG might increasingly help address West’s liberating imperative. The significance of GVAG’s practice has been recognised in Gorton now for over a decade. Several permanent installations remain in place: work is displayed in the Grange Community Centre in Beswick and in local schools and colleges. McKay’s approach has tended to bind him and the group within a commemorative mode, an alignment which may restrict new stimuli and bypass some of the realities of an area increasingly home to younger black and minority ethnic populations. Members play a legitimate role as custodians of a vanished order but Gorton is mutating rapidly and the ritual telling over of its past may limit their capability as elders. What, for example, is happening in the lives of the young? Among struggling parents? In the experience of refugees? McKay is as conscious of these issues as he is of the frailty and slowing down that some members now experience. His response has been to turn outwards to enfranchise new participants. By fostering a membership-based project, McKay has distanced himself from the claim to offer universal access. By developing an alternative to the art class through a disciplined mediatory practice, Gorton Visual Arts Group has revived the disciplines of the early modern workplace (Sennett 2008). This approach questions the primacy often given to innovation and the more superficial discourses of participation. It supports a labour-oriented approach closer to an interpretation of art as ‘imitation’ rather than of originality or imagination (Williams 1961, p. 20), fostering shared responsibility as much as individual creativity while also connecting to traditions of non-professional practice (such as well-dressing in the nearby Peak District or the costume-making that took place in the early years of the Notting Hill Carnival). Nevertheless, GVAG has developed solutions to the problem of relating individual contributions to an overall statement. The turn to paint has resulted in work which offers multiple perspectives to generate emotional and imaginative complexity. In this chapter I have explored four achievements. The first has been the outcome of Ian McKay’s sustained commitment to exploring place through visual means. The second has come from his successful engagement of a group of local older people, predominantly women, within a studio-based public arts project. The third is in the accomplishment of these goals without core funding. The fourth is more subtle: it is in the extensive penetration of the local area, its walls, meeting-points and places of assembly. In their shared commitment to a disciplined blending of visual ideas and local experience, and with their ongoing invitation to others take part, the Gorton Visual Arts Group offers a platform from which others can build and develop new stories in a time of severe austerity and rapid change. If there are unanswered questions, they can be focused on age and style. The group’s ethos is rooted in a common experience of becoming adults and of working and rearing children rather than

238 John Miles of later life. Becoming and being old has not been the subject of their work. Although members work hard to set aside feelings of moral superiority grounded in their experience of social arrangements in the past (cf. Jerrome 1992), there is no doubt they draw pride and conviction from those experiences and the belief that life was once simpler and harder than it now is. Stylistically, their work has been figurative and traditional; panoramic in the big mosaics in a way that evokes the Victorian tradition of Frith or Holman Hunt rather than the modernism of Leger. GVAG’s non-figurative work draws more from decoration and pattern and the traditions of poster art than it does from abstraction. Nevertheless it is often radical in visual terms. Local acceptance and enthusiasm for the group’s work may be linked in part to an understanding of the context: the knowledge that these artists are one’s near neighbours may mediate otherwise unacceptable styles and indicate a mutability to taste. This highlights again the extent to which, as a set of committed and disciplined practitioners, the group has played a sustained and meaningful role in local cultural life. It has been McKay’s achievement to avoid this becoming a burdensome or predictable responsibility for the surviving members. In this instance, ‘old-age style’ – defined by ‘contingency, not transcendence’ (McMullan and Smiles 2016, p. 7) – has genuinely evolved ‘as something which is directly or indirectly the product of the adjustments and collaborations necessary … in old age’ (p. 7).

Notes 1 The quotation in the title of this chapter is from lead artist Ian McKay’s commentary on the Gorton Visual Arts Group’s continuing ‘Park Life’ project for 19 September 2017 at https://gortonvisualarts.wordpress.com/. 2 The High Gothic backdrop to GVAG’s origins in the Monastery surfaces consistently in my explorations of the group’s work. There is an echo, for example, of Ruskin’s practice documenting Venetian stonework in McKay’s account of his sketching inside the derelict building (Griffin 2008). 3 This is a slight misquotation from Rosenstock-Huessy (1949), a series of lectures delivered at Dartmouth College: ‘Mankind goes forward then, gentlemen, by looking backward. It has one eye on the past and one on the future. And that’s a very different march. See? This rear – facing both ways at the same time. If he faces backwards too much, we ruin the march of history by going exclusive. If we go forward only in a {} we lose all intensity.’ Rosenstock-Huessy, a Christian social and historical philosopher and German émigré, was making the case to resolve an imbalance between apathy and intensity which has some strong contemporary echoes. 4 The untitled painting illustrated at Figure 16.2 is an example of that ‘stark contrast between air and water’ which Robert Rosenblum (1975, p. 23) identifies as running from Caspar David Friedrich to Barnett Newman in his account of the sublime in the Northern Romantic tradition. 5 Some of Ian McKay’s own work is abstract in the symbolist tradition while his son Andrew identifies strongly with conceptual art and good-humouredly accepts that it does not find much favour with GVAG members. In their comprehensive survey of public taste a decade ago, Tony Bennett and colleagues had this to say: ‘The working class, in Britain, is, in general, not engaged with high culture; it neither likes nor is interested in the items and genres of legitimate culture. Most notably, its members do

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 239 not go to art galleries, museums, theatre, classical concerts and the like. They do not feel that they are excluded from legitimate culture’. (Bennett et al. 2009, p. 252).

Acknowledgements I acknowledge the support from Keele University, Manchester City Council and the Beth Johnson Foundation which enabled my original postgraduate research. Except where otherwise stated, quotations from Gorton Visual Arts Group members are from interviews in Manchester in 2011; the quotation on page 1 is from another local respondent. The data I recorded at that time with Ian McKay have been supplemented by material from an interview at his Salford studio in 2015 and from subsequent correspondence and further encounters with him and the group. Some quotations have been edited to remove hesitation or repetition and to clarify the sense, while words inserted in square brackets are my own interpolations to relate the quote to its context in this text.

References Arnold, M. (1869/2009) Culture and Anarchy. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Basting, A. (2009) Forget Memory: Creating Better Lives for People with Dementia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bennett, T., M. Savage, E. Silva, A. Warde, M. Gayo-Cal and D. Wright (2009) Culture, Class, Distinction. London: Routledge. Blackwell, T. and J. Seabrook (1993) The Revolution Against Change: Towards a Conserving Radicalism. London: Vintage. Carley, B. (2012) Connective Action for Regeneration: A Comparative Case Study for Social Networks and Community Infrastructure in New East Manchester. Unpublished PhD thesis. Manchester University, Manchester, UK. Dunn, P. and L. Leeson (1997) The aesthetics of collaboration. Art Journal 56(1): 26–37. Epstein, J. (2002) In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Fogg, A. (2012) Squatting is not just about occupying homes, it’s about preserving history. The Guardian15 November. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2012/nov/15/squatting-occupying-homes-history-non-residential. Gorton Events Committee (GEC) (2010) Gorton 100http://www.thisiseast.com/2010/ 03/18/gorton-100-book-and-more/. Grant, L. (2009) Lest we forget. http://www.thisiseast.com/tag/gorton/page/2/. Griffin, P. (2007) Gothic revival. East 7. http://www.lengrant.co.uk/users/East07.pdf. Griffin, P. (2008) Pieces of the past. East 9. http://www.lengrant.co.uk/users/East09.pdf. GVAG (2010) Workforce: a public arts project by the Gorton Visual Arts Group [film]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGKsXe8eWrE [Accessed 17 November 2017]. GVAG (2013) Bradford Pit project. https://gortonvisualarts.wordpress.com/2013/11/ [Accessed 17 November 2017]. GVAG (2015) Munition project. https://gortonvisualarts.wordpress.com/2015/09/ [Accessed 17 November 2017].

240 John Miles GVAG (2016) Kite [film]. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qxzw8C5-ZE [Accessed 17 November 2017]. GVAG (2017) Park Life project: descriptions and photographs of outdoor and studio activity between 25 July and 3 October. https://gortonvisualarts.wordpress.com/ 2017/12/05/parklife-project/ [Accessed 19 October 2017]. Hewison, R. (1995) Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics since 1940. London: Methuen. Hewison, R. (2014) Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain. London: Verso. Hyland, B. (2013) Gorton Monastery. Northern Soul. 19 April.http://www.northernsoul. me.uk/gorton-monastery/ [Accessed 3 October 2017]. Jerrome, D. (1992) Good Company: An Anthropological Study of Older People in Groups. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Larsen, J. E. (2004) The active society and activation policy: Ideologies, contexts and effects. In J. G. Andersen, A.-M. Guillemard, P. H. Jensen and B. Pfau-Effinger (Eds), The New Face of Welfare. Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Leeson, L. (2008) Art with Communities: Reflections on a Changing Landscape. ixia Public Art Think Tank. http://ixia-info.com/new-writing/loraineleeson/. Leeson, L. (2015) Case study: Engaging older people in creative thinking – the Active Energy project. In S. Clift and P. M. Pamic (Eds), Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health and Wellbeing: International Perspectives on Practice, Policy and Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 245–249. Manchester City Council (2011) Ward profiles of Gorton North and South. Marlow, J. (1969) The Peterloo Massacre. London: Rapp and Whiting. Matarasso, F. (2013) All in this together: the depoliticisation of community art in Britain, 1970–2011. In E. van Erven (Ed.), Community, Art, Power: Essays from ICAF 2011. Rotterdam: Rotterdams Wijktheater. McMullan, G. and S. Smiles (2016) Introduction: Late style and its discontents. In G. McMullan and S. Smiles (Eds), Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1–14. Miles, J. (2014) Reconnecting the Disconnected: A Study of Manchester City Council’s Intergenerational Initiative. Unpublished PhD thesis, Centre for Social Gerontology. Keele University, Staffordshire, UK. Paterson, T. (2017) Powerful People, Powerful Places: Mobilising the yet to be mobilized. London: Fabian Society. Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rosenblum, R. (1975) Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko. London: Thames & Hudson. Rosenstock-Huessy, E. (1949) Universal History. Unpublished lecture notes. Dartmouth College. https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=0912148217 [Accessed 17 November 2017]. Ruskin, J. (1853/1997) The nature of Gothic. In C. Wilmer (Ed.), Unto this Last and Other Writings. London: Penguin. Schweitzer, P. (2007) Reminiscence Theatre: Making Theatre from Memories. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishing. Sennett, R. (2008) The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Smiles, S. (2016) From Titian to Impressionism: The genealogy of late style. In G. McMullan and S. Smiles (Eds), Late Style and its Discontents: Essays in Art, Literature and Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 15–30.

‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’ 241 Taylor, I., K. Evans, and P. Fraser (1996) A Tale of Two Cities: Global Change, Local Feeling and Everyday Life in the North of England. A Study in Manchester and Sheffield. London: Routledge. West, C. (1995) Prophetic pragmatism: Cultural criticism and political engagement. In R. B. Goodman (Ed.), Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader. New York: Routledge. 209–233. Williams, R. (1961) The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus. Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

17 The late Peter Rice Late-style stories of ageing and the city in A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent David Amigoni

‘Stoke-on-Trent needs to reconcile itself to its past before it can renew’. (Rice 2010, p. 13)

The late Peter Rice Peter Rice, the acclaimed theatre designer and artist, died suddenly in December 2015, aged 86. It was a shock. It came out of the blue. We were working on an exhibition about his life and work and about the life and work of his wife Pat Albeck, another leading designer.1 Guided by our multi-disciplinary interests in late-life creativity, we were tracing their illustrious, varied careers by curating the history of a productive partnership in design that had been active since the mid-1950s, when they both graduated from London’s Royal College of Art. The narrative of our exhibition was to culminate in an exploration of their ‘late work’: both designers were still working into their mid-eighties, indefatigably and with a vivacious sense of stylistic innovation. A key example of this work, and the focus of my chapter, is Peter Rice’s large and visually stunning mural painting, ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ (2013).2 In his becoming ‘the late Peter Rice’, our sense of the meaning of this work subtly changed. The event of Peter Rice’s death was unforeseen. He was in good health; indeed, only a couple of weeks previously he had been visiting us in order to co-design the exhibition space in the way that only a veteran of stage design could – by scoping the environment and then building a threedimensional model of it. That said, death as a horizon had been acknowledged: when Matthew Rice, Peter’s son, approached us to commission the exhibition of his parents’ work it was in part because, well, they would not be around for ever. The narratives of ‘lateness’ diversified and deepened in relation to Peter Rice’s work as his death became a fact, though that fact was able to build on alreadyestablished narratives of lateness. This chapter goes beyond the question of late style by interrogating those diverse narratives of lateness and their implications for understanding the dynamics of later-life creativity. I’ll come clean about this: I acknowledge my

The late Peter Rice 243 own primary role in framing Peter Rice’s work in this way. But what I describe as an acknowledgement of its lateness was also shared: at least one of Rice’s obituaries characterised ‘A Bright Past’ specifically as a late work (Strachan 2016). Through this mode of identification, the mural arguably shifted from being a playful work about place and urban identity completed in the sixth decade of a long career to a still playful but now more compelling representation of a left-behind city that – going against the grain – can be seen to challenge the very idea of being ‘left-behind’. The death of the artist arguably lent a whole range of meanings and moods to ideas about lateness at play in and around the city. As we have seen in other chapters in this collection and elsewhere, late style may be an outcome of an impulse expressed in the context of later years, but it is certainly a categorization, a discursive repertoire, a set of critical thought-manoeuvres which can aid and stimulate interpretation and even put new meanings into the world. Thus it might enrich and interrogate our cultural discourse and the social capital it can help to build in other contexts. When we acknowledge this dimension of lateness through a work which is said to exemplify it, we find that the discourse can initiate a range of explorations – of complex timeliness, as well as the sense that the work might be eccentrically out of step with the established (pessimistic) thinking of its own time. And here expectations of the art work as a route to renewal and indeed reconciliation come into play. As my epigraph suggests, the need for urban renewal, and reconciliation with the past as a source of that renewal, is explicitly called for in Matthew Rice’s book, The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent (2010). In addition to being Peter’s son, Matthew Rice is an author, designer and, with his wife Emma Bridgewater, ceramics manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent, the major city of the ‘Potteries’, an area of the North Midlands best known for being the epicentre of ceramics production in the UK from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth. Matthew Rice commissioned us to develop the exhibition of his parents’ work: in doing so, as we have seen, he was aware of their mortality – the very species of ‘lateness’ which, alas, asserted itself twice (following Peter’s death in 2015, Pat Albeck passed away in September 2017).3 In the course of this chapter, I shall explore the way in which Matthew Rice’s story of his father’s mural painting had already begun to locate it implicitly but tellingly in the kind of late-style discourse the contours of which have been delineated by the critic Edward Said. This is conveyed specifically through the idea of a ‘return’ to, and radically different treatment of, material from the ‘lost’ time of an earlier career phase. I shall analyse what I construct as a creative intergenerational dialogue between the son’s book and the father’s art work. This is a dialogue which plays on the resources of a range of stories (told in film, prose and images). In exploring this dialogue, I aim to interrogate in particular the exotic style of the mural and its relationship to ideas of cosmopolitan renewal. This, I argue, builds on and replies playfully to Matthew Rice’s explicit construction of Stoke in his writing as an ageing city, a crumbling and indeed a ‘late city’ in a global order that has rendered its original industrial base moribund. For here a shared

244 David Amigoni sense of ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ as a late work critically intersects with continuing – indeed revived – ideas about ‘late capitalism’ and the effects of globalisation. ‘Late-style’ discourses here intersect with narratives about late, left-behind ‘post-industrial’ cities in ways that can generate innovative and creative approaches to understanding the past and its relation to the present. My chapter explores the way in which critical interpretive approaches to late works and to career narratives can form a basis for participatory, action research focused on art by and among older people (and indeed all people). Late-life creativity delivers, in this sense, a striking and indeed critically resonant dividend in moving beyond stories about deficit and loss. We might put it this way: to acknowledge the powers of creativity in later life may also help us to acknowledge, and indeed further to build, the cultural capital connecting communities across the late city.

