1st Edition
Creativity in Later Life Beyond Late Style
This collection begins with two premises: that our understanding of the nature and forms of creativity in later life remains limited and that dialogue between specialists in gerontology, the arts and humanities can produce the crucial new insights that are so obviously needed. Representing the outcome of ongoing dialogue across the disciplinary divide, the contributions of this volume reflect anew on what we share and how we differ; creating new narratives so as to build an understanding of late-life creativity that goes far beyond the narrow confines of the pervasively received idea of ‘late style’.
Creativity in Later Life encompasses a range of personal reflections and discussions of the boundaries of creativity, including:
- Canonical artistic achievements to community art projects
- Narratives of carers for those living with dementia
- Analyses of creative theory
Through these insightful chapters, the authors consequently offer an understanding of creativity in later life as varied, socialised and - above all - located in the cultural and economic circumstances of the here and now.
This title will appeal to academics, practitioners and students in the various gerontological, arts and humanities fields; and to anyone with an interest in the nature of creativity in later life and the forms it takes.
Introduction
David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan
The challenges of late-life creativity
- Imagining otherwise: the disciplinary identity of gerontology
- The singing voice in late life
- Creative ageing: the social policy challenge
- Turner’s last works and his critics
- Constructing a late style for David Bowie: old age, late-life creativity, popular culture
- An ‘old man in the dimming world’: Theodor Adorno, Derek Walcott and a defence of the idea of late style
- Late-life creativity: assessing the value of theatre in later life
- Late-life creativity: methods for understanding arts-
- ‘It’s play, really, isn’t it?’: dress, creativity, old age
- Visual diaries, creativity and everyday life
- Self, civic engagement and late-life creativity
- A critical narrative on late-life creativity and dementia: integrating citizenship, embodiment and relationality
- ‘The artistry of it all’: narrating The Tempest, dementia and the mapping of identity in a Manchester extrincare housing scheme
- Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s as a case study in late-life creativity
- Narratives as talking therapy: research with Sikh carers of a family member with dementia in Wolverhampton
- ‘Work, work, work and full steam ahead’: Ian McKay and the conserving radicalism of the Gorton Visual Art Group, public artists in later life
- The late Peter Rice: late-style stories of ageing and the city in A Bright Past for Stoke on Trent
Ruth Ray
Jane Manning
Susan Hogan and Emily Bradfield
Rethinking late style
Sam Smiles
Gordon McMullan
Robert Spencer
The varieties of late-life creativity
Miriam Bernard and Michelle Rickett
generated social capital in the lives of older people
Jackie Reynolds
Hannah Zeilig and Anna-Marie Almira
Wendy Martin and Katy Pilcher
Angela Glendenning
Narrating dementia
Pia Kontos and Alisa Grigorovich
Liz Postlethwaite
Martina Zimmerman
Karan Jutlla
Old age, creativity and the late city
John Miles
David Amigoni
Biography
David Amigoni is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Enterprise and Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University, UK
Gordon McMullan is Professor of English at King’s College London, UK; and Director of the London Shakespeare Centre
