This document summarizes a research project that explored the relationships between older people's engagement with contemporary visual art, identity construction, and sense of wellbeing. The project followed 7 existing groups of older people with and without prior art engagement as they visited art galleries over 2 years. The analysis found that engaging with artworks allowed older people to maintain and revise their identities, and supported their wellbeing by fostering positive self-images and mutual support among group members. The debate around whether the benefits are intrinsic to engaging with art or instrumental for wellbeing is discussed.

1. Contemporary visual art and
Identity construction – wellbeing
amongst older people
AHRC Cultural value project
Andrew Newman and Anna Goulding

2. Contents
• Description of project
– Aims and data collection
• Analysis and results – what engagement with
Contemporary visual art does for people
• The intrinsic / instrumental debate

3. Description of project
• Funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing
Programme – 2 year project
• Follow-on fund grant from ESRC for
Knowledge transfer 1 year

4. Aims and data collection
• To explore the relationships between older
people’s engagement with contemporary
visual art, identity construction and sense of
wellbeing
• 7 pre-existing groups – with and without prior
engagement – visited three over a 2 year
period.
• 4 venues – Contemporary visual art galleries in
NE England

5. Analysis and results
• Role of art in identity processes for older
people
– Existing work on the role of cultural property –
meanings that become embedded
– Identity revision and maintenance (Kroger 2002)
important for the wellbeing of older people

6. Analysis and results
• links to aspects of identity prompted through
encounters with the art works

7. Analysis and results
• Strong mutual support amongst some groups
enables them to overcome major psychosocial
barriers that would otherwise have prevented
engagement.

8. Analysis and results
• Those with a pre-existing engagement with art
used the experience to deepen their
engagement with the field.

9. Analysis and results
• A positive self image created through
engagement – feedback from environment

10. The intrinsic / instrumental debate
• Impossible to see in the responses of
participants
• Appears in the work of Vesteim (1994)
• What is core to the experience of engagement
with art and what is not?