Creative Dementia Practice Handbook

 

January 2026

At the end of 2025, The Creative Dementia Practice Handbook: Arts for Health and Wellbeing book, edited by Maria Pasiecznik Parsons and Richard Coaten, was published. The handbook examines the ways in which the creative arts (including poetry, dance, digital arts, and more) can help meet the psychological and occupational needs of people living with dementia and their family caregivers. The book foregrounds the lived-experience of people living with dementia and their carers.

My chapter contribution - Support for Creative Practitioners - covers topics including;

  • Asking for help, learning from other professions and the culture of coping

  • Feelings of isolation

  • Relational aspects of participatory arts, ethical dilemmas and lived experience

  • Consequences of a lack of support

  • Meeting creative practitioner support needs, creating an inclusive culture of support

  • The difference between self-care and support

  • Instrumental and affective support

  • Adopting a menu approach to affective support

  • The role of reflection

  • Support in relation to structural challenges

  • Identifying and celebrating successes.

I hope this chapter will be useful for creative practitioners (both experienced and those starting out), commissioners, managers, and funders of this work. Creative practitioners, are a distinct group of workers within this field of practice and must be taken care of, something which is picked up in other related chapters including Developing the Creative Health Workforce (Julia Puebla Fortier and Maria Pasiecznik Parsons) and The Working Lives of Freelance Creative Health Practitioners (Maria Pasiecznik Parsons with Kaya Green, Helen Shearn, Kate Wilkinson and Richard Coaten).

With endorsements from David Cutler (Baring Foundation), Professor Hilary Moss (University of Limerick), Dr Steven Michael (Chair of Creative Wakefield) and Keith Oliver, author of Dear Alzheimer’s, you can buy the book here.

If you are interested in collaborating with me to design and deliver support packages for the creative practitioners you work with, please get in touch.

 
Nicola Naismith