Contexts: the older artist, ‘the longevity dividend’ and generic hybridity The notion of a multi-layered ‘arts dividend’ returned from investment in arts and cultural activity, widely enjoyed and widely shared, has become enshrined in cultural policy. It is an approach that is exemplified in Darren Henley’s recent book The Arts Dividend (2016). As Henley argues, on the basis of his extensive travels across England as chief executive of Arts Council England, the layers can include and be shaped by universities working in partnership with communities, arts organisations, enterprises and charities – a partnership process which in turn has important implications for place-making. Echoing and extending the ‘dividend’ idea to the field of late-life creativity, the clinical gerontologist Desmond O’Neill has recently observed how the ‘major art galleries around the world have woken up to the artistic bounty of the longevity dividend’, noting that ‘artistry arises not despite old age, but because of it’ (O’Neill 2015). Sam Smiles’ essay on his Turner exhibition for this collection critically explores the status of a canonical ageing artist in the field of history of art; methodologically, this involves a documentary and contextual approach to the art so that certain details of the later life – in Turner’s case, his health and his mature sense of corporate responsibility to an artistic institution (the Royal Academy) – are explored as ‘shapers’ of a late style; but so too was the artist’s engagement with the mid-nineteenth century world’s economic and technological development – in other words by way of ‘concerns with the lessons of history and the nation’s future prospects’ (Smiles 2014, p. 14). Such an approach shaped our own curating and interpretive work on Peter Rice and Pat Albeck in the field of design; it has also shaped this chapter. O’Neill made his point about the longevity dividend in the context of a review for The Lancet of Linda and Michael Hutcheon’s Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen and Britten (2015) which, in its focus on opera, in turns underlines the multi-media ubiquity of late style discourse: it pays the same dividend in the concert hall and theatre as it does in the gallery.

The late Peter Rice 245 Significantly, the Hutcheons focused on opera because in its material grandeur it has the capacity to make a statement about age that is almost ostentatiously public and because it is ‘texted’ by a libretto as well as through musical notation, singing and orchestral arrangement. By reviewing the Hutcheons’ valuable interpretive work, O’Neill builds a connection between academic critical discourse and fields of practice in medical and social gerontology. My focus on Peter Rice aims to establish an equivalent connection: by taking art and (operatic) stage design as starting points, it goes beyond received stories about lateness by exploring their intersection with multiple regimes of the visual and the verbal as well as ideas about place-making. Accounting for Peter Rice’s late style enables us to explore those intersections from a perspective that is different from that of the usual ‘canon’ of late stylists in the fields of art, musical composition or literature. Peter Rice was a leading designer of theatre and opera sets, deeply respected in his own field but relatively unsung in the front-of-house arena of canonical artist heroes.4 In contrast to the Hutcheons’ focus on composers as primary artistic creators, our exhibition focused on the way in which Rice’s work in stage design contributed to the staging of performed opera. Rice designed for the Royal Opera House, ENO, Sadler’s Wells, Glyndebourne and Scottish Opera. Beyond that particular craft – and bearing in mind that we were addressing the careers of two designers, not one – our exhibition also embraced the sheer variety of the cultural industries within which Peter Rice and Pat Albeck produced highquality design between the mid-1950s and the present – from sketches of three-dimensional stage designs, to collage art works, to book illustrations, to tea towels for the National Trust, to dresses for Horrockses Fashions, ceramics and even indeed to wallpapers (Albeck designed for Sanderson’s). Both artists reached later life, in other words, via a deep immersion in a variety of artistic genres and a multiplicity of design traditions. This enabled them to cross numerous borders in art and design practice. As I shall go on to show, Peter Rice’s ‘Bright Past’, as a large mural painting, borrows and hybridises design traits adopted in part from stage design through its depiction of panoramic scenery but also from fine-art traditions of landscape painting and even design traditions that produced, in earlier historical periods, exotic mural wallpapers for domestic interiors. In Peter Rice’s late work, this breadth of influence is manifest in a hybrid artefact located somewhere between a piece of public art and a theatrical vista, an exotic tableau and a grand domestic decoration – the homely rendered unfamiliar. The critical subject matter is a post-industrial – in that sense, a late – English Midlands city in the form of Stoke-on-Trent.

Narrating visual impact: reading ‘A Bright Past for Stoke on Trent’ Criticism is rooted in acts of reading, interpretation and context building. I shall begin to read Peter Rice’s mural painting by weaving in some of the stories that have been told about the work. I will begin with a short film made for

246 David Amigoni

Figure 17.1 Peter Rice, ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ (2013). Source: Reproduced by kind permission of Matthew Rice/Emma Bridgewater Ltd.

ITN News through which something of the context and back story to the work of art is told, including the commissioning of the work by Matthew Rice and the intended public destination for the work – the Emma Bridgewater Factory in Lichfield Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent – where the original, comprising three separate but pictorially connected panels, continues to be displayed (our exhibition displayed a carefully reproduced copy, scanned at a slightly smaller scale) and which has come to be a significant tourist and visitor attraction in the region (see ITV 2013). The news story establishes the Albeck– Rice–Bridgewater family network and its intergenerational commitment to art and design: Peter Rice’s longevity (a six-decade career) is set alongside the substantial time investment in the act of painting to complete the challengingly innovative, indeed deeply ‘eccentric’ work – one whole year, which recalls, we might add, the four years it took Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel in later life (he was in his sixties). Stylistic innovation and eccentricity are outcomes of the time investment. Moving beyond the contexts broached by the story, these elements are reinforced by claims about the definitive contribution to lateness of the visual arts: Kenneth Clarke argued for the distinctiveness of the drawn or painted line in his Rede Lecture of 1970, ‘The Artist Grows Old’ (Clarke 1972). Clarke asserted a very fundamental distinction between the acts of writing and drawing/painting through, he felt, an innate pleasure in the latter that the inscription of a written mark never produces. Certainly, the pleasure and capability experienced in line drawing was a consistent theme of our conversations with

The late Peter Rice 247 Pat Albeck and Peter Rice as we learned about their approach to their work. In the ITN news story, Peter Rice comments on how the mural was premised on a ‘totally new approach to working’: for a set designer whose work depended on being seen from distance, this new work demanded a stylistic departure, based in the careful accumulation of painterly detail, albeit on a very large scale. This process would invite a different approach to viewing when compared with a set design, in which the overall ‘broad-brush’ effect of viewing from a distance would be the organising principle for the total effect, with set design and costume being just one element of narrative construction – the total effect being forged through a combination of stage action, dialogue and libretto. Instead, engagement with this work would depend upon a close-up intimacy of the kind that a viewer might expect from a painting hung in a public setting – or indeed through art and design work which can turn even domestic settings into a context for displaying a work of art. As we shall see, Rice was invoking a grand, panoramic tradition of mural wallpaper décor that was fashionable in the early nineteenth century. Peter Rice thus contrasts to some of the other laterlife creators encountered in this volume: while some of those older people reinvent themselves as artists by tackling a completely new practice, he was experimenting with what he had spent an entire professional lifetime perfecting. While there were significant continuities – through stage design and mural painting (as we shall see) – he was still combining, and thus making anew, elements of his long-term practice. Generically hybrid, the mural also plays with reference and with local context (the architectural detail offers a familiar frame of reference for those who know the city of Stoke) while mixing up relations of space and time. Its visual impact might, during the 1990s, have been classified as characteristically ‘postmodern’ – a term that was born in the field of architecture and design, embracing playfulness with reference and historical and generic border-crossing. Here I shall account for the several ways in which the work might be seen as ‘late’. In doing so, I am re-thinking some of the key terms elaborated by Frederic Jameson in his ground-breaking work, Postmodernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Arguably, it is now the term ‘late’ that we need to interrogate, a term used by Jameson as a short-hand for the acute period of economic and social crisis that has been sustained since the 1980s. This may be the time to look for what Raymond Williams might describe as the ‘resources of hope’ in lateness; as Richard Yeselson put it, interviewed in Annie Lowrey’s recent survey of the term ‘late capitalism’, ‘late is so pregnant’ (Lowrey 2017). ‘Lateness’ is perhaps most evident in the mural in the high degree of wit and the effect of eccentricity achieved by inscribing urban Stoke, with its north Midlands weather pattern, into an exotic landscape. ‘A Bright Past for Stokeon-Trent’ presents scenes from the industrial past of the English industrial conurbation of Stoke-on-Trent, the heart of the ‘Potteries’, in a strikingly defamiliarised, tropical landscape that links the mural to earlier visual sources: potbanks, canals and industrial landmarks such as the Spode chimney and the original Wedgwood works at Etruria, which are situated in an exotic, tropical

248 David Amigoni landscape of palm trees and heat haze. Visually, the Spode chimney seems to grow organically out of the palm tree in the very centre of the composition. Adjacent, but in hazy light and growing out of the blue and purple hills comprising the background, a rounded bottle kiln swells into the scene as though it were a volcano, its smooth surface a marked contrast with the detail of the brickwork making up the industrial buildings on the wharf in the foreground of the mural. The familiarity of ‘place’ is also re-arranged: the landmarks of Burslem – the so-called ‘mother’ town of the conurbation – which include the Romanesque St Joseph’s Church and the Town Hall are dwarfed by the classical façade of the (presently ruined) Burslem Sunday School which dominates the upper right of the picture, Parthenon-like atop a hill. The compositional detail comprising the landscape also disrupts a singular historical narrative: it works in multiple, discontinuous time zones. The Spode chimney dominates the Stoke skyline, as it does to this day. The famous Wedgwood works at Etruria, built in 1769, occupies the lower right-hand corner of the work, though the works ceased full production in 1938, and the final remains of the factory had been dismantled by the 1960s. Between the industrial foreground and the exotic, tropical background, the aristocratic houses and estates of North Staffordshire figure: Barlaston Hall (linked to the new site of the re-located Wedgwood works); Ingestre Hall (now an arts centre); Keele Hall (now Keele University); and the mausoleum of the Trentham estate (a reminder of lateness and of mortality). All nestle in the hills between background and foreground where factories and workers congregate. The Emma Bridgewater factory in Lichfield Street (where the mural is displayed) is a feature of the mid-view landscape – though the Bridgewater name that adorns the side of the factory is lost in the haze, unlike the very prominent names of Spode and Wedgwood that identify their factory structures. In the foreground are stylised workers from the heydays of industrial ceramic production, balancing crates of pottery ware on their heads at the canal wharf, in preparation for its transportation to markets beyond Stoke in the far-flung world. These stylised workers – arrayed in the manner of a dancing chorus, a homage less to Lowry and more perhaps to the Hollywood traditions of the 1930s and 40s that Rice knew and loved – congregate on a sandy beach shaded by palm trees. They stand before a Cauldon Canal that is, as Matthew Rice remarks in another narrative commentary on both the painting and his father’s career, ‘preternaturally blue’: Rice’s commentary tellingly identifies the detail of a pair of tourists, visiting from India, rowing on the canal. I shall return to this detail because of its gesture to what Matthew Rice describes as the ‘cosmopolitan’.

