Within A Forest Dark

A two day research workshop, leading to an experimental performance, was held in the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts at the University of Sussex. It explored the experience of transition into a care home towards the end of life, and how the challenges of this new world can be expressed through music and words.\n\nCo-devised by Prof Jackie Cassell, Prof Ed Hughes and theatre maker Peter Cant.\n\nMusic by Ed Hughes.\nLibretto by Peter Cant. \nDirected by Peter Cant.\n\nThe workshop involved professional and amateur musicians with personal experience and knowledge of care homes, dementia and scabies at the end of life.\n\nWe want to develop this work into a participatory musical experience focussing on the common yet hidden experiences of dementia, and of outbreaks of infection in care homes for the frail elderly. We hope to explore how the forms of narrative and music can be used to understand and address these existential challenges of closed communities, from multiple perspectives. \n\nSupported by \nThe Research Opportunities Fund (University of Sussex)\nThe Brighton and Sussex Medical School\nThe Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts\n\nWorkshop performance 25 July 2017 Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts.\nVideo produced by the creative team.\nScreened on 8 November 2022 as part of ESRC Festival of Social Science organised by Dr Gem Aellah, Research Fellow with the Social Science for Stigmatising Skin Diseases Foundation.<p></p>