Our Day Out

Creative Arts East

Grantholder

A unique dementia-friendly programme of creative arts for rurally-isolated older people, their families and carers in Norfolk

£430,989

Total Spirit grant

August 2016

Date awarded

September 2016 – August 2022

Project duration

Norfolk / Suffolk

Location

Evaluation Report Our Day Out – The perspective of carers Wellbeing Dosage Report Dr. Hannah Zeilig – Artist Reflections

Project Detail

Project summary

Our Day Out aimed to enhance the wellbeing of older adults in rural Norfolk by offering creative activities, with a particular focus on people with dementia and their carers. Initially Spirit of 2012 awarded Creative Arts East (CAE) a grant of £231,110 in 2016 to fund the activities over three years, following a successful pilot funded by Broadland District Council. This was followed by an extended impact grant of £199,904 in 2019 for a further three-year project.

Our Day Out was funded as part of Spirit’s 2016 Challenge Fund, an open call for projects that would help further our understanding of inclusive arts and cultural practice. Challenge Funds were developed with the advice of the Spirit of Achievement Panel (SOAP), a panel of disabled expert advisers working across arts, sports and disability rights. SOAP was chaired by then Board Member and Paralympic swimmer, Susie Rodgers MBE. Challenge Funds were developed to test how the common mechanisms used by event legacy projects (culture, physical activity, volunteering) could be designed to reach people who are often left out of such activities: in the case of Our Day Out, older adults, carers, those with a dementia, and people living in rural areas.

In Norfolk, about 7% of those over 65 (almost 15,000 people) have dementia. Nearly 21,000 elderly people are ‘lonely all or most of the time’. Creative Arts East collaborated with dance and music organisations to deliver an exciting programme of activities, with fortnightly dementia-inclusive music, dance and visual arts sessions for older people and their carers’. Professional artists ran the sessions with support from the Creative Arts East team.

Creative outputs and learning were celebrated at larger scale community events. The evaluation found that regular involvement in diverse artistic activities fostered self-expression and personal growth among the older adults. The project cultivated a sense of belonging, leading to the formation of supportive social networks among participants and caregivers. The evaluation concluded that the project had been successful in achieving its outcomes, and suggested the approach be included in the social prescribing offer for Norfolk. In 2019, Creative Arts East won the Arts and Health Award at the Royal Society for Public Health Awards for Our Day Out.

Creative Arts East could not deliver their extended impact funding as planned due to the pandemic. Although they ran some online workshops, they found Zoom did not suit many of their participants both because of the lack of decent WiFi in many of the locations, but also the needs of the group. However, staff knew that many of their participants would be particularly vulnerable, not just to virus, but to disconnection and loneliness. At the same time, they also had to navigate the huge organisational challenges of COVID-19 – including rotational furlough for staff, and their responsibilities to freelance artists who were not eligible for it. Staff and artists made and posted Creative Wellbeing Packs, which included activities ranging from postcard making, to recipes, to hip hop dance, accompanied with a ‘good news’ letter sharing updates about staff and participants. As one participant explained: “what’s nice about the pack, it’s the contact with someone isn’t it?”

Creative Arts East wanted to collect wellbeing impact data but found that the ONS4 subjective wellbeing measure was not appropriate for participants with a dementia: rather than missing this core beneficiary group from the evaluation, Creative Arts East worked with Prof Paul Camic to implement his Canterbury Wellbeing Scale, specifically designed to be accessible for those with a dementia. The scale asks people to rank different aspects of their wellbeing from 0 – 100: Sad/Happy, Unwell/Well, Bored/Interested, Not Confident/Confident, and Not Optimistic/Optimistic. Our Day Out also worked collaboratively with researchers including Dr Hannah Zellig, Dr Sarah Strohmaier and Millie van der Byl Williams throughout the project on a range of qualitative and quantitative outputs that have created a robust body of learning aimed at both academics and practitioners.

