Welcome to the Culture Box blog!
In this blog series we will be sharing project updates and insights from our research and analysis process. We will also be casting a spotlight on the artists involved in the project and providing stories from the participants involved!
In post, we will share some updates on the project including methodological reflections, the virtual interactive exhibition: the Culture Box Show, and recent conference presentations.
About Culture Box
Culture Box designed and distributed pandemic guidance and creative activities to people with dementia in care homes, with a particular focus on the inclusion of BAME communities. The activities aimed to support the health and wellbeing of residents to alleviate social isolation and loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Activities were a mixture of online and physical resources. Over the course of a year (December 2020-December 2021), a physical culture box was mailed out to the care homes each month, full of exciting activities and resources.
Each box was themed around a tree. The artist Martin Jordan was commissioned to produce these beautiful images along with colouring pages for residents to complete.
Research methodology
The project began with 40 care homes and staff and 89 residents from across England[1]. The data was collected in four time stages using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework. The first time stage (T1, September-December 2020) was an initial online survey to provide an understanding of demographics, social isolation levels, responsive behaviours, and activity preferences. This data informed the content of the culture boxes. The second time stage (T2, February-May 2021) involved interviews hosted over video call with 20 dyads (including residents and staff members). These interviews were dialogic in structure and focused on the initial reception of the boxes after 4 months from dissemination. The third (T3, June-Sept 2021) time series was another round of dialogic interviews with residents and staff members after 8 from the beginning of the project.
Participating care homes
This map shows the spread of care homes who took part in Culture Box.
The fourth time series (T4, October 2021 – 2022) included another set of interviews at 12 months and a final survey (Spring 2022). The survey will be disseminated to residents and staff to capture overall responses from the project and the effects the boxes had on social isolation and responsive behaviours. This stage of the project also includes a Culture Box Show which will involve a virtual exhibition of work from artists in response to the project.
Culture Box Show
The Culture Box Show is a virtual interactive exhibition. The research team worked closely with Culture&, an independent arts and education charity, to put together a programme of special artist commissions, virtual, and remote activities for people living with dementia in care homes and care staff. The programme marks the end of the yearlong AHRC funded research project based at the University of Exeter.
Four artists have been commissioned to produce interactive and participatory work for the Culture Box Show. In later posts this blog will profile each artist involved in the show! You will be hearing from:
“Bringing the Outside In” by Kate Munro
“Fold” by Helena Tomlin
“Personal challenges of the pandemic” by IIrumva Isaac
“Data visualisation” by Polly Townsend
The Show will be disseminated to participating care homes in boxes containing instructions, information, and the relevant materials. We look forward to sharing the work from the artists and participants!
SOAS conference
Recently, the research team took part in ‘Learning lessons from Covid-19: Hearing voices from multilingual cultural and vulnerable communities' conference at SOAS University, London. Victoria and Hannah, two lead academics on the project, presented a paper entitled “Culture Box: Lessons from a novel pandemic-responsive intervention for older people with dementia living in care homes”. Their presentation focused on the lessons learnt from undertaking the project, including reflections on ethics, the methodological approach, and preliminary research findings from the T1 survey data and interviews.
Hannah provided some reflections on the conference:
“The paper was well received by the conference delegates. In particular, the inclusion of Akeim's film was appreciated and livened up the morning session. Akeim's music and movement contrasted with other presentations and provided another example of how the 'arts' can communicate well across a range of audiences and environments.
Victoria and I were both interested in other presentations from around the world about how covid-19 has been experienced, it was great to understand our own work within a much wider context.”
Watch Akeim’s film here:
The conference also made Victoria reflect on the vulnerable nature of care home staff during the pandemic, and during this project. Experiences of staff vulnerability, stress, and anxiety are present in the interview data. Thus, more attention needs to be paid to the vulnerable and precarious position of care home staff during COVID-19. This issue is discussed in depth in Masterson-Algar et al.’s (2022) article on the impact of the pandemic on care and quality of life of people with dementia and their carers. Their scoping review points to the high levels of stress, exhaustion, burden and isolation experienced by carers.
T4 surveys
The team have recently launched the final project survey to residents and care staff. The survey asks questions about the participants’ overall reception of the project and seeks to understand whether there was improvement in residents’ wellbeing since taking part in the project.
The survey will close in mid-May and the research team look forward to receiving some more data on outcomes of the project and feedback!
Research team
We have recently welcomed a new member of the research team, Chloe Asker. They are currently working on the analysis of the interview and survey data along with supporting the organisation of the Culture Box Show.
They joined the team just after handing in their PhD thesis, which they undertook in the geography department at the University of Exeter. Their doctoral work used a similar methodological approach to Culture Box, valuing participatory, creative, feminist, and embodied approaches to research. Furthermore, they are passionate about creative and innovative research outputs.
To learn more about their doctoral work please visit their website: https://mindfulgeographies.co.uk/. Or chat to them directly, please email: c.asker2@exeter.ac.uk.
We would love to hear from you! Let us know if there is anything that you would like to hear about in this blog series. You can contact us on culturebox@exeter.ac.uk.
[1] Due to attrition this number reduced throughout the project. Currently, we have 28 care homes and staff, and 68 residents involved.