ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL KEY FINDINGS REPORT

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1 ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL KEY FINDINGS REPORT The Key Findings Report should be completed and submitted using the grant reference as the subject to, on or before the due date. Please complete each box as fully as possible, adhering to the word counts, please do not include images within the text. Appendices are not accepted. Principal Investigators are expected to consult with co-investigators on the content of this report. Grant Reference: Investigator/s: Project Title: RES Julia Twigg (PI) Christina Buse (RA) Dementia and Dress: embodiment, identity and personhood Summary of Project Findings (circa 500 words) Please summarise your main findings from the project. You are also invited to briefly indicate any plans for further research in this, or a related area. For ESRC Seminar Series and projects under the Research Development Initiative please detail the outcomes of the activities carried out and provide information on the level of demand for participation. The study concluded that: - Dress continued to be significant in the embodied lives of many people with dementia whether living in domestic or care settings. This is true of both men and women. - It remained entwined with personal and social identity. Individuals often retained a clear sense of the colours, styles, and fit which embodied their personal aesthetic. Dress also reflected broader dimensions of social identity, such as class, gender and 1

2 age. People also often retained clothing that had been particularly significant for identity, for example in work roles. - Interest in clothes tended to decline with more advanced dementia, however they remained significant at a tactile and sensory level, part of the environment closest in. - Clothes have a capacity to act as memory objects, stimulating memories of past and current self, allowing direct material connection with earlier biographies. - During the transition to care, clothes were often discarded, though small things jewellery, watches, handbags - continued to act as biographical and transitional objects in the context of wider displacement. - Retaining good presentation in dress was significant for relatives who regarded it as a proxy for good practice, as well as a means to maintain connection with the person they knew. - Clothes remained part of the interactional order of the home. Residents would compliment each other on dress in a manner familiar among women. Careworkers also used dress as an opportunity for positive interaction. - Family carers, and sometimes careworkers, could become involved in curating the identity of the person with dementia, maintaining the nuances and routines which constituted their personal style. - This could however, raise complex questions about whose choices were being enacted, and whether current wishes could properly be imputed from past preferences. - Dress forms part of the bodywork of care, and involves complex physical and emotional work, negotiating bodily boundaries of intimacy and privacy. Dress could thus be a site of struggle. This had different implications in formal and informal care. The study has: - contributed to the development of the emerging field of Cultural Gerontology, showing how even the lives of frail elders can be explored within a broader cultural context, helping to reduce their social and intellectual marginalisation - shown how the concrete materiality of dress can be used to explore day-to-day embodiment now, or in the past through the enactment of memory, contributing to the wider Material Turn. - extended the remit of dress studies to encompass the older population, frequently ignored in such work. - developed new methodological tools to explore the experiences of people with dementia through wardrobe interviews in which respondents and researchers together discuss the meaning of dress, and through the use of the direct tactility of material objects. - helped challenge the overwhelmingly negative account of dementia, supporting ideas of living with the condition. 2

3 Exploitation Routes(circa 250 words) Please describe the process and activities through which you plan to ensure that your findings obtain the maximum potential impact. This can include both scientific impact and economic and societal impact. We have disseminated our findings at 13 academic events including conferences in USA, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Ireland and UK. We have organised four events aimed at the wider research and practice community, producing related Findings leaflets: - (A)Dressing the Ageing Demographic: A one-day symposium exploring ageing and dress, Royal College of Art, London. - Supporting Personhood in Dementia Care: Dress, Grooming and Everyday Practice, a one-day conference for care practitioners, British Library. - Collaborative Learning Set: Multi-sensory Appearance Biographies workshop for care practitioners, University of Manchester. - Multi-sensory Appearance Biographies Workshop, for care workers/practitioners at Clore Manor Care Home. We have published two articles: C. Buse and J.Twigg (2014) Women with dementia and their handbags: Negotiating identity, privacy and home through material culture Journal of Aging Studies, 30, J. Twigg and C. Buse (2013) Dress, dementia and the embodiment of identity, Dementia, 12, 3, Four more in press: S.Campbell, C. Buse, J. Twigg, J. Keady and R.Ward (2015) Multi sensory appearance biographies, Journal of Dementia Care. C. Buse and J. Twigg (2015) Clothing, embodied identity and dementia: maintaining the self through dress, Age, Culture, Humanities. 3

4 C. Buse and J.Twigg (2015) Materializing memories: exploring the stories of people with dementia through dress, Ageing & Society. C. Buse and J. Twigg (2015) Looking out of place: analysing the spatial and symbolic meanings of dementia care setting through dress, International Journal of Ageing and Later Life. Two more in preparation: For Sociology of Health and Illness For Qualitative Research Potential use in a non-academic context (circa 250 words) Please outline any anticipated or potential economic or societal impacts that you believe your project might have in future on the 'user' community. The project has potential to influence dementia care practice, raising awareness of the significance of appearance and embodiment. Following our event and workshops, practitioners described changes they will make to their own care practice, recognising the significance of appearance as part of person-centred care, and the importance of relating to people with dementia through embodied and sensory practices. The guidance we are developing for care-workers concerning appearance and dress fills a significant gap in this area, and has potential for influencing care settings. These findings will be disseminated through the network of contacts we have developed during the project. The project also has potential for wider societal impact as part of the recognition of the embodied personhood of people with dementia. The project outputs and dissmentation work aims to make visible their voices and experiences, increasing understanding of their everyday lives, challenging negative potrayals of dementia, and emphasising positive ways of living with the condition. 4

5 URL If your project has its own website/web page, please enter the URL here. Sector Coding Please select the sector(s) from the list that best indicates where the findings of your grant will potentially be of most relevance to (delete those not applicable): Education Healthcare Politics Social Services 5