Healthy Ageing: A Brand New Sense
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A Brand New Sense was an ESRC Healthy Ageing Catalyst Award delivered between 2023 and 2024 with Antonis Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou, Nikos Stavropoulos, Kingsley Ash and Rosemary Spencer in partnership with care homes, charities and Leeds City Council. Building on the pilot project ART-thritis, Brand New Sense wanted to test whether echome could encourage movement in older adults. Workshop sessions were designed and tested through multiple iterations with users and stakeholders with the aim to create structures that could enable facilitators to work with echome in a group setting with older adults over a period of time. The technology was also handed over to selected care homes who used it as part of their activities with residents.
The findings of this project confirmed that echome encourages movement in older adults, is suitable for a wide range of users, and can benefit both those who live with significant movement restrictions as well as those who live independently. The project also showed that echome may produce a series of emergent benefits:
- It fosters sociality. The production of sound becomes a means through which users can interact with other people in both verbal and non-verbal ways.
- It stimulates memory. Sound generates associations to previous experiences and the sharing of these further supports social exchange.
- It provides care staff and arts practitioners with a holistic tool with which they can engage their service users. An experienced activities coordinator at a care home gave us the following feedback: ‘I have worked in all aspects of care now for at least 26 years and this was just amazing. I have experienced many sensory activities and technology but this topped it for me, this captures all levels’.
Photo Credit Jules Lister