Kevin Bales tells us how the dementia workshops came to be

Three years ago Kevin Beals saw The Writing Festival was happening. At the time he was managing day services for adults with additional needs and disabilities. So he contacted Dominic Wong, founder of The Writing Festival about the different events the festival offers, and which ones would be most suitable to bring adults with learning disabilities and dementia who want to engage in a creative writing experience.

Off the back of this interaction they both continued the conversation and decided they needed to put on a workshop which was more specific. After working together to put on a one day workshop for adults with additional needs and disabilities based on the concept of lost property. Around 30 adults attended the workshop to have fun, use props in a series of exercises to write a poem while working around this theme.

Clearly passionate about the project, Kevin said “it was really successful. It kind of did what I wanted.”

From this came the idea from Kevin about potentially working with a different kind of client group “what about people with dementia? Could we do something to support people who have dementia and their carers to be engaged in the workshop and festival?”

Eventually the pair came to the decision to bite the bullet, and set up a series of workshops for people with dementia and carers who could drop into.

Kevin said “This is an experiment. Can we support people with dementia to unleash their creative side? And if we can, how? Essentially that is where we are today.”

For him it’s an experiment to see if they can do this, as they have supported adults with learning disabilities and will adults with dementia be next.

Kevin said; “supporting people with dementia, if we can do this, it will be really powerful. So that’s essentially what brought me here, it’s not necessarily that I’m a writer or publisher, just that I have been working with these different client groups for 25 years.”

His plan is to have as many tools, prompts and opportunities available in the room as possible, so that attendees can express their creative side and express it either pen to paper or verbally with someone else capturing that pen to paper.

Using photo and question prompts for the adults joining the workshop gives them the opportunity to remember past memories as adults with dementia often lose their recent memories and older ones are more present.

Kevin has previously used prompts such as ‘what is your favourite music?’. They also use photos to steer people into conversations that can be moulded more creatively.

Thinking about peoples creative journey Kevin thinks his role there is going to be: to make sure the room is set up, making sure everyone feels welcomed and there is a space with tea and cake available, have access to questions, prompts and subjects to then be able to facilitate conversation among themselves and him.

He thinks really having that space and asking those questions is what helps shape things into something creative which can be shared.

Writing is about two things.

 “I think writing in itself is powerful, because putting pen to paper, typing or printing, having your inner thoughts physically out there has a power. For you to see it physically out there and for others to see what you have created. That final product, I think is powerful but I think for me more so when I’ve been doing the workshops previously it’s not so much the final product. It’s that process of people thinking it through, letting their creative juices flow and just letting their minds go in all sorts of places knowing they are allowed to.”