Coming in 2023: Leisure and Dementia (published by Open University Press)

Leisure and Dementia (to be published by Open University Press, August 2023)

Edited by Karen Gray, Chris Russell and Jane Twigg

This book examines leisure in the everyday lives of people living with dementia. It challenges readers to consider the role of leisure activities beyond their potential for therapeutic benefit. Leisure encompasses a range of activities: the things we do, and those that interest and engage us given opportunity and choice. This book emphasises how leisure offers people living with dementia opportunity to realise their citizenship, through participating in leisure in everyday life. It explores the role of society in enabling this through giving equal chances to make choices about how, when and where people participate. The book’s co-editors include Jane Twigg, who is herself living with dementia: Jane’s vision of leisure as life-enhancing and open to all people living with dementia as a right has guided its creation.

This is the first time that an edited collection has been brought together to examine this topic. Contributors from multiple disciplines discuss areas including sports, arts and culture, travel, nature, and the online world. Chapters unpick the diverse implications for care and provision of dementia and leisure services, for research, and for society more generally. They present frameworks for understanding leisure opportunities in research and recommendations for implementing them in practice. The content should be considered essential reading for anyone whose study or work in nursing or social care, occupational therapy, social work, arts therapies, arts, health and wellbeing, sports and exercise, or gerontology includes an interest in dementia.

Key points

  • First edited collection to examine the topic of the role of leisure in the everyday lives of people living with dementia
  • Co-edited and with a guiding vision provided by a person living with dementia
  • Chapters examine diverse kinds of leisure, including sports, music, travel, nature, and the online world
  • Accessible summary and a ‘So what does this mean in practice?’ sections at the end of each chapter

If you are interested in hearing more please contact Dr Chris Russell via c.russell@worc.ac.uk

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