Art and dementia: Nicci Gerrard and Hannah Zeilig
Festival of Ideas
Tuesday 11 September 2018 1 - 2pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
£12, £8 concessions
Thriller writer Nicci Gerrard talks about how everyday creativity can keep a person connected to the world around them. In conversation with academic Hannah Zeilig, Gerrard discusses how the arts can keep people well, aid recovery and support longer lives, better lived.
Nicci Gerrard’s father, John Gerrard, lived with dementia for many years. As he slowly lost his sense of self, she saw how little acts of everyday creativity like singing or drawing could be transformative. These small acts changed not only his mood, but his engagement with the world and his relationship to those around him. In November 2014, after her father died, Gerrard founded a campaign to help patients living with dementia and she is currently writing a book about the the stages of loss involved in dementia and what the disease teaches us about the self. Listen to more about curing dementia.
Nicci Gerrard is the co-author, with Sean French, of the bestselling Nicci French psychological thrillers. She has also written six novels under her own name, including The Winter House and Missing Persons. She was a journalist for the Observer for many years and still writes for the paper. In 2016 she won the Orwell Prize for Journalism for her work on dementia. Along with Julia Jones