Narratives of lateness: late style and the late city Matthew Rice’s commentary on his father’s mural was published as a small, fold-out brochure (I picked up my copy the first time I viewed the mural). The brochure brings together the two ‘sides’ of Peter Rice’s career, as stage and costume designer, and mural artist. It implicitly identifies the mural as a late

The late Peter Rice 249 work because of the way in which the artist ‘revisits’ material first developed at an earlier career phase. The brochure is notable for the rhetorical echoes from Matthew Rice’s own book about the ‘lost’ city of Stoke-on-Trent, in which (as we shall see in more detail in a moment) he sets forth a narrative about the city’s ‘lateness’ as a post-industrial location. Thus, he comments on the remaining ‘beautiful ruins’ in a city from which ‘so much … has been lost’. ‘This mural’, he states, ‘gathers together those fragments’ in an effort to remind viewers that Stoke ‘was once an industrial marvel of the world’. Matthew Rice’s brochure thus connects two manifestations of lateness – career and city – and at a certain point these domains of meaning shade into one another; with this as a cue, critical interpretation can enable them to interrogate one another. It is the career dimension on which I wish to focus first. Edward Said’s own late work on late style (developed in proximity to his own death) has been influential in helping critics to identify and reflect on the presence of the late style discourse across a variety of fields of representation and creative activity. While Robert Spencer (in Chapter 6 of this collection) criticises Said’s approach for being naively biographical and documentary, my own approach, informed as it is by my own ongoing research into life-writing in all its varied manifestations, continues to argue that wider stories of cultural value can be generated by life and career stories. Such stories can also recognise real complexity: after all, to document biographically is by no means necessarily to engage in hero-worship or hagiography. It is possible to find value, for instance, in Said’s observation that late-style stories have a tendency to identify examples of returns to earlier phases of a creative life, thereby opening them to creative re-workings in later life that have far-reaching ramifications beyond that life.5 Matthew Rice tells a story of a project completed during an earlier phase of his father’s career that he revisited in later life. Matthew Rice’s narrative of his father’s career notes that ‘A Bright Past’ had its origins in a network of elite private patronage: Peter Rice had first been commissioned to paint a mural in the Bahamas, during the 1970s, for the impresario Geoffrey Russell’s plantation house on Paradise Island. This commissioning of Peter Rice’s artistic skills in mid-career probably occurred in the wake of the vogue for elaborate, high-art decoration in the Caribbean pioneered by the figure who led Rice’s own field, the preeminent British stage designer Oliver Messel.6 Matthew Rice’s brochure describes the resulting work as being ‘painted in the style of an eighteenth-century French wallpaper’. In all probability the model from which Peter Rice worked can be traced to the wallpaper of the late eighteenth-century French designer Jean-Gabriel Charvet, which depicted James Cook’s voyage to the South Seas: Charvet’s wallpaper communicates in exactly that exotic visual language which is the striking feature of ‘A Bright Past’. The original wallpaper (1804–5) was manufactured by Joseph Dufort who, in his own brochure to accompany the product, commented that the representation was designed ‘to reveal the natural bonds of taste and enjoyment that exist between all men’.7 That said, Charvet included darker complexities in his composition: one of Charvet’s ten panels represented

250 David Amigoni the slaughter of Cook following an encounter where the ‘natural’ bonds of trust and understanding tragically broke down. Peter Rice actually chose a different historical moment of encounter as the subject matter of his exotic mural for Paradise Island. Instead of James Cook’s enlightened mission of exploration to the Pacific, Peter Rice depicted something darker – ‘the imagined arrival of Columbus on just such a tropical island.’ Remembering the work his father painstakingly painted for two years, Matthew Rice recalls the telling detail of ‘Arawak Indians with fearsome feathered headdresses [who] form a less than friendly reception on the stony ground now lost to a thousand sun beds’. If the native inhabitants constitute a resistance to the colonist-invader, this is a meaning that seems to spill over into another context of invasion, this time from tourism as Paradise Island became a mass leisure resort. The meanings here are complex, to be sure – and we might, by the way, recall Robert Spencer’s concerns in his chapter on Walcott with the postcolonial challenge of tourism faced by the Caribbean, though I don’t have the space to explore these parallels here. For my purposes in this chapter, Peter Rice seems to deploy this image to intimate that, with the arrival of Columbus, the Arawak were poised to lose a way of life. Matthew Rice appears to go further with these meanings, applying them to the degenerative effect of mass tourism. The plantation house in which the original mural had been painted was, by the 1980s, sold to become a hotel so that the work had been effectively lost, disappeared from view, ‘hidden behind a ply woodlined corridor.’ This is the point at which Matthew Rice’s narrative of his father’s career shades into his narrative about a late, ageing and disappearing city: a narrative of multiple losses in the Caribbean – of the art work, of way(s) of life – here mirrors a narrative of the loss and disappearance of Stoke-on-Trent through its crumbling architectural heritage: Stoke-on-Trent as the embodiment of ruined lateness. This narrative had already been developed at greater length in Matthew Rice’s book of 2010, The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent, which uses many imaginative resources of narrative and visual illustration to make its case. It is also conspicuous in its use of a language of ageing in the dust cover to depict Stoke: the narrative (variously described as a ‘lament’ and a ‘ballad’) will show, we are told, ‘how she crumbled as she grew old but, surprisingly, did not die’. Matthew Rice’s narrative poses the question ‘What Happened to the Potteries?’ and, in one answer to the question, constructs a ‘Fantasy’, or an imaginative fiction that takes the reader back to the early twentieth century when the factories worked long hours to produce goods which flooded the empire, in particular the Indian sub-continent: the fiction imagines crates destined for Ceylon, Madras, Calcutta and Simla (Peter Rice’s birthplace). Thus, as productive industrial capacity declines, the characters in this story disappear, and one of them ages. Adele, the character who observes the early morning shift at the potbank as her entire family and neighbours gather to staff the great imperial production machine, is the same invented character as the 92-year-old woman who collects her pension from the Indian post office manager:

The late Peter Rice 251 Adele is old, so old. … None of her family now works on the potbank. … [S]he narrows her eyes at Miss Choudry, the only connection now with the subcontinent, who without asking passes her ten Rothmans and a box of Swan Vestas before slipping noiselessly behind the P[ost] O[ffice] counter to hand out the last pension payment Adele will collect (my italics). This is a story about colonial reversal and a lost way of life brought about by the corrosive passing of time that produces a feeling of lateness – indeed of finality, signified here by proximity to death (pp. 56–7). In one sense, Matthew Rice has written a narrative about Stoke that stresses post-imperial decline, with perhaps a hint of recognition of the resentment that may be felt against migrants as old Adele’s eyes narrow towards her migrant – and indeed now state-sponsored – helper (as, in the actual Stoke, the ballot box has on occasion returned anti-immigration political representatives). But this is not merely to reinforce a familiar negative story about Stoke: in fact, Matthew Rice promptly tells a more complex story about historical waves of migration into the city (Hungarians, Italians, Tajiks) which stresses the cosmopolitan openness of Stoke to the outside world. What is striking is the way in which the issue of migration ushers in more complex stories about waves of development that, when read alongside Peter Rice’s ‘Bright Past’, explain why, for Matthew Rice, there may be an outcome for Stoke that reconciles its past and its future. Indeed, I want to point to the ways in which there is dialogue between Matthew Rice’s narrative and his father’s late-style mural that begins to prepare some critical and creative ground for Stoke to move forward and reconcile itself to its past, and the way in which that dialogue is framed by a variety of disciplines and ways of knowing, including theories of urban regeneration and growth.

Upwave cities: the culture dividend and place-making Culture-driven urban regeneration in the present and the future, reconciled with a sense of the glories of the industrial past is an attractive dividend for many medium-sized post-industrial cities: it is what propelled Stoke’s (ultimately unsuccessful) bid in 2016–17 to be ‘UK City of Culture’ for 2021. Given the central presence of artefacts such as ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-onTrent’, our exhibition was proud to make a contribution to the bid’s supporting programme: Peter Rice’s connection to Stoke was manifest in his mural and its connection to the ceramics revival that the Emma Bridgewater factory represents, and Pat Albeck frequently talked about her early career as a designer in the 1950s and 60s when she worked for the great Stoke pottery manufacturers such as Minton and Spode.8 In addition to these connections, Matthew Rice’s book has given the so-called ‘lost’ city a paradoxical visibility; moreover, his book has also informed a context for academic debate about culture-led urban regeneration and place-making. Here, I want to focus on a recent paper that uses a reading of Rice’s book as confirmation of what we

252 David Amigoni might describe as the deficit approach to Stoke, which can be mapped onto narratives about ageing. John Montgomery opens his essay on ‘Upwave Cities, Creative Cities: the case of London’ by referring Matthew Rice’s The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent, seeing it as ‘one of the saddest books on cities that I have read in a long time’ (p. 36): when Stoke does something superlatively, it seems, it does so by invoking sadness and loss on an almost unprecedented scale. For Montgomery, Stoke is not an ‘upwave’ city and is chronically limited in the scale of (industrial and cultural) creativity it can contribute to its own renewal. By contrast, both London and Manchester are examples of unquestioned ‘upwave cities’, conurbations that thrive and grow through network-generated waves of economic activity building from a ‘gene pool’ of knowledge, skills, techniques and methods, which lead to ‘creative self-organisation’ (Montgomery 2013, p. 41). This growth occurs in geographically concentrated waves, not slowly and incrementally but by leaps and bounds. As Montgomery argues through his case studies, ‘waves’ of growth can be quite precisely located in time. Montgomery’s account of the origins of London’s development looks back historically to the 1950s: he singles out expanding creative industries such as design – fashion, as well as West End theatre – as major engines of economic growth which helped to propel an economic ‘wave’ that has been surging forward since the Festival of Britain in London and since the 1990s in Manchester. My point is certainly not to contest the main (and broadly, it seems to me, correct) drift of Montgomery’s argument, which is that social and cultural enterprise that is divorced from harder-edged, diversifying economic activity will not produce growth. That said, I would highlight the subtler implications of Montgomery’s argument for the ‘elsewhere’ places which can still be caught up in the complex effects of the upwave, in precisely the way which such places have been affected by complex ‘waves’ of migration. I want to question the implication that Stoke’s irredeemable ‘lateness’ means that it is denied a place in this narrative, becoming instead just an object of ‘sadness’. The denial of a place for Stoke in the narrative is striking in relation to the very evidence that Montgomery presents, which through a wonderful coincidence of detail precisely tracks the careers of Peter Rice and Pat Albeck that ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ documented. After all, the creative industry ‘upwave’ that propelled the early careers of Pat Albeck and Peter Rice from the 1950s onwards was one of the concrete ways in which London’s expansion was in fact connected to, not detached from, the city-region of Stoke/Staffordshire. This historical trace is, I argue, woven into the represented landscape of ‘A Bright Past’. Ingestre Hall, former estate of the Chetwynds, the Earls of Shrewsbury-Talbots, is, as we have seen, part of the re-purposed ‘great house’ fabric of Peter Rice’s re-imagined region, in which the gentry estates became educational establishments, leisure parks and art centres. Seen during the 1950s as the ‘Northern Glyndebourne’, Ingestre Hall was where Peter Rice completed some of his earliest work: his 1958 set for Bizet’s comic opera Doctor Miracle was praised by The Musical Times as a contribution to the ‘upwave’

The late Peter Rice 253 beginning in London: the Midlands population was advised by the reviewer to treat themselves to tickets ‘before an invasion of tourists makes them hard to get’ (Musical Times 1958, p. 444). Such an invasion of tourists is positively sought by the Stoke of 2017 and the place-making initiatives taking place there: indeed, it informs the context in which Matthew Rice points to the ‘touch of cosmopolitan glamour’ that is added to ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-onTrent’ by the pair of Indian tourists, sightseeing while rowing upon Wedgwood’s Cauldon Canal. Cosmopolitanism constitutes, perhaps, one of the ways in which a feel for the global inhabits ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’. If the mural playfully works against the grain of some of the pessimistic and crisisridden senses of postmodern lateness that Fredric Jameson’s work mobilised during the 1990s, then its lush exoticism perhaps embraces ‘globalisation’ as that conceptual construct which, as Jameson has noted in a recent interview, was the very thing that was missing from his conceptualisation of the postmodern more than twenty-five years ago (see Bulson 2016).

Conclusion: Beyond late style: cultural capital as a resource of hope in the late city To conclude, I will come clean about it again: I have invented ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ as a late-style work. I have invented it in this way for my chapter, but as a team of curators, we had already invented it in this way as an exhibited artefact for the ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ exhibition.9 Of course, certain facts support this invention: the mural painting is an indisputably remarkable act of individual late-life creativity, as I have argued here. Peter Rice was in his eighth decade when he painted it, his death in 2015 altered the ways in which it can be viewed, and my construction of the work as an instance of ‘late style’ builds on narratives about the work that had already begun to be shaped. My point is that critical arguments about late style can help us productively to see – and to see again, in different and potentially wide-reaching ways. The late work of the late Peter Rice helps us see the ‘belated’ identity of Stoke-on-Trent as a post-industrial city in new, againstthe-grain ways that take us beyond ‘superlative sadness.’ To advance this argument is, I would argue, also to enrich and mobilise for new purposes the curatorial and historicist paradigms that have shaped my argument: in short, the evaluative stories that cultural criticism can construct and share. One of the most striking and frankly pleasurable features of displaying the mural in the exhibition was the remarkably positive way in which its reproduction was viewed, gracefully dominating as it did one wall of the exhibition space: numerous visitors remarked on the ways in which the mural made them proud of the city of Stoke and made them see the Stoke they recognised in the painterly detail in striking new ways, the familiar made pleasingly unfamiliar. This powerful reaction to the work was reinforced by a co-located installation based on the mural in which visitors were encouraged, among other activities, to use a projection of the mural to add, through writing

254 David Amigoni and images, to ways of thinking about a positive future for Stoke-on-Trent. This was an especially striking example of the way in which ‘late work’ by an older person, invoking ideas about memory, loss and re-building, can form the basis of an approach to reconciliation that can be widely shared with other hard-to-hear groups.10 Such a case for social inclusiveness is theoretically reinforced in the New Dynamics of Ageing-funded research of Andrew Newman and Anna Goulding, which has delivered important insights into the ways in which older people view art in galleries – that what they bring to the experience is dependent on what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would describe as their cultural capital, shaped by field and ‘habitus’, and that artistic consumption and appreciation is intimately linked to the question of identity. We would argue that ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ curated exhibits from the theatrical, decorative and domestic design traditions that could precisely mobilise forms of cultural capital that did not invite a response dependent on a training in high culture and its modes of criticism. Of course, this is not the same as saying that discourses of high culture cannot feed back into these processes or learn from them (see Newman, Goulding and Whitehead 2013). Viewed in this way, this is another widely-shared resource that can be harvested from what Desmond O’Neill has called ‘the longevity dividend’. Clearly, working collaboratively with older people to enable a process of realising their complex identities can also go hand in hand with a commitment to building new forms of cultural capital, from sources of information and curation – new stories and narratives – away from the mainstream represented by the canonical figures of the late-style pantheon. New late-style stories have the potential to build new deposits of cultural capital while developing new bonds of social capital – indeed, new resources of hope for the so-called ‘belated’ and left behind.