Impact & Learning

Key achievements

Evaluation found that the project encouraged the creativity of participants both in and out of the sessions, in whichever way suited them best. Participants reported that the sessions had “encouraged” and “inspired” them and given them a “push” to be more creative in their day-to-day lives.
Qualitative studies by Dr Hannah Zellig describe the way Our Day Out provided a welcoming space that “privileged playfulness” and showed that “despite the difficulties of living with dementia [carers and their loved ones] were prepared to take part in new activities and to continue engaging with life”.

In the words of participants….

“It gave me something to get out for, because you know it can be so easy to shut yourself away, and you know not bother to do anything. You know you have got to have something to live for which I think is why these groups have been so, so brilliant. I can’t really say much more than that, because it’s, you know it’s true it’s meant an awful lot to my life.”

“It’s not just been for P [person living with dementia], I’ve enjoyed it very much indeed. And you know, when we go in there, they say hiya P, and hi C, how are you as well. So, you know, it is a … being a part of … it’s almost like a second family.”

“Yes, just the looking forward to it, you know, it’s on the calendar, yes, the looking forward to something social and funny, and belonging, like everyone likes to belong don’t they? They go oh hello M, they call me M, hello, come in, come in A, yes, the belonging, definitely.”

Key learnings

Maturity of current social prescribing infrastructure and funding models: Creative Arts East have a robust evidence base testifying to the benefits of Our Day Out. They made many attempts to establish partnerships with health and social care. But at the point of our funding ending, they had not established a sustainable funding route for Our Day Out despite its wellbeing evidence benefits, and the potential savings to the NHS. We cannot make good on the promise of social prescribing without regular, ongoing funding for high quality projects to subscribe people to.

Understanding wellbeing of those with a dementia: Creative Arts East were committed to understanding the impact of their project– including on groups who too often are excluded from evaluations because the available tools and measures do not support their participation. The use of the Canterbury Wellbeing Scale, as well as embedding qualitative researchers with specific expertise in dementia has created a powerful body of evidence. ONS should prioritise producing validated wellbeing measures for neurodiverse groups and people with learning disabilities.

Rural provision: Creative Arts East used venues in small towns and villages in rural Norfolk, some of were underused thus (in the words of the project evaluation) “connecting those in the community to their local spaces and amenities”. Having high quality arts and cultural activities close to home was essential for Our Day Out participants, especially because public transport in Norfolk is limited. Work by the Bennett Institute and others has explored the importance of social infrastructure –the Our Day Out experience suggests that some venues have the potential to become more important as anchor institutions than they currently are: this potential needs to be factored in by projects mapping existing social infrastructure.

How you deliver creative activities can matter as much or more than the activities themselves: All Our Day Out activities involved professional artists, who were experts in their creative fields. However, conversations with artists helped both Creative Arts East and the evaluators to identify what worked across different artistic disciplines. In Zellig’s qualitative study (2017) ‘Creating a Moment for Someone Else’ (see above) six artists involved in Our Day Out describe the core features that made the sessions work: “the importance of fun, the need to create community and ability of arts activities to do this, the importance of the setting / space in which sessions happen and the need to be flexible and use intuition in order to ensure inclusivity. In addition, the role of improvisation, performance and aesthetic quality were also considered.”

64%

average increase in wellbeing

Using the Canterbury Wellbeing Scale there was a statistically significant increase in wellbeing across seven sessions. Participants experienced a 64% average increase in wellbeing after 9-12 months of taking part.

97%

made social connections

97% of participants reported that they felt their involvement in the Our Day Out programme had helped them make social connections, enhancing their sense of belonging. Those who reported feeling lonely “hardly ever” or “never” increased by 10%.

1620

Creative Wellbeing packs sent out

In 2021 Creative Arts East sent out 1620 Creative Wellbeing packs to 120 Our Day Out participants, and 170 people who were new to the project. “Along came the packs and it’s just like the joy pack, it’s the joy event, it’s the enjoying this film, and laugh, as much as you like because it’s funny and serious at the same time. It has… I think from someone who is self-isolating and highly clinically vulnerable, it’s just a game changer.”