Grant: Other: Canada-UK Aging Initiative

Engagement in meaningful activities, such as participation in the arts, contributes to a wide range of positive health outcomes for seniors. Participation also reduces health inequalities, promotes independence and reduces reliance on health services and the cost of providing them. The overall purpose of this CIHR application is to add a comparative component to the UK NDA funded program "Ages and Stages: The Place of Theatre in Representations and Recollections of Ageing" led by Professor M. Bernard by examining how older people's involvement in the arts plays a role in promoting quality of life and well-being, including physical and mental health. We address the implications of older adults' social participation for healthy aging by (1) engaging them in telling their own stories of aging in an intergenerational theatre setting and assessing its impact, and (2) by translating those stories into a creative format that will help a wide range of audiences, including health professionals and policy makers, to understand experiences of growing older. We will use a mixed method approach combining discourse and textual analysis, qualitative interviews, and performer-created theatre over a period of three years. The UK NDA/Bernard program will benefit from our access to a unique community-based theatre company, GeriActors and Friends, one of very few theatre companies in North America or the UK that unites seniors and younger generations in exploring common issues and stories through the process of performer-created play development. Evidence gathered will offer a new way of examining inclusion of older adults in theatre and subsequent health outcomes and informing health and social service delivery. In addition to conference papers and refereed publications, we plan a theatre piece based on research findings about the role of social participation in healthy aging.