Notes 1 See Cownie et al. (2016). This chapter operates at the intersection between two projects with which I have been involved: the ‘Ages and Stages’ project (RCUK NDA-funded) and the ‘Late-Life Creativity’ project (AHRC-funded). 2 I gratefully acknowledge the help, support and generosity of Peter Rice, Pat Albeck and Matthew Rice without whom neither the exhibition nor this chapter would have been possible. This chapter is dedicated in memoriam Peter Rice and Pat Albeck. 3 I regret that, for reasons of space, the remarkable Pat Albeck enjoys less prominence here than she deserves. She merits a study of late-style work in her own right. It is certainly not the intention of this chapter to reproduce unthinkingly the gender biases of the discourses of late style that other chapters in this collection have discussed. 4 This was territory we had already visited through the ‘Ages and Stages’ project, which blended social/critical gerontology (interviews), literary and historical analysis (dramaturgy, archival work), theatre practice (‘Our Age, Our Stage’, 2012). Peter Cheeseman, the original artistic director, saw an equivalence between community theatre and the ‘story telling’ function of a community’s elders. In our interview work, we adopted a semi-structured life-course interview approach to people who worked in the theatre, who gave form and embodiment to its imaginative vision

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5 6 7

8 9

10

through design and material practice: stage and costume designers and makers. For instance, we interviewed a costume designer: a woman who worked for the theatre as a young woman (in the 1960s), during which it became a major source of education but one which intersected with and built upon the experience of the wider community of Stoke-on-Trent, such as the campaign to save Shelton Bar (the steel works). We became aware of the theatre’s capacity for generating new ways of understanding and its role in forging social connections; costumes were also found to be sources of historical understanding when they were donated to local museums. See Said (2006, pp. 10, 17–18, 159), for the idea of recapitulation and return to earlier phases of a career. For Oliver Messel’s significance and legacy, see Messel (2011). I am grateful to the theatre-design historian Kate Burnett for drawing my attention to Messel’s significance. Peter Rice’s ‘Bright Past’ gestures back to a tradition exemplified by ‘Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique’, panels 1–10 of woodblock-printed wallpaper representing Cook’s voyage, designed by Jean-Gabriel Charvet and manufactured by Joseph Dufour (1757–1827). The artefact appealed to elite domestic taste in the period, in Europe and America. See, e.g., the Philadelphia Museum of Art http://www.philamuseum. org/collections/permanent/148943.html. See ‘Back to the Drawing Board: Pat Albeck’, http://www.bibleofbritishtaste.com/ back-to-the-drawing-board-pat-albeck/. The caption read as follows: ‘The final works of art we encounter in the exhibition are Pat Albeck’s “Kitchen Dresser for Emma Bridgewater” (2010) and Peter Rice’s “A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent” (2013). Both art works are celebrations of later life creativity, as well intergenerational familial sharing. … Matthew tells the story of his father’s “A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent”, a work he commissioned from Peter which had its origins in eighteenth-century mural wallpaper and a unique work of decorative art produced in the paradisiacal Bahamas. Peter’s last major work of art is powerfully creative – but it is also in a kind of playful conversation with Matthew’s book on The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent (2010). Whatever may have been lost from North Staffordshire’s glorious industrial past, the creative enterprise of the Emma Bridgewater factory restores something: the act of going Back to the Drawing Board as exemplified so vividly in the artistic lives of Pat Albeck and Peter Rice brings nothing but gain: art and design is restorative, as the next generation knows’. I am grateful to Susan Moffat and her team (New Vic Theatre, Borderlines) for this richly multi-disciplinary and multi-media interactive installation which creatively utilised many of the design traditions that were curated as part of the main ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ exhibition: these comprised theatrical spaces, which included domestic settings, littered with empty frames, exotic materials and Bridgwater artefacts and a projection of Peter Rice’s mural ‘A Bright Past for Stoke on Trent’. The installation also included recordings made with local people from The Potteries and specifically from Newcastle-under-Lyme expressing their own ideas about the ‘Bright Past’ of Stoke-on-Trent and their hopes for a bright future. Three interactive workshops were delivered in the installation space with community members from Stoke-on-Trent. These groups were made up of people who were described as ‘long-term unemployed’, meaning that they had been out of work for six months or more, who were participating in an employability project at the theatre called ‘Get Up Get Out Get In’; adults with learning disabilities who access weekly drama workshops at the theatre; and members of ex-coal-mining communities in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent who were creating a piece of drama called The UnQuiet – a documentary piece about these communities since the closing of the pits. The guided workshops began with the projection of the mural, giving participants the opportunity to explore the colours used to portray a city which is

256 David Amigoni usually shown with soot-stained buildings and these days desolated brown field sites and derelict factory buildings and abandoned or boarded up shops and houses. The mural was especially vibrant because of being projected: it excited and challenged participants to use their own imaginations, to choose parts of the mural to place themselves in and be inspired by a different way of seeing the place they belong to through the eyes of an artist. Participants could get up close to the project and see themselves superimposed. They could trace the river and cross the bridge and place themselves into a new emerging version of the mural entitled ‘A Bright Future for Stoke-on-Trent’. From the initial stop at the mural, people would enter the ‘homely installation’ filled with familiar and unfamiliar artefacts which where simultaneously comforting and unsettling. In these settings, participants could listen to recordings of local people talking about the places they remember, the work they did, the things that are no longer there resonating with the empty frames and tree. Participants were asked to replace the absence with simply cinqains, a five-line poem, to express a picture of the future in words and objects, colours and feelings. The poems could be written on leaves or objects, printed on to tea towels or put into frames. The final part of the workshop was to revisit the projected mural and add to it: new buildings, colours, boats and creatures. Some people drew outside the parameters of the mural and extended the picture of the future upwards and outwards. Each participant drew a self-portrait, which they placed onto the projection. Each figure was holding a kite which had written on it a simple aspiration for the future. See https://mcckeele.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/back-to-the-drawing-boa rd-interactive-installations-drawings-creative-writing-at-the-media-building-starting -23rd-november-all-welcome/

References Bible of British Taste. (2017) Back to the Drawing Board: Pat Albeck. http://www. bibleofbritishtaste.com/back-to-the-drawing-board-pat-albeck/. Bulson, E. (2016) This is a Headline. TLS. October 19. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/arti cles/public/this-is-a-headline/. Clarke, K. (1972) The Artist Grows Old. The Rede Lecture 1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cownie, F., K. Jones, P. Bisht, R. Leach, C. Morgan, E. Poole and D. Amigoni (2016) Back to the Drawing Board Exhibition. Keele University Press Releases. 4 November. https://www.keele.ac.uk/pressreleases/2016/backtothedrawingboard.php. Henley, D. (2016), The Arts Dividend: Why Investment in Art and Culture Pays. London: Elliott and Thompson. Hutcheon, L., and M. Hutcheon (2015) Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen and Britten. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ITV (2013) Leading British theatre designer paints giant mural. http://www.itv.com/ news/anglia/update/2013-08-20/leading-british-theatre-designers-spends-year-painti ng-giant-mural/ [Accessed 13 July 2018]. Lowrey, A. (2017) Why the phrase ‘Late Capitalism’ is suddenly everywhere. Atlantic. 1 May. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/. Messel, T. (Ed.) (2011) Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design. London: Rizzoli. Montgomery, J. (2013) Upwave cities, creative cities: The case of London. In T. Flew (Ed.), Creative Industries and Urban Development: Creative Cities in the 21st Century. London: Routledge. 36–42. Musical Times (1958) Review of Bizet, Doctor Miracle, Ingestre Hall. The Musical Times. August. 443–445.

The late Peter Rice 257 Newman, A., A. Goulding and C. Whitehead (2013) How cultural capital, habitus and class influence the response of older adults to the field of contemporary visual arts. Poetics 41. 456–480. O’Neill, D. (2015) Late-life creativity. Review of Hutcheon and Hutcheon 2015. The Lancet, November 28. 2135. Rice, M. (2010) The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent. London: Frances Lincoln. Said, E. (2006) On Late Style. London: Bloomsbury. Smiles, S. (2014) Turner in and out of time. In D. B. Brown, A. Concannon and S. Smiles (Eds), Late Turner: Painting Set Free. London: Tate Publishing. Strachan, A. (2016) Peter Rice: Designer whose work benefited from his ability to distil complex ideas into simple images. The Independent. 14 March.

Conclusion David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan

What, then, do we hope to have achieved with this collection? Clearly, the work represented here is provisional – surprisingly provisional, you might think, given the length of time that the no-longer-so-new field of ‘humanistic gerontology’ has now had to coalesce – and thus it underlines how long and slow the process of cross-disciplinary engagement can be, how hard it can be to create genuine conversation between disciplinary groupings whose ‘natural’ working premises in respect of both theory and practice differ so substantially. As will by now be apparent, the chapters in this collection vary very widely indeed in style, in approach and in assumptions, and they vary widely, even wildly, in their understandings of what creativity – together with its subcategory, late-life creativity – actually is. Nevertheless, it seems possible to draw some principles from the chapters taken together, principles that might at very least form debating points for whoever next takes up the cudgels and sets out to create and sustain dialogue across the disciplinary divide. One, we seek an understanding of late-life creativity that can encompass, or at least distinguish between, the widely differing degrees of creativity that this volume addresses, from the highest levels of artistic achievement in later life to the amateur creative activities – reflective writing, photography, gardening, knitting, etc – of older people who do not have the kinds of professional skill or achievement that we would expect from an acknowledged artist, poet, novelist, composer or performer but who wish to find appropriate ways to engage with creativity. It is hardly surprising, given their professional focus, that arts-and-humanities scholars tend to foreground creative activity at the complex, professional end of the spectrum; it is equally unsurprising that gerontologists engaged practically with older people who have not led privileged creative lives should tend to focus on what we might call ‘everyday’ creative activities, those with manageable skill sets that can be adopted in later life by individuals without the need for prior artistic experience. The challenge is to find a theory of creativity that can encompass each end of this spectrum without treating them as if they are in certain ways directly comparable whilst nonetheless recognising the value of each in particular contexts. Two, we seek a socialised understanding of late-life creativity, one that recognises that creativity in old age always has a social, political and, above all,

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economic context. The classic theory of late style treats late work as in some way transcendent, as work that rises above its contemporary moment, allegedly sharing many of its characteristics with the late work of other consummate artists across the centuries – thus the existing critical accounts of, e.g., the late works of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine and Ibsen that give the reader the impression that these writers were all working in the same attic over the same weekend instead of writing in radically different historical and aesthetic contexts across centuries (e.g. Muir 1961; Grene 1968). For the contributors to this volume, late-life creativity always has a context; it always exists in a specific historical moment and, above all, in a particular economic context. It will be obvious enough from the various contributions that any account of late-life creativity that restricts itself to individuals of social or professional privilege cannot hope to encompass all the possibilities for creativity in later life. Economics underpins both the high theory of our collective approach, exemplified in Robert Spencer’s re-reading of Adorno; the accounts of practical late-life creative endeavours by communities of older people by e.g. Jackie Reynolds, Liz Postlethwaite and John Miles; and the extension of ideas of lateness from individuals in later life to the ‘late city’ proposed by David Amigoni in the final chapter. Our premise, in brief, is that theorising or making policy decisions about creativity in later life without addressing economic conditions and economic inequalities can only ever be reductive – a critical shortcoming (to remind ourselves of Alan Walker’s invocation of the importance of criticality to the new science of ageing). Moreover, in a political context in which governmental interest in late-life creativity is so tangibly instrumental – their interest in the well-being of older people premised principally and visibly on limiting state spending – it matters a very great deal to be aware that late-life creativity is, firstly, never transcendent but always situated in the here and now and, secondly, is articulated and enabled through intersecting networks of economic, social and cultural capital. Three, then, we need to continue to look for new ways to articulate the critical interstices between our multiple disciplines – which, we believe, hold the potential both to interpret and to understand the value of creativity in later life in a more fully integrated manner than has been the case to date. We have urged that the varieties of creativity be understood as inhabiting a spectrum, and the same claim may be made, we believe, for a spectrum of forms of critical evaluation. We argued in our introduction that the arts-and-humanities background of the editors provides us with a distinctive approach to criticality as critique, which has emerged from a long history of criticism as a discourse and practice: one which gave birth to the idea of ‘late style’, among other concepts. We believe it is important to re-connect with that history in order to see both the limits to the discourse and the openings for interdisciplinary engagement it continues to provide. Thus the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold – one of the originators of ‘criticism’ as a discourse based in literature – defined the critical approach as being capable of discerning ‘the best knowledge, the best ideas of [its] time’ (Arnold 1986, p. 362). He thus linked it to

260 David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan questions of evaluation as it emerged from what we might recognise as a field of overlapping and contested disciplines, such as theology, Biblical criticism and science (see Amigoni 1986). Arnold, however, also drove an unhelpful wedge between creativity and criticism, arguing that certain periods generate creative acts, while others generate critical acts, and he downgraded his own century, the nineteenth, to the status of a lesser, ‘critical’ period (Arnold 1986, p. 318), and it is important to recognise that other nineteenth-century originators of criticism as a discourse, notably John Ruskin, envisaged a greater power of connection between interpretive criticism, the creation of things and their value for those who engage with them (Swann 1986, p. 49). Ruskin’s powerful critical legacy remains evident in, for instance, John Miles’s essay in this collection, through the astonishing labours of late-life creativity traced in the Gorton Visual Arts Group, but also in the more incisive critique of capitalist modernity on which Robert Spencer draws. All of the critical approaches we have brought together in this volume use critical systems of evaluation both to validate and further to advance their work. It is in the spectrum of critical, evaluative methods between our arts-and-humanities and social-science disciplines that shaded degrees of congruence and opportunities for further engagement will be located. This, we would argue, is the next work that needs to be advanced so as better to understand the benefits of late-life creativity across the spectrum. Four, we seek a located understanding of late-life creativity, one that recognises that creativity does not take place in a neutral or centralised geographical zone but is always in some way local, necessarily produced by, and responsive to conditions that begin in a locale, even if their consequences extend radically beyond it. Several of our contributions make clear how locally inflected and, perhaps above all, how community-centred late-life creativity is. It will be clear enough by now that a key geography for this volume is the North-West and Midlands of England: this is partly for personal reasons (one of the editors lives and works near Stoke-on-Trent, the other was born in Liverpool), but it is also, more to the point, because these locales, lying as they do beyond the economically privileged zone of London and the South-East, exemplify the interrelations of late-life creativity and economics in Britain today. From Karan Jutlla’s report of the challenges faced in later life by an immigrant community in Wolverhampton to John Miles’s account of the activities of the Gorton Visual Arts Group in urban Manchester, these chapters together underline the premise that to seek to detach late-life creativity from local social circumstance is not only intellectually unsound, it is also politically and culturally mendacious. It is in these ways that we have set out to question received assumptions about late-life creativity. It is in these ways that we hope to encourage colleagues in both the gerontological sciences and the arts and humanities to move beyond late style, to jettison inappropriate, transcendent or naïve understandings of creativity in later life and to begin to understand that before we make decisions – theoretical, therapeutic or policy decisions – that relate to late-life

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creativity, we need a fuller, more nuanced, more locally inflected understanding of such creativity, one that will allow us to move forward with a genuine sense of optimism about the discoveries that are yet to unfold about the relationship between old age and the creative imagination.

