Can making a dance performance with young people help older adults feel more connected?

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There has been strong interest in intergenerational arts practice in the UK since the 1980s, but evidence for the effectiveness of intergenerational practice remains generally weak across domains. This study investigated an intergenerational arts project’s outcomes for participants’ social and psychological well-being using a mixed-methods, short-term longitudinal design.

The project, Generations Dancing, brought together community artists, 25 students and 11 older adults living in Bedford. Over 11 weeks, participants worked together to create a new dance performance and photography exhibition. Researchers conducted focus groups with participants to explore their feelings about collaboration across generations and communities. Participants also completed a battery of questionnaires before and after the project to assess changes in well-being.

The results indicated that older adults showed increased confidence and willingness to connect with others, and took immense enjoyment in talking about their experience with other people. The project also helped address older adults’ negative stereotypes about working with young people. Older adults enjoyed the students’ company and felt encouraged and supported by them.

A small number of challenges were identified, including difficulty travelling to workshops for vulnerable participants, but most challenges were overcome through older adults’ engagement in the project. For example, initial anxieties about the performance did not seem sufficient to affect participants’ overall enjoyment of the project. Scores for relatedness, affect and social well-being increased over time, supporting the findings, although these increases were not statistically significant.

The researchers concluded that intergenerational dance and arts projects can have wide-reaching positive impacts on social and psychological well-being. However, methodological challenges included difficulty recruiting enough participants for both experimental and control groups to allow a robust quantitative evaluation. These challenges highlight how real-life settings and situations can influence the amount, nature, validity and reliability of the data collected. The researchers encouraged continued consideration of innovative ways to address these methodological challenges.