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The Artful Dementia Research Lab at UiT The Arctic University of Norway conducts research on innovative understandings of ageing and dementia. On the basis of situated art interventions with the creative and performative arts our researchers investigate other ways of living with and relating to dementia. The overall goal is twofold:
(1) to advance knowledge on how to enact dementia beyond individual human loss
(2) to increase awareness on how to create meaningful reciprocal relations between people living with and without dementia and promote research-based cultural change
Series of experimental art interventions become thereby a mode of social science knowledge generation. Through developing a new conceptual repertoire, research conducted within the Artful Dementia Research Lab contributes to complementing medical and pharmacological interventions with experimental art interventions that are sensitive to socio-material dimensions of everyday life.
The Artful Dementia film is based on a set of video recordings collected at Bergsodden residential care home in February 2020. All those who wanted to participate had been informed about the broad outline of the project, and that the whole session would be filmed. All participants, and legally authorized representatives (next of kin) when needed, gave informed and proxy consent in advance. Furthermore, we collected consent by editing by watching the film together with the residents and their next of kin who all agreed orally to publish it publicly and make it available for researchers and others who want to change perceptions of dementia. ® Artful Dementia Research Lab / RESULT at UiT The Arctic University of Norway 2021 Citation: Lilli Mittner, Tiia Grøn, & Terje Bergli. (2021). Artful Dementia Film 2021. UiT The Arctic University of Norway. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4455781
Conceptual workArtful Dementia Research Lab conducts conceptual work in several forms:
Situated art interventionsArtful Dementia Research Lab develops a variety of situated art interventions together with the community:
Open researchWe explore together with the University Library at UiT The Arctic University of Tromsø how to make our research process as transparent and our research data as accessible as possible.
InnovationArtful Dementia Research Lab provides policy recommendations based on research conducted within our lab.
In my work, I explore ways we can live together despite differences in age, gender, ability, nationality, ethnicity, and / or other differentiating mechanisms. Questions about how we can promote interaction and integration in society without standardizing ways of living are central. These are issues that are particularly urgent for individuals and groups of people who do not have or will not be able to live up to a given standard.
In my current research, I focus on people who have developed brain failure in adulthood, often in the form of a dementia disease, and ask how everyday life can be organized to ensure that their potential contributions to social development are actualized and their citizenship maintained. I do this by investigating inter-action and intra-action through creative processes and artistic activity. The methodological approach is qualitative art-based research, while I theoretically apply sociological perspectives such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), material feminist theory and citizenship theory.
I have been researching since 1998, completed my doctorate in 2004, became a professor in 2011, and have led several projects. A common feature of these projects is that they are all designed within a participatory research paradigm and revolve around equality, aesthetics, and societal participation.
Themes I am particularly interested in: Applied theater, art & health, disability art, inclusive research, pragmatic aesthetics, poetry and theater as a means of research communication, drama education, education policy, everyday consequences of Covid, performance ethnography, Arctic humanities, dementia, CRPD, and community science.
I am part of the Arctic Center for Welfare and Disability Research https://uit.no/research/asvf and the research group Artful Dementia Research Lab; https://uit.no/research/adlab
ADlab webinar series is a format of scholarly conversation that brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines who are working on art & dementia. By making our conversations transparent and openly accessible we invite a broader audience to listen and take part in knowledge creation. All recording and data handling is declared with the panelists. #openresearch #consentbyediting #academickindness
#1 ADLab Webinar: Clothing the clown. Creative dressing in day-centre for people with dementia (Ruud Hendriks, Maastricht)
#2 ADLab Webinar: Challenging Perceptions of Old Age and Art (Ingrid Tranum Velásquez, Copenhagen)
#3 ADLab Webinar: The situated/spatial ethics of dementia activism research (Professor Ruth Bartlett, VID Specialised University)
#4 ADLab Webinar: Dear future self with dementia. Articulating inclusive futures through letter writing (Annelieke Driessen and Hannah Cowan, London)
#5 ADLab Webinar: My Memory Returned to Me. Writing about dementia from a queer-feminist perspective (Teri Szűcs, Researcher and Writer, Hungary)
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