International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Campbell, S., Dowlen, R., Keady, J., Thompson, J. (2024). Care aesthetics and ‘being in the moment’ through improvised music-making and male grooming in dementia care. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 25(si1.13). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea25si2.13

Care aesthetics is a unifying concept that aims to make visible the often-invisible aspects of sensory and embodied practices of care. Relations shaping care can be understood as aesthetic practices, requiring us to unlearn an overreliance on technical perceptions of care, and reframing our understanding of care by recognizing that the technical elements are intertwined with sensory attributes. In this article we map out the concept of care aesthetics and using a case study approach, apply it to two examples of care within dementia settings – one an example of hairdressing in an NHS in-patient assessment ward and one community-based music-making programme for people living with dementia and their carers. The study’s rationale is based on the claim that expanding the richness, complexity, quality, and craft in care relations (between people, and between groups of people in care settings, to include families and broader context) improves the quality of life of people receiving care. If there are multiple skills and behaviours available in care relationships in health and social care settings that are undervalued and unacknowledged, what might attention to those skills’ embodied, sensory, and crafted nature help to demonstrate? The article places care aesthetics in dialogue with the “in the moment” framework for dementia care research and aims to foster learning about how to better understand everyday life practices in health and social care settings. With this, the article demonstrates how attention to aesthetics reveals often unacknowledged elements of care.