Testing out our TOUS practice model with attendees at a conference

Andy Barry (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester), Enid Saunders (Member of the Elders Company at the Royal Exchange Theatre) and Debra Westlake (University of Oxford) were invited to run a session at the Creative Symposium in Lancaster. The session was on the Elders Dream project, which is facilitated by the Royal Exchange Theatre as a way of connecting with older people and making visible the lives of individuals who are often under-represented in our theatres. The Royal Exchange Theatre was part of the TOUS study (‘Tailoring cultural offers with and for diverse older users of social prescribing’) run by researchers from the University of Oxford. For part of the TOUS study, we collected and analysed stories from people involved in creative activities using a Storytelling approach. Storytelling centres on the experiences of those involved in an activity or organisation about what they consider the most significant change(s) they have encountered. 

Our session  

Andy and Enid started our session with an introduction to the Dream project, and Enid read extracts of the story that she had told as part of the TOUS study’s Storytelling element. I presented an overview of our research group’s work on social prescribing. I described how the TOUS project came out of an earlier study on older people’s involvement in cultural sector activities. I explained that the TOUS study sought to understand how creative offers could engage more older people from the global majority. The Dream project is one example of how this can be done.

I went on to present, to workshop participants, an early draft of our study model (as shown in the photograph below), which seeks to present in one place what we have found out from the research. In the future, we hope to give support to organisations who are seeking to make their cultural offers more attractive and accessible to a diverse population of older people by developing an interactive tool.

Debra Westlake presenting the TOUS model

Feedback from attendees at the symposium

Andy led the feedback session. It invited participants to engage with the model in various ways using a series of questions:

• Did it make sense?
• How could it be improved?
• Could it be useful for practice - why or why not?
• How could we make the model most useful for someone starting out in practice with these communities? What would that look like?
  
  

A number of creative practitioners were in the audience, including some who were also social prescribers based at a GP surgery. They thought the model made sense and identified strongly with concepts such as ‘broker’ although acknowledging that some concepts needed explaining. Those attending felt the model could be a useful tool for the following applications:

• As an organisation establishing partnerships involving multiple stakeholder groups who need to understand how best to work together to engage older people from global majority and other intersectional groups.
• As a community group or cultural organisation just starting out, to prompt discussions around the concepts from the model – such as what does it mean for us to create ‘safety’ in our organisation or what would a ‘broker’ look like in our organisation?
• As a planning and debrief tool - to check against each of the concepts in the model to discuss and evaluate progress and propose next steps.
• As a management tool to plan strategies.
• As a way of structuring funding applications to gain grants for creative work.
• As a training tool for community arts engagement workers.
  
  

They felt it is not enough to say that an organisation is ‘inclusive’. This can be meaningless unless it has clear and active strategies and policies that are being implemented. They felt the TOUS model could support this.

Older people in the audience acknowledged that the model is not really aimed at them, but rather at organisations. However, some felt the language was too complex and an interactive online tool could be digitally exclusive.  Enid’s voice was very much appreciated. Her story was found to be powerful by the audience and some felt it was important not to lose that voice in the model. When creating the online tool, we will aim to incorporate some spoken extracts.

Older artists felt the model was valuable and informative and wanted to know more than we had time for in the session. Therefore, we have agreed to stay in touch about its progress. We hope to have an online tool developed by the end of the year.

The workshop provided a valuable opportunity to get feedback and some useful contacts were made. There were helpful comments about the design and layout of the model, which we can address when developing the online tool. 

The study mentioned in this blog is funded by a grant from UK Research and Innovation (MR/Y010000/1). The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the funder or the author’s host institution.