References Amigoni, D. (1986) Matthew Arnold and the Colenso controversy: The Bible in the ‘Republic of Letters’. In R. Giddings (Ed.), Matthew Arnold: Between Two Worlds. London: Barnes and Noble. 75–99. Arnold, M. (1986) Matthew Arnold: Oxford Authors. Eds M. Allott and R. H. Super. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grene, D. (1968) Reality and the Heroic Pattern: Last Plays of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Sophocles. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Muir, K. (1961) Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Swann, C. (1986) Reading the signs of the times: Some functions of criticism – Arnold and Ruskin. In R. Giddings (Ed.), Matthew Arnold: Between Two Worlds. London: Barnes and Noble. 44–74.

Index

Abse, Dannie 161 abundant communities, idea of 183 Active@60 33–4 adaptation to getting older 26–7 Adorno, Theodor W. 13, 55, 259; aesthetic practice, Beethoven’s late style and 84–5, 86; aesthetic reconciliation 79–80; Aesthetic Theory 82; aesthetics, theory of 80–81; artworks, reflection and 83; on biographical explanations of late style 82–3; Bowie, late style and 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 73–4; capitalist modernity, radical redefinition of 87–9; criticality, value and 78; Critique of Judgement (Kant, I.) 84; Deutschlandfokussiert 86; Endgame (Beckett) 95–6; genius, contemplations about Beethoven 80–84, 95; genius, criterion that distinguishes 79–80; German and Austrian music tradition 85–6; harmony, exhaustion of dynamic of concept of 85; late style and 77–8, 79–86, 87–90, 93, 95–7; lateness, major theorist of 63–4; Los Angeles Times 96; materialist cultural criticism 87; modernity, conception of 87–9; Negative Dialectics 87; old age and late life creativity 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 73–4; Parsifal (Wagner) 95–6; Second Viennese School 85–6 aesthetic pleasure 134–6 aesthetic practice 84–5, 86 aesthetic reconciliation 79–80 Aesthetic Theory (Adorno, T.W.) 80–81, 82 aesthetic value 104, 105–6 African Children’s Educational Trust 163 ageing: active ageing 5, 8, 123; Ageing, Drama and Creativity (Rickett, M. and

Bernard, M.) 102, 103–4; arts, ageing and social capital 116–18; arts, social capital and 116–18; biology of 21; creative ageing 22, 132; creative ageing, social policy challenge and 31–44; Cultural Ageing (Katz, S.) 7–8; The New Science of Ageing (Walker, A.) 8; old age, varied interests in 4–5; physical deterioration associated with 49–50; postmodern ageing 21; in public eye 26; scholarship on, articulation of critical interstices between multiple disciplines of 259; science of, importance of criticality to 259; signs and symptoms of 24–5; see also social policy, creative ageing; Stoke-on-Trent, stories of ageing Ageing, Drama and Creativity (Rickett, M. and Bernard, M.) 102, 103–4 Ageing Well programme 33, 34 Agenda for Later Life 2015: A Great Place to Grow Older (Age UK) 35 Ages and Stages Company 102, 107–10; developing methodology and empowering older people 107–10 ‘Ages of Man,’ idea of 3 Ahn, S. and Ashida, S. 171 Aked, J., Marks, N., Cordon C. and Thompson, S. 36, 37 Albeck, Pat 242, 243, 244, 245, 246–7, 251, 252, 253–4 Alford, Zachary 71 Alfreds, Mike 184, 186–7 ‘Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory.’ (Rossato-Bennett documentary film) 168 All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW) 35–6, 38, 41

Index 263 All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia (APPGD) 209, 219 Almila, Anna-Mari xi, 7, 13, 131–42 Altersstil (old-age style) 74 Alzheimer’s, Terry Pratchett and living with 198–206; agency and acuity, opposition to loss of 198–9; anti-vivisectionism 202–3; articulacy 198–9; Birmingham Discworld Convention 200, 201, 203, 204–5; celebrity, stage persona and 204–5; cognitive decline, creativity and negotiation of 198; cognitive failure 201; control (and perceptions of) 201–2, 203; creativity, communication and 199; creativity, therapeutic process 199–200; cultural notions, challenges to 199; death 198, 199, 200, 204–6; dementia patients, creativity of 198; Discworld fantasy 204–5; distancing method 201; fantasy writing, meaning and purpose of 204, 205; illness, narratives of 203–4; illness, personal experience of 201; King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry 202; late-life creativity, probing ideas of 200; late style, concept of 200; lifetime continuity 205–6; Living with Alzheimer’s (BBC TV, 2009) 200–201; Losing My Mind (DeBaggio, T.) 198–9, 199–200; medico-scientific discourse 198, 200; neuroimaging 203; neuropsychological evaluation 198; patient, caregiver and 205; reinforcing dynamics 202–3; self, Alzheimer’s and 203–4; social criticism 205; Vergiss mein nicht (Sieveking, D.) 201 Alzheimer’s Society 208 Amabile, T. 157 Amadeus (Peter Schaffer film) 64 Amigoni, D. and McMullan, G. 145, 168 Amigoni, David xi, 1–16, 242–56, 258–61 ‘And the Doctor Said ...’ project 115, 124, 128 Andrews, M., Squire, C. and Tamboukou, M. 102, 210 anti-vivisectionism 202–3 Aristotle 6, 21 Arnold, Matthew 224, 259–60 articulacy 198–9 ‘The Artist Grows Old’ (Kenneth Clarke lecture) 246–7

arts: ageing, social capital and 116–18; arts-and-humanities in dialogue, gerontology and 10–16; arts-and-humanities scholarship 258; arts-based methods, development of 108–10; arts-based research methodologies, absence of 106; in dementia care, turn to 169–73; for everyone 224–5; reflection, artworks and 83 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 5; arts-generated social capital in late life 124, 254n1; gerontology 8, 11; theatre in later life, value of 101, 102, 106, 111–12 Arts Council England 35, 185, 244 The Arts Dividend (Henley, D.) 244 arts-generated social capital in late life 114–28; ‘And the Doctor Said ...’ project 115, 124, 128; arts, ageing and social capital 116–18; Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 124, 254n1; Baring Foundation 117; Better Together Report (2000) 117; Bowling Alone (Putnam, R.) 115–16; common themes 119; ‘Connected Communities’ project 124–7; creative research methods, reflections on potential for 123–7; Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences (Kara, H.) 127; Index of Wellbeing in Later Life (Age UK, 2017) 117; knowing, paradigmatic and narrative 119; late life access to resources 123; late life creativity, burgeoning interest in 117; life-course perspectives, application of 121; narrative gerontology 119–20; project context 120; qualitative approach 117–19, 121–2; research findings 120–23; research methodology, design of 118–20; research questions 117–18; Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America (2000) 117; social capital, complex nature of concept 115–16; social capital, concept of 114; social capital, methodological gaps? 115–16; social capital, participation, creativity and 114–15, 117; storytelling, motivation for 125; study participants, recruitment of 120; therapeutic communities 122; University of the Third Age (U3A) 120, 153 Asian carers, research with 209–10

264 Index astonishment, Walcott and ideal of 91, 92, 94–5 Atchley, R. 121 The Athenaeum 50 Atkinson, R. 210 Auden, W.H. 92, 93 Audubon, John James 92 awareness, social policy and 39–40 ‘Back to the Drawing Board’ exhibition 252, 253–4, 255n9–10 Bakhshi, H. 103 Baring Foundation 117 Bartlett, R. and O’Connor, D. 173 Basting, A., Towey, M. and Rose, E. 185–6 Basting, Anne D. 105, 106, 225; identitymapping, dementia and 182, 184, 185, 186, 189, 193; late-life creativity, dementia and 168, 170, 173, 175 Bateson, P. 136 Batson, G., Quin, E. and Wilson, M. 171, 172 Battersby, C. 97n1 Bauer, M. 210 Beard, R.L. 170 Beaumont, Sir George 51 beauty, Walcott and production of 94–5 Becker, H. 132, 141 Beckett, Samuel 95–6 Beethoven, Ludwig von 3, 54, 62, 67, 68; Adorno and contemplation on genius of 77, 79–87, 95–6 Beghetto, R.A. and Kaufmann, J.C. 142 Behuniak, S.M. 169 Belfiore, E. and Bennett, O. 103 Bellass, S., Balmer, A., May, V., Keady, J., Buse, C., Capstick, A., Burke, L., Bartlett, R.L. and Hodgson, J. 142 Belle Vue mosaics 226, 228 Bennett, Richard Rodney 12 Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M. and Wright, D. 238–9n5 Benson, S. 185 Berman, H.J. 135 Bernard, M., Rezzano, J. and Ages & Stages Company 102, 108 Bernard, M., Rickett, M., Amigoni, D., Munro, L., Murray, M. and Rezzano, J. 102 Bernard, Miriam xi, 13, 101–12, 124 Beth Johnson Foundation 161–2 Better Together Report (2000) 117

Beyer Peacock commemoration 224, 226 Biggs, Simon 21 Billboard 65 Billington, J., Carroll, J., Davis, P., Healey, C. and Kinderman, P. 173 biographical approach, talking therapy and 209–10 biomedical discourses, visual diaries and 145 Birmingham Discworld Convention 200, 201, 203, 204–5 Birtwistle, Harrison 12 Bizet, Georges 252–3 Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups 209, 219 Black, S., Entwistle, J., Haye, A., Rocamora, A., Root, R. and Thomas, H. 141 Blackshaw, T. and Long, J. 116 Blackwell, T. and Seabrook, J. 236 Blackwood’s Magazine 52 Blade Runner (Ridley Scott film) 73 Blytheway, B. 107 Boal, Augusto 183, 190 Bohm, David 3–4 bonding capital 224, 235 Boota Singh, case of 214–16 Booth, Michael 58 Bosch, Hieronymous 92 Boston Museum of Fine Arts 58 Bourdieu, Pierre 132, 142, 174, 254 Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) 174–5 Bowie, David 7, 12 Bowie, David, late style and 61–75; Adorno, old age and late life creativity 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 73–4; Altersstil (old-age style) 74; Amadeus (Peter Schaffer film) 64; Billboard 65; Blackstar (David Bowie album) 67, 68, 69, 72, 73; Blade Runner (Ridley Scott film) 73; The Conversation 67; David Bowie: The Last Five Years (Francis Whately TV documentary) 68–72, 73; disability style 64; The Economist 63; gerontology, arts and humanities and 61; ‘The Hurricane Festival’ (David Bowie concert) 70; inauthenticity 72; late style, asymmetries of actual ageing and claims to 66–7; late style, early style and assumptions of 64–5; late style, emergence of idea of 62–3; late style, mainstream understanding of 61–2; late style, materials of theory of 65–6; late

Index 265 style, pop music and 66–7; late style, simplistic nature of premise of 64; late voice 67–8; The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music (Elliott, R.) 66–7; lateness, arts-and-humanities scholarship and 65; lateness, detachment for old age of 74; Lazarus (David Bowie play) 69, 70–71, 73; The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg film) 73; The Next Day (David Bowie album) 67, 69, 70, 72, 73; Spätstil (late style) 74; Virgilian artistic trajectory 62; As You Like It (Shakespeare) 63; You Want It Darker (Leonard Cohen album) 67 Bowling Alone (Putnam, R.) 115–16 Bowman, W.D. 172 Boyer, Rene 234 Boyle, D. and Harris, M. 42 Bradfield, Emily xi, 12, 31–44 Brandt, Anthony 2–3, 4, 6 Brecht, B. and Willet, J. 187 Brecht, Bertolt 187 Bridgewater, Emma 243, 246, 248 ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ (Peter Rice mural) 242–4, 249, 251, 253 British social policy context 32–6 Britten, Benjamin 25–6 Brooks, Peter 96 Brown, David Blayney 56 Bruner, Jerome 119 Building a Society for All Ages (HM Government, 2009) 32 Bülow, M.H. and Söderqvist, T. 43 Bulson, E. 253 Burke, L. and Zeilig, H. 189 Burke, Lucy 189, 201–2 Burns, Terry 72 Cameron, David 42 Cameron, M., Crane, N., Ings, R. and Taylor, K. 37 Canada National Ballet School 174 capitalist modernity, radical redefinition of 87–9 Capps, D. 136 Capstick, A. and Ludwin, K. 126 Carley, B. 223 Carlson, L. 174 Carrigan, Anthony 97 Carter, Elliott 27, 65 Cash, Johnny 67 Cave, K. 51

Celebrating Age Fund (Baring Foundation) 35 celebrity, stage persona and 204–5 Centre for Ageing Better 35 Césaire, Aimé 94, 95 Chakravarty, A. 172 Chang, Y.-S., Chu, H., Yang, C.Y., Tsai, J.-C. et al. 171 Charvet, Jean-Gabriel 249–50, 255n7 Cheeseman, Peter 254–5n4 Chesterton, G.K. 204 Churchill, E. 33 Citizen of the Year 163 citizenship, relational model of 173–5 civic engagement 162–3 Clarke, Kenneth 246 Clarke, L.H.M., Griffin, M. and Mahila, K. 141 Clegg, Nick 42 Clift, S., Gilbert, R. and Vella-Burrows, T. 39 clothes, self-expression and 135 Co-production Manifesto (NEF, 2008) 42 cognitive decline, creativity and negotiation of 198 cognitive failure, living with Alzheimer’s and 201 Cohen, Leonard 67, 74 Cohen-Mansfield, J., Libin, A. and Marx, M.S. 170 Cole, T. and Ray, R. 20 Cole, Thomas 20 Cole, T.R., Kastenbaum, R. and Ray, R. 104 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1–2 collaborative approach: development of, theatre in later life and 107–8; singing voice in late life 27 Columbus, Christopher 250 Composer magazine 29 Concannon, Amy 56 confidence: identity-mapping, dementia and 195–6; singing voice in late life 27 Connect 37–8 ‘Connected Communities’ project 124–7 connectivity, relationships and 148, 153–4 control (and perceptions of) 201–2, 203 The Conversation 67 Conway, Kathlyn 203–4 Cook, E.T. and Wedderburn, A. 52 Cook, James 249–50 Cooper, M. and Thomas, H. 122 Court Magazine 52

266 Index Cownie, F., Jones, K., Bisht, P., Leach, R., Morgan, C., Poole, E. and Amigoni, D. 254n1 Craig, Claire 199, 204 Creative Age Festival 102 creative engagement 183–4 creative expression, opportunities for 104, 105 Creative Health (APPGAHW, 2017) 35–6 creative individuality 137–8 creative leisure activities 155–6 creative research methods, reflections on potential for 123–7 Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences (Kara, H.) 127 creative therapy 208 creativity: age and 1–6; arts-generated social capital in late life 114–28; capture of, dress and 142; civic engagement 162–3; communication and living with Alzheimer’s 199; conceptualization of 168; creative ageing, social policy challenge and 31–44; creative state of mind 4; Creativity: Theory, History, Practice (Pope, R.) 6; decline, creativity and framework of 145; definitions of 131–3; degrees of 258; Les Demoiselles (Picasso) 2; dress, creativity in late life and 131–42; engagement with 258; ‘everyday’ creative activities 258; everyday creativity 5; late style and 3–4, 9–10, 12–16; liberation from decline through 145; The Long Revolution (Williams, R.) 6–7; multiple notions of 6–10; narrowness of constructions of 167–8; The Runaway Species (Brandt, A. and Eagleman, D.) 2; self-expression in 173; singing voice in late life 27–8, 30; social policy, creative ageing and 31–44; theatre in later life, value of 101–12; as therapeutic process 199–200; value of 170–71; visual diaries, everyday life in 145–60 Critchley, Simon 61, 72–3 criticality, value and 78 Critique of Judgement (Kant, I.) 84 Crossick, G. and Kaszynska, P. 102, 103, 106–7 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 136, 137, 142 Cuddy, L.L. and Duffin, J. 168, 171 Cuddy, L.L., Sikka, R. and Vanstone, A. 171

Cuijpers, Y. and van Lente, H. 169 Cultural Ageing (Katz, S.) 7–8 Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology (Twigg, J. and Martin, W.) 7–8 Cultural Value programme (AHRC) 101, 102, 106, 108, 109–10 Culture, Media and Sport Department (DCMS) 34–5 Culture and Society, 1750–1950 (Williams, R.) 7 culture dividend 251–3 The Culture White Paper (DCMS, 2016) 34–5 Cutler, David 103, 117 daily life: creativity in 156–8, 159; novel methods for understanding 145–6, 146–7; visual diaries, everyday life in 145–6; visual images of 146 Daily News 52 Daly, S. 117 Daly, T. and Szebehely, M. 169 dance, dementia and 171–2, 174–5 Darlow, Michael 57 David Bowie: The Last Five Years (Francis Whately TV documentary) 68–72, 73 Davidson, Cathy 20–21 Davis, Elaine 232, 235 Davis, F. 135 Daykin, N., Byrne, E., Soteriou T. and O’Connor, S. 38 De Kooning, Willem 172 De Medeiros, K. 102, 145, 146 De Medeiros, K. and Basting, A. 170 death, living with Alzheimer’s and 198, 199, 200, 204–6 DeBaggio, Thomas 198–9, 200, 205–6 Deleuze, Gilles 55–6 dementia, critical narrative on late-life creativity and 167–75; ‘Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory.’ (Rossato-Bennett documentary film) 168; arts in dementia care, turn to 169–73; Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI) 174–5; Canada National Ballet School 174; citizenship, relational model of 173–5; creativity, conceptualization of 168; creativity, narrowness of constructions of 167–8; creativity, self-expression in 173; creativity, value of 170–71; dance 171–2, 174–5; innovative dance programmes 174–5; late style, continuity and 168; late style, narratives

Index 267 of 168–9; medication in dementia care, overreliance on 169–70; music therapy 170–72; National Care Forum 169; neurological impairment, creativity in face of 175; non-pharmacological approaches to dementia care 170; nursing home residents, ethnographic observation of 167; selfhood, embodiment and 172, 174; World Federation of Music Therapy 171 dementia patients, creativity of 198 dementia statistics 208 DeNora, T. and Ansdell, G. 170, 174 Derrida, Jacques 97n3 disability style 64 Disciplining Old Age (Katz, S.) 20 discussion about: social policy, creative ageing and 42–3; theatre in later life, value of 110–11 Discworld fantasy 204–5 distancing method, living with Alzheimer’s and 201 Doctor Miracle (Bizet comic opera) 252–3 Dodds, R.E., Tseelon, E. and Weitkamp, E.L.C. 134 Don Quixote (Cervantes, M. de) 78 Dorsey, Gail Ann 70 Douglas, S., James, I. and Ballard, C. 170 dress, creativity in late life and 131–42; aesthetic pleasure 134–6; age-appropriate dress, resistance to 140–41; age-ordered expectations 133; clothes, self-expression and 135; colour, importance of 138; creative individuality 137–8; creativity, capture of 142; creativity, definitions of 131–3; dress, classical definition of 131; dress, everyday creativity and 142; fashion studies, dress and 133; London College of Fashion 133; multi-faceted creative practice, dress as 136–9; originality, elements of 132; playfulness 136; restraints 139, 141; self-actualisation, aesthetic pleasure and 134–6; serendipity 136; social expectations, resistance to 141–2; storytelling 133; time, effect of 139–41; wardrobe interviews 133–4 Dryer, Henry 168 Dufort, Joseph 249 Duhamel, K.V. 137 Dunn, P. and Leeson, I. 225 Dupuis, S., Wiersma, E. and Loiselle, L. 169

Durkin, Rachael 67–8 Dussel, Enrique 88–9, 90, 96 Dylan, Bob 65, 74 Eagleman, David 2–3, 4, 6 Earhart, G.M. 171 The Eccentric Mr Turner (Michael Booth short film) 58 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 145–6 The Economist 63 Edinburgh, Philip, Duke of 203 Ehresman, C. 170 Elbourne, John 32 Elliott, D. and Culhane, D. 145 Elliott, J. 119 Elliott, Richard 66–7, 74 Ellis, Havelock 62 Empowering Engagement: A Stronger Voice for Older People (DWP, 2009) 32 Endgame (Beckett) 95–6 energy retention 25 Entwhistle, J. 131, 135 Epstein, J. 235 Essex University 162–3 ethics of research 147–8 ethnic relationships 163 European modernity, demise of 90 Facer, K. and Enright, B. 43 Fairer Society, Healthy Lives (Marmot Report, 2010) 33 Fairhurst, E. 140 fantasy writing, meaning and purpose in 204, 205 fashion studies, dress and 133 Field, John 13, 115 Fischman, D. 171 Fogg, A. 224 Foresight Report (2008) 32, 36 Fossey, J., Ballard, C., Juszczak, E., James, I., Alder, N., Jacoby, R. and Howard, R. 170 Four Last Songs: Aging and Creativity in Verdi, Strauss, Messiaen and Britten (Hutcheon, L. and Hutcheon, M.) 244–5 Franco, M.R., Sherrington, C., Tiedemann, A., Pereira, L.S. et al. 171 Frank, Arthur W. 125 Fraser, K.D., O’Rourke, H.M., Wiens, H., Lai, J., Howell, C. and Brett-MacLean, P. 105

268 Index Frayn, Andrew 67–8 freedom, poetry and 92–3 freelance life 24, 28 Freudian psychology 21 Frith, William Powell 238 Fritsch, T., Kwak, J., Grant, S., Lang, J., Montgomery, R.R. and Basting, A.D. 173 Fujiwara, D., Kudrna, L. and Dolan, P. 34 Fukuyama, Francis 116 Gardner, K. 210–11 Gatens, M. 169 generic hybridity 244–5 genius: contemplations about Beethoven and 80–84, 95; criterion that distinguishes 79–80 Genoe, M.R. and Dupuis, S.L. 175 geriatric research 20 German and Austrian music tradition 85–6 gerontology 6–10, 19–23; age research, attitudes towards 19; ageing, biology of 21; arts and humanities and 10–16, 61; Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 8, 11; Cultural Ageing (Katz, S.) 7–8; cultural gerontology, emergence of 159; Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology (Twigg, J. and Martin, W.) 7–8; Culture and Society, 1750–1950 (Williams, R.) 7; disciplinary identity of 19–23; Disciplining Old Age (Katz, S.) 20; discovery, contexts of 22–3; geriatric research 20; gerontophobia, gerontophilia and 49; humanistic disciplines 19–20; humanistic gerontology, field of 258; Guide to Humanistic Studies in Aging (Cole, T. and Ray, R.) 20; humanistic study, need for 20–21; humanities, advocacy for 19; imaginative repertoires 23; inclusivity, issue of 22; Information Age 20; interdisciplinary questioning 20–21; The New Science of Ageing (Walker, A.) 8; postmodern ageing 21; purpose of scholarship on 22; sociological imagination, need for 22 Gibson, P.C. 133 Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. 116 Gimlin, D. 157 Glendenning, Angela xi–xii, 5, 13, 161–3 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 54

Good, B.J. 169 Gorton Visual Arts Group (GVAG) 223–39, 260; art is for everyone 224–5; Belle Vue mosaics 226, 228; Beyer Peacock commemoration 224, 226; bonding capital 224, 235; community art 225; community for all ages 233–5; cultural policy 225; Gorton Events Committee (GEC) 223; group membership 232–3; loss, memorialisation of 224; Manchester City Council (MCC) 224; meaningful involvement 226–8; membership 226, 232, 237; narrative, medium and 229; narrative, technique and style 228–32; neighbourhood characteristics 223–4; older people, artists working with 225; options for the future 235–6; origin and evolution of 225–6; outreach 233–5; ‘Park Life’ project 230, 238n1; Peterloo Massacre commemoration 235–6; priorities and values 236–7; radicalism, conservation of 224–5, 233, 235, 236–7, 238; significance of practice at 237; tradition, character of 236–7; working practice 228–32 Gould, Timothy 84 Goulding, A. and Newman, A. 104 Goulding, Anna 103, 254 Gowing, Lawrence 55, 56 Graham, D.J., Stockinger, S. and Leder, H. 171 Grant, L. 224 Gray, A. 116 Green, M., Iparraguirre, J., Davidson, S., Rossall, P. and Zaidi, A. 117 Gregory, Richard 184 Grene, D. 259 Grenier, A., Lloyd, L. and Phillipson, C. 170 Griffin, Phil 224, 226, 228 Grigorovich, A. and Kontos, P. 170 Grigorovich, Alisa xii, 14, 167–75 group membership 232–3 group relationships, development of 104, 105 Guattari, Félix 55–6 Gullette, M.M. 169 Güner, F. 57 Guzmán, A., Freeston, M., Rochester, L., Hughes, J.C. and James, I.A. 171 Guzmán, A., Robinson, L., Rochester, L., James I. and Hughes, J.C. 170

Index 269 Hall, Michael C. 71 Halpern, D. 115 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert 54 Hannemann, B.T. 170, 172 Hansen, K.T. 131 Happy Returns (Ages and Stages Company) 102 Harbans Kaur, case of 212–14 Hardy, Thomas 3 Harkness, V., Cameron, D., Latter, J., Ravat, M. and Bridges, L. 34 harmony, exhaustion of dynamic of concept of 85 Hatamian, A., Perarmain, D. and Golden, S. 34 Hattori, H., Hattori, C., Hokao, C., Mizushima, K. and Mase, T. 173 Havighurst, R. 121 Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker 202 Haworth, M. 97n3 Hay, Henry 71 health, risk and body 148, 151–2 health and wellbeing, benefits to 104–5 Health Department (DoH) 219 Healthy Lives, Healthy People (HM Government, 2010) 32–3 Heathcote, D. and Bolton, G. 182, 185–6 Heatlcote Dorothy 182, 185–6 Hebdige, D. 133 Heenan, D. 117 Hegel, Georg W.F. 81, 83 Henley, Darren 5, 156, 244 Herskovitz, E. 169 Hewison, R. 224–5 Higgs, P. and Gilleard, C. 131 Hill, H. 170 Hind, C.L. 55 Ho, R.T.H., Cheung, J.K.K., Chan, W. C., Cheung, I.K.M. and Lam, L.C.W. 171 Hogan, S. and Coulter, A. 38 Hogan, S. and Warren, L. 37 Hogan, Susan xii, 12, 31–44 Holden, John 103, 104, 111 Hölderlin, Friedrich 95–6 Holland, S. 140 Holm, A.K., Lepp, M. and Ringsberg, K. C. 173 Holman Hunt, William 238 Holstein, M.B. and Gubrium, M. 119 Holstein, M.B. and Minkler, M. 107, 123 hope, cultural capital as resource of 253–4 Hsieh, S., Hornberger, M., Piguet, O. and Hodges, J.R. 171

humanistic disciplines 19–20 humanistic gerontology, field of 258 humanistic study, need for 20–21 humanities, advocacy for 19 Hunter, Sarah 191–3 Hurd-Clarke, L. 140 Hutcheon, L. and Hutcheon, M. 168, 172, 244–5 Hutchinson, Ben 74, 88 hydration, dehydration and 25 Hyland, B. 224 Ibsen, Henrik 62, 259 identity 161–2 identity-mapping, dementia and 182–96; abundant communities, idea of 183; Arts Council England 185; being, different ways of 187; confidence, feelings of 195–6; creative engagement 183–4; interconnectedness 186; The Island, independent living and 184–8; ‘Mantle of the Expert Approach’ (Heathcote, D. and Bolton, G.) 182, 185–6; meanings, sharing of 196; ownership, feelings of 195–6; The Penelope Project (2016) 185–6; performance 186–7, 194–5; performance, accessibility of 190; performance, multidisciplinary nature of 183; personhood and identity, ideas of 182; playfulness 185–6; power, issues of creativity and 185; reflection 187, 193, 196; residency 192–4; ‘The Rules of the Game’ project 184; session themes 189; Shore Green extra-care housing scheme in Wythenshawe, Manchester 184–5, 188, 192, 194, 196; Small Things Creative Projects 182–4; stories, telling and sharing 182–3; stories, transcendental nature of 186–7; structure, process and 188–95; The Tempest, access to narrative of 190; The Tempest, elements as starting points 187–8; theatre, communal nature of 183; theatre, connected creativity of 184; TimeSlips project (Anne Basting) 189; workshops 188–92 illness: narratives of 203–4; personal experience of 201 Illustrated London News 52 imaginative repertoires, gerontology and 23 immortality, creative ingenuity and 92 inauthenticity, late style and 72

270 Index incapacity, dealing with 162 inclusivity, issue of 22 Index of Wellbeing in Later Life (Age UK, 2017): arts-generated social capital in late life 117; social policy, creative ageing and 35, 117 Information Age 20 innovative dance programmes 174–5 interconnectedness 186 interdisciplinary questioning 20–21 interdisciplinary research 145 interpretive criticism, connection between value and 260 Iran 163 The Island, independent living and 184–8 ITN News 246–7 Iyer, V. 172 James, O. 191 James, William 3 Jameson, Frederic 247, 253 Jamieson, A. and Victor, C. 118–19 Jennings, B. 170, 174 Jerrome, D. 238 Johnson, J.K., Chang, C.-C., Brambati, S.M., Migliaccio, R. et al. 171 Johnston, G. and Percy-Smith, J. 116, 118 Jones, J. 57 Jones, Sidney 161 Jung, R.E., Segall, J.M., Bockholt, H.J., Flores, R.A. et al. 171 Jungian psychology 21 Just 70 Challenge 162–3 Jutlla, K. and Moreland, N. 209 Jutlla, Karan xii, 14, 199–200, 208–19, 260 Kant, Immanuel 79–80, 83, 84, 86, 87 Kara, Helen 127, 145, 146 Karkou, V. and Meekums, B. 171 Kastenbaum, R. 137 Kaszynska, P. 107 Katz, S. and Campbell, E. 49 Katz, Stephen 7–8, 20, 157, 169 Kavanagh, Patrick 94, 95 Keats, John 89, 90 Keele University, Adult Education at 161–2 kidney transplantation 162–3 Killick, John 199, 204 Kincaid, Jamaica 94, 97 King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry 202 Kingsley, Rev. William 54

Kirkwood, T., Bond, J., May, C., McKeith, I. and Teh, M. 39 Kitwood, Tom 169, 188, 190, 196 Klepp, I.G. and Storm-Mathisen, A. 141 Knapp, M., Prince, M., Albanese, E., Banerjee, S., Dhanasiri, S. et al. 208 knowing, paradigmatic and narrative 119 Kontos, P. and Grigorovich, A. 168, 170, 173 Kontos, P. and Martin, W. 169, 172, 174 Kontos, P., Grigorovich, A., Kontos, A.P. and Miller, K.L. 170, 173 Kontos, P., Miller, K.L. and Kontos, A.P. 170, 173 Kontos, Pia xii, 14, 167–75 Koudellas, Marie 226–8, 231–2 Kovach, C.R., Kelber, S.T., Simpson, M. and Wells, T. 170 Kshtriya, S., Barnstaple, R., Rabinovich, D.B. and DeSouza, J.F. 171 La Fontaine, J., Jutlla, K., Read, K., Brooker, D. and Evans, S. 209 The Lancet 244–5 Larsen, J.E. 224 late city, late style and 248–51 late life access to resources 123 late-life creativity 258–9; beyond late style 9–10, 253–4, 260–61; burgeoning interest in 117; context of 259; economic decision-making about 259; Freudian psychology 21; interpretive criticism, connection between value and 260; Jungian psychology 21; located understanding of, need for 260; The Long Life (Small, H.) 21; The Mature Imagination (Biggs, S.) 21; probing ideas of 200; scholarship on, articulation of critical interstices between multiple disciplines of 259–60; socialised understanding of 258–9; White Egrets (Walcott, D.) 12–13; see also gerontology ‘the late Peter Rice’ 242–4 late style: Adorno and 77–8, 79–86, 87–90, 93, 95–7; Adorno and biographical explanations of late style 82–3; asymmetries of actual ageing and claims to 66–7; beyond late style, late-life creativity and 9–10, 253–4, 260–61; beyond late style, stories of ageing and 253–4; concept of 200; continuity and 168; early style and assumptions of 64–5; emergence of

Index 271 idea of 62–3; late stylists and multitude of 96; mainstream understanding of 61–2; materials of theory of 65–6; narratives of 168–9; pop music and 66–7; simplistic nature of premise of 64; Walcott and 77–8, 80, 89–95, 96–7; see also arts-generated social capital in late life; dress, creativity in late life; Gorton Visual Arts Group (GVAG); singing voice in late life; Stoke-on-Trent, stories of ageing; theatre in later life, value of; visual diaries, everyday life in Late Turner: Painting Set Free (Tate Britain) 56–7 late voice 66–8 The Late Voice: Time, Age and Experience in Popular Music (Elliott, R.) 66–7 late work: cumulative criticisms of 52–3; spectacular nature of 49, 50 lateness: Adorno as major theorist of 63–4; arts-and-humanities scholarship and 65; detachment for old age of 74; narratives of ageing and 248–51 Lazarus, Neil 89 learning: in adulthood, social policy and 40–41; opportunities for, theatre and 104, 105 Leeson, L. 225, 235 Léger, Fernand 238 Leigh, Mike 57–8 Lieberman, J.N. 136 Liebreich, Richard 53 The Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner (Thornbury, W.) 53 life-course perspectives, application of 121 lifetime continuity, living with Alzheimer’s and 205–6 LinkAge Plus 33 Lipscomb, Valerie B. 105–6 Livesley, Brian 53 Living with Alzhaimer’s (BBC TV, 2009) 200–201 Local Government Association (LGA) 34 London College of Fashion 133 The Long Life (Small, H.) 21 ‘longevity dividend’ 244–5 Los Angeles Times 96 Losing My Mind (DeBaggio, T.) 198–9, 199–200 loss, memorialisation of 224 The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent (Rice, M.) 243, 250–51, 252, 255n9 The Lost Empire (Walcott, Derek) 93–4

Lovestone, Professor Simon 202 Lövgren, K. 134, 136, 138, 140 Lowrey, Annie 247 Lucas, J.A., Chakravarty, S., Bowblis, J. R., Gerhard, T. et al. 169 Ludwin, K. and Capstick, A. 126–7 Lukács, Georg 95 lung capacity, singing voice and 25 Lutyens, Elisabeth 27 McKay, Ian 223, 226, 228–9, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237–8, 239 Mackenzie, Catriona 23 McKern, Leo 57 McKnight, J. and Block, P. 183–4 MacMillan, James 12 McMullan, G. and Smiles, S. 132, 223, 238 McMullan, Gordon xiii, 1–16, 7, 12, 61–75, 200, 258–61; late style, defence of idea of 78–9, 83–4, 86, 87 Macpherson, H. 174 McRobbie, A. 132 Mahler, Gustav 74, 86 Malone, Gareth 37–8, 43 The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg film) 73 Manchester City Council (MCC) 224 Mannay, D., Creaghan, J., Gallagher, D., Marzella, R., Mason, S., Morgan, M. and Grant, A. 145, 146 Manning, Jane xii, 11–12, 24–30 ‘Mantle of the Expert Approach’ (Heathcote, D. and Bolton, G.) 182, 185–6 marginalisation 79, 101, 209 Marlow, J. 235 Marmot Report (2010) 33 Martin, Wendy xii–xiii, 7–8, 13, 145–60, 204 Marx, Karl (and Marxism) 73, 87, 88, 95 Mass Observation 9 Massey, D. 151 Matarasso, F. 117, 224, 225 materialist cultural criticism 87 Matisse, Henri 64 Matthews, Colin 12 The Mature Imagination (Biggs, S.) 21 meaningful involvement 226–8 medication in dementia care, overreliance on 169–70 medico-scientific discourse 198, 200 Mello, R. and Voigts, J. 106 Mental Health Foundation 210, 219

272 Index Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 174 Messel, Oliver 249, 255n6 metaphor, life transmuted into 91–2 Michelangelo 85, 246 Miles, John xiii, 7, 15, 38, 223–39, 259, 260 Miller, E. and Johansson, B. 173 Miller, K.L. and Kontos, P. 170, 173 Mills, C. Wright 22 mindfulness 39–40 Mitchell, G., Dupuis, S. and Kontos, P. 169 Mitchell, Joni 74 mobility retention 25 modern technology 29 modernity, Adorno and conception of 87–9 Moffat, Susan 255–6n10 Mohan, G. and Mohan, J. 116 Monet, Claude 57 Moniz-Cook, E., Woods, R.T. and Richards, K. 170 Monkhouse, Cosmo 54 Montgomery, John 252 morbid decline, symptoms of 52 Morgan, A. 210 Moriarty, J., Sharif, N. and Robinson, J. 209 Morning Post 51 Moss, H. and O’Neill, D. 169, 175 Mozart, Wolfgang A. 62, 65, 74 Mr Turner (Mike Leigh film) 57–8 Muir, K. 259 Müller, P., Rehfeld, K., Schmicker, M., Hökelmann, A. et al. 171 muscle memory 26 music therapy 170–72 The Musical Times 252–3 Narayan, K. and George, K.M. 123 narrative: analysis of 209–10; cross-disciplinary connections through 5–6; medium and 229; narrative gerontology 119–20; narrative interviews 208; technique and style 228–32 National Care Forum 169 Negative Dialectics (Adorno, T.W.) 87 Nelson, Cary 19 Nelson, Willie 74 neo-colonial system, Walcott’s disavowal of 89–90 NESTA Innovation Foundation 42 Neumann, Erich 62

neuroimaging 203 neurological impairment, creativity in face of 175 neuropsychological evaluation 198 New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) 8–9 New Economics Foundation (NEF) 12, 31–2, 33, 35, 36–7, 38, 39–40, 41–2; Happy Planet Index 43 The New Science of Ageing (Walker, A.) 8 Newman, A., Goulding, A. and Whitehead, C. 41, 254 Newman, Andrew 9, 254 Nicholsen, Shierry Weber 80 Nochlin, L. 138 Noice, Helga and Tony 104–5 Nolan, M., Ryan, T., Enderby, P. and Reid, D. 169 non-pharmacological approaches to dementia care 170 North Staffordshire Kidney Patients Association 162 Novek, S., Morris-Oswald, T. and Menec, V. 125–6 nursing home residents, ethnographic observation of 167 Oakley, Rita 234–5 O’Brien, D. 103 O’Donnell, Darren 183, 184 old age, memory and 89–90 old age and late life creativity 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 73–4 ‘The Old Gods’ (Dannie Abse) 161 older artists, stories of ageing and 244–5 Older People: 2010–2015 Government Policy (HM Government, 2013) 33 older people, artists working with 225 Olive Tree Campaign 163 O’Neill, Desmond 244, 245, 254 Oppen, George 64 Oppenheimer, C. 168 originality, elements of 132 Osborne, T. 132 Oulibichev, Alexandre 74 Our Age Our Stage (Ages and Stages Company, 2012) 102, 107, 254–5n4 Oursler, Tony 70–71 Outcomes of the Active at 60 Community Agent Programme (DWP, 2012) 34 ownership, feelings of 195–6 Palestine 163 Palmiero, M., Di Giacomo, D. and Pasasafiume, D. 131

Index 273 ‘Park Life’ project 230, 238n1 Parsifal (Wagner) 95–6 Paterson, T. 225 Pattison, Margaret 234–5 Paulson, S. 122 Payne, Anthony 28 Payne, H., Warnecke, T., Karkou, V. and Westland, G. 171, 172 Payne, M. 210 Peck, K., Girard, T.A., Russo, F. and Fiocco, A.J. 171 perfect pitch 25–6 The Penelope Project (2016) 185–6 People’s Health Trust 38 performance: accessibility of 190; identity-mapping, dementia and 186–7, 194–5; multidisciplinary nature of 183 Perlovsky, L. 172 personal life, need for happiness in 28 personal reflections, talking therapy and 218–19 personhood and identity, ideas of 182 Peterloo Massacre commemoration 235–6 Petrovsky, D., Cacchione, P.Z. and George, M. 170 ‘Photographing Everyday Life; Ageing, Lived Experiences, Time and Space’ research study 145–6, 148–56 physical activity, wellbeing and 39 Picasso, Pablo 2, 3, 62 Pierrot Lunaire (Schoenberg) 12, 28 Pilcher, K., Martin, W. and Williams, V. 145, 147, 157 Pilcher, Katy xiii, 13, 145–60 Pink, S. 145 place-making, culture dividend and 251–3 Plato 6, 21 playfulness: dress, creativity in late life and 136; identity-mapping, dementia and 185–6 Plucker, J.A. and Beghetto, R.A. 132 Pluye, P. and Nha Hong, Q. 36 Pope, Rob 6 Postlethwaite, Liz xiii, 10, 14, 182–96, 259 postmodern ageing 21 Postmodernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Jameson, F.) 247 power: issues of creativity and 185; politics and 29–30 Pratchett, Terry 14, 198, 200–206 Price, K.A. and Tinker, A.M. 133, 170

proto-modernism 57, 58–9 public artists in later life see Gorton Visual Arts Group (GVAG) 223–39 Pugin, Edward 225 Pulitzer Prize 5 Putnam, Robert D. 115–16, 224 Qin Shi Huang 90 qualitative approach, social capital and 117–19, 121–2 Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport (DCMS, 2014) 34 race relations 162, 163 Racine, Jean 259 Rader, J., Barrick, A.L., Hoeffer, B., Sloane,, P.D., McKenzie, D.. et al. 170 radicalism, conservation of 224–5, 233, 235, 236–7, 238 Ram Piari, case of 216–17 Ray, K.D. and Mittelman, M.S. 171 Ray, M., Bernard, M. and Reynolds, J. 123 Ray Karpen, Ruth xiii, 8, 11, 19–23, 119 Reid, D., Ryan, T. and Enderby, P. 173 Rembrandt 3, 62, 79, 85 research: arts-generated social capital in late life 18–20, 117–18, 120–23; talking therapy, dementia and narratives as 211–12; theatre in later life, value of 106; visual diaries, everyday life in 146–8 Review of Older People’s Engagement with Government (Elbourne, J.) 32 Reynolds, J., Hetherington, J., O’Sullivan, A., Clayton, K. and Holmes, J. 123 Reynolds, Jackie xiii–xiv, 13, 14–15, 114–28, 259 Rezzano, Jill 102, 108, 109, 112 Rice, Matthew 242, 243–4, 246, 248–9, 250–51, 251–2, 253, 255n9 Rice, Peter 15, 242–3, 244, 245–8, 249–51, 252, 253–4 Rickett, Michelle xiv, 13, 101–12, 124 Riessman, C.K. 119, 210, 211 Romanticism 1–2, 6, 62, 63, 66, 73, 79, 238n4 Rosch, E., Varela, F. and Thompson, E. 172 Rosenblum, Robert 238n4 Rosenstock-Huessy, E. 228, 238n3

274 Index Rossato-Bennett, M. 168 Royal Academy 50, 51, 52 Royal Academy of Music 24 ‘The Rules of the Game.’project 184 Ruskin, John 51, 52, 54, 224, 233, 260 Russell, Geoffrey 249 Rwanda 163 Sabeti, S. 132 Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America (2000) 117 Said, Edward 63–4, 66, 67, 243, 249; late style, defence of idea of 77, 86, 95 Salma Dialysis Centre in Khartoum 162–3 ‘sandboxing’ 146 Sandelowski, M. 133 Savin-Baden, M., Brady, G., Wimpenny, K. and Brown, G. 106 Schaffer, Peter 64 Schiavio, A. and Altenmüller, E. 172 Schiavio, A., Menin, D. and Matyja, J. 172 Schiermer, B. 135 Schneider, L.S., Dagerman, K.S. and Insel, P.S. 169 Schoenberg, Arnold 3, 86 Schweitzer, P. 225 Scott, Ridley 73 Scott-Heron, Gil 67 Seabrooke, V. and Milne, A. 209 Searing, C. and Zeilig, H. 134 Second Viennese School 85–6 Sedlmeier, P., Weigelt, O. and Walther, E. 172 self, Alzheimer’s and 203–4 self-actualisation, aesthetic pleasure and 134–6 selfhood, embodiment and 172, 174 Sennett, R. 228, 237 serendipity 136 Shakespeare, William 3, 62, 63; As You Like It 63; identity-mapping, dementia and 182, 184, 186, 187–8; late style, defence of 78, 79, 89, 91–2, 93; The Tempest: access to narrative of 190; Derek Walcott and 93–4; elements as starting points 187–8; identity-mapping, dementia and 182, 186, 187, 188–9, 190–94 Shakespeare and the Idea of Late Writing (McMullan, G.) 79 Shaw, George Bernard 90 Shi, B., Cao, X., Chen, Q., Zhuang, K. and Qiu, J. 171

Shore Green extra-care housing scheme in Wythenshawe, Manchester 184–5, 188, 192, 194, 196 Sidney, Philip 1 Sieveking, David 201 sight in old age 52–3 Sikh community in Wolverhampton 14, 208, 209, 211–17, 219 Silver, Christina 160 Simmel, G. 133 Simoni-Wastila, L., Ryder, P.T., Qian, J., Zuckerman, I.H. et al. 169 Singh, G. and Tatla, D.S. 209 singing voice in late life 24–30; adaptation to getting older 26–7; ageing, signs and symptoms of 24–5; ageing in public eye 26; collaboration 27; competition 27; Composer magazine 29; concentration 26; confidence 27; courage 27; creativity 27–8, 30; energy retention 25; fitness and exercise regime 25; freelance life 24, 28; hydration 25; lung capacity 25; memory 26; mobility retention 25; modern technology 29; muscle memory 26; perfect pitch 25–6; personal life, need for happiness in 28; power, politics and 29–30; presentation 27; professional singing, aspects of 24; Royal Academy of Music 24; Voicing Pierrot (Manning, J.) 28; writing, importance of 29 The Slave Ship (Turner, J.M.W.) 58 Slick, Earl 70 Small, Helen 21 Small Things Creative Projects 182–4 Smiles, Sam xiv, 7, 12, 49–59, 78–9, 223, 244 social capital: complex nature of concept 114, 115–16; methodological gaps? 115–16; participation, creativity and 114–15, 117 social criticism 205 social expectations, resistance to 141–2 social policy, creative ageing and: Active@60 33–4; Ageing Well programme 33, 34; Agenda for Later Life 2015: A Great Place to Grow Older (Age UK) 35; All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing (APPGAHW) 35–6, 38, 41; awareness 39–40; British social policy context 32–6; Building a Society for All Ages (HM Government, 2009) 32;

Index 275 Celebrating Age Fund (Baring Foundation) 35; Centre for Ageing Better 35; Co-production Manifesto (NEF, 2008) 42; Connect 37–8; Creative Health (APPGAHW, 2017) 35–6; cultural activities, physical activity and 39; Culture, Media and Sport Department (DCMS) 34–5; The Culture White Paper (DCMS, 2016) 34–5; discussion about 42–3; Empowering Engagement: A Stronger Voice for Older People (DWP, 2009) 32; Fairer Society, Healthy Lives (Marmot Report, 2010) 33; Five Ways to Wellbeing in action 36–7; Foresight Report (2008) 32, 36; Healthy Lives, Healthy People (HM Government, 2010) 32–3; Index of Wellbeing in Later Life (Age UK, 2017) 35, 117; learning in adulthood 40–41; LinkAge Plus 33; Local Government Association (LGA) 34; Marmot Report (2010) 33; mindfulness 39–40; NESTA Innovation Foundation 42; New Economics Foundation (NEF) Happy Planet Index 43; Older People: 2010–2015 Government Policy (HM Government, 2013) 33; Outcomes of the Active at 60 Community Agent Programme (DWP, 2012) 34; participation, giving and 41–2; People’s Health Trust 38; physical activity, wellbeing and 39; Quantifying and Valuing the Wellbeing Impacts of Culture and Sport (DCMS, 2014) 34; Review of Older People’s Engagement with Government (Elbourne, J.) 32; What Works Centre for Wellbeing 35; Work and Pensions Department (UK, DWP) 32, 33–4 sociological imagination, need for 22 Somers, M.R. and Roberts, C.N.J. 173 Sophocles 62, 259 space, public and private 148, 149–51 Spall, Timothy 57, 58 Spätstil (late style) 74 Spencer, Robert xiv, 8, 12–13, 73, 77–97; late style stories of aging and the city 249, 250, 259, 260 Staffordshire Transplant Association 162 Sterin, G.J. 175 Stoke-on-Trent, stories of ageing and 242–56; ‘The Artist Grows Old’ (Kenneth Clarke lecture) 246–7; The Arts Dividend (Henley, D.) 244; ‘Back

to the Drawing Board’ exhibition 252, 253–4, 255n9–10; beyond late style 253–4; ‘A Bright Past for Stoke-on-Trent’ (Peter Rice mural) 242–4, 249, 251, 253; visual impact, narration of 245–8; culture dividend 251–3; Doctor Miracle (Bizet comic opera) 252–3; hope, cultural capital as resource of 253–4; ITN News 246–7; The Lancet 244–5; late city, late style and 248–51; ‘the late Peter Rice’ 242–4; lateness, narratives of 248–51; ‘longevity dividend’ 244–5; The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent (Rice, M.) 243, 250–51, 252, 255n9; The Musical Times 252–3; older artists 244–5; place-making, culture dividend and 251–3; upwave cities 251–3; visual impact, narration of 245–8 stories: creativity in late life and 133; motivation for storytelling 125; narratives and storytelling 210–11; telling and sharing 182–3; transcendental nature of 186–7 Storm-Mathisen, A. and Klepp, I.G. 141 Strachan, A. 243 Straus, Joseph N. 64 Stravinsky, Igor 3, 62 subjectivity in late work, Walcott and force of 93–4 The Sun is God: The Life of J.M.W. Turner (Michael Darlow TV film) 57 Swaffer, K. 175 Swann, C. 260 Sylvester, C.D. 170 talking therapy, dementia and narratives as 208–19; All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia (APPGD) 209, 219; Alzheimer’s Society 208; Asian carers, research with 209–10; biographical approach 209–10; Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups 209, 219; Boota Singh, case of 214–16; carers, challenges for 208–9; case examples 212–17; concluding comments 219; creative therapy 208; cultural assumptions 209; dementia statistics 208; Harbans Kaur, case of 212–14; Health Department (DoH) 219; marginalisation 209; Mental Health Foundation 210, 219; narrative, analysis of 209–10; narrative interviews 208; personal reflections 218–19; Ram

276 Index Piari, case of 216–17; research methodology 211–12; Sikh community in Wolverhampton 14, 208, 209, 211–17, 219; storytelling, narratives and 210–11; Wolverhampton City Council 209 Tanzi, R.E. and Parson, A.B. 203 Tanzi, Rudy 203 Taylor, Gary 58 Taylor, I., Evans, K. and Fraser, P. 224 temporality, transience and 96–7 terracotta warriors, meaningfulness of 90–91 Tew, Philip 9 theatre in later life, value of 101–12; aesthetic value, quality and 104, 105–6; Ageing, Drama and Creativity (Rickett, M. and Bernard, M.) 102, 103–4; Ages and Stages 102, 107–10; Ages and Stages Company, developing methodology and empowering older people 107–10; Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 101, 102, 106, 111–12; arts-based methods, development of 108–10; arts-based research methodologies, absence of 106; co-construction of research, development of 108–10; collaborative approach, development of 107–8; comparative research, need for 106; Creative Age Festival 102; creative expression, opportunities for 104, 105; cultural value, research on 102–3; Cultural Value programme (AHRC) 101, 102, 106, 108, 109–10; discussion about 110–11; group relationships, development of 104, 105; Happy Returns (Ages and Stages Company) 102; health and wellbeing, benefits to 104–5; learning, opportunities for 104, 105; longitudinal research, need for 106; multidisciplinary approach, development of 107–8; Our Age Our Stage (Ages and Stages Company, 2012) 102, 107, 254–5n4; research methods, need for development of 106; theatre-making, cultural value of older people’s experiences of 103–7; theory, need for development of 106 therapeutic communities 122 Thomson, Virgil 25 Thornbury, Walter 53 time: effect of 139–41; resistance to and acceptance of 91; routines and 148–9

The Times 51–2 TimeSlips project (Anne Basting) 189 Titian 3, 54, 62, 79 tradition, character of 236–7 Trevor-Roper, Patrick 53 Turner, B.S. 173 Turner, J.M.W. 3, 7, 12, 79, 244 Turner, J.M.W., late works and critics 49–59; age-related aspects of criticism 50–51; ageing, physical deterioration associated with 49–50; Blackwood’s Magazine 52; Boston Museum of Fine Arts 58; Court Magazine 52; Crossing the Brook 51; Daily News 52; early work, accusations of squander of abilities evident in 51–2; The Eccentric Mr Turner (Michael Booth short film) 58; gerontophobia, gerontophilia and 49; Hero of a Hundred Fights 52; Illustrated London News 52; Late Turner: Painting Set Free (Tate Britain) 56–7; late work, cumulative criticisms of 52–3; late work, spectacular nature of 49, 50; The Life and Correspondence of J. M. W. Turner (Thornbury, W.) 53; morbid decline, symptoms of 52; Morning Post 51; Mr Turner (Mike Leigh film) 57–8; proto-modernism of 57, 58–9; Royal Academy 50, 51, 52; sight in old age 52–3; The Slave Ship 58; The Sun is God: The Life of J.M.W. Turner (Michael Darlow TV film) 57; The Times 51–2; triumph of late works, recognition of 54–6; Turner: Imagination and Reality (Museum of Modern Art, New York) 55; The World through Blunted Sight (Trevor-Roper, P.) 53 Turner Prize 5 Twigg, J. and Martin, W. 104, 145 Twigg, Julia 7–8, 133, 134–5, 138, 140, 141 United Nations (UN) 4, 122 University of the Third Age (U3A) 9, 120, 153 upwave cities 251–3 Van der Steen, J.T., van Soest-Poortvliet, M.C., van der Wouden, J.C. et al. 171 Van Dijck, J. 202 Vasari, Giorgio 54 Vasionyte., I. and Madison, G. 171 Vella-Burrows, T., Ewbank, N., Mills, S., Shipton, M., Clift, S. and Gray, F. 117

Index 277 Verdi, Giuseppe 64 Vergiss mein nicht (Sieveking, D.) 201 Vidal, F. 169 Virgilian artistic trajectory 62 Visconti, Tony 70, 71 visual diaries, everyday life in 145–60; biomedical discourses 145; connectivity, relationships and 148, 153–4; creative leisure activities 155–6; creativity, liberation from decline through 145; cultural gerontology, emergence of 159; daily life, creativity in 156–8, 159; daily life, novel methods for understanding 145–6, 146–7; daily life, visual images of 146; decline, creativity and framework of 145; Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) 145–6; ethics and research project 147–8; everyday lives 145–6; health, risk and body 148, 151–2; interdisciplinary research 145; participants in research project 147–8; ‘Photographing Everyday Life; Ageing, Lived Experiences, Time and Space’ research study 145–6, 148–56; research project 146–8; ‘sandboxing’ 146; space, public and private 148, 149–51; time, routines and 148–9; visual diaries 147; visual diaries, creativity and everyday life 156–8; visual images, omnipresence of 145; volunteering activities 154–5; work, volunteering and leisure 148, 154–6 visual impact, narration of 245–8 Voicing Pierrot (Manning, J.) 28 voluntary organisations 163 volunteering activities 154–5 Wagner, Richard 95–6 Walcott, Derek 12–13; The Acacia Trees 92–3; astonishment, ideal of 91, 92, 94–5; beauty, production of 94–5; European modernity, demise of 90; freedom, poetry and 92–3; immortality, creative ingenuity and 92; late style and 77–8, 80, 89–95, 96–7; The Lost Empire 93–4; metaphor, life transmuted into 91–2; neo-colonial system, disavowal of 89–90; old age, memory and 89–90; subjectivity in late work, force of 93–4; The Tempest (Shakespeare) 93–4; temporality, transience and 96–7; terracotta warriors, meaningfulness of 90–91;

time, resistance to and acceptance of 91; White Egrets 77, 89–90, 91–2, 96, 97; late-life creativity and 12–13 Walker, Alan 8, 259 Warburton, E.C. 172 wardrobe interviews 133–4 Webster, M., Tomkins, A., Walton, G. and Reynolds, J. 123, 124 Weir, Judith 12 Five Ways to Wellbeing (New Economics Foundation, 2008) 12, 31–2, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41–2, 43; in action 36–7 Wenger, G.C. 118 Wengraf, T. 211 West, C. 236–7 West Bank 163 What Works Centre for Wellbeing 35 Whateley, F. 68 Wheeler, Monroe 55 Whitman, L. 208–9 Whyte, M. 57 Williams, Raymond 6–7, 224, 237, 247 Williams, Veronika 160 Wimpenny, K. and Savin-Baden, M. 106 Wiseman, Alice 36 Wolk, Douglas 72 Wolverhampton City Council 209 Woodward, S. 133 work, volunteering and leisure 148, 154–6 Work and Pensions Department (UK, DWP) 32, 33–4 working practice at Gorton Visual Arts Group (GVAG) 228–32 workshops, dementia and 188–92 World Bog Snorkelling Championships 163 World Federation of Music Therapy 171 World Health Organisation (WHO) 31 The World through Blunted Sight (Trevor-Roper, P.) 53 Wullschlager, J. 56 Yarnal, C., Son, J. and Liechty, T. 135 Yeats, William Butler 78, 79, 89, 91, 92, 93 Yin, R. 118 You Want It Darker (Leonard Cohen album) 67 Zeilig, Hannah xiv, 7, 13, 131–42 Zimmermann, Martina xiv, 14, 64, 198–206 Zitcer, Andre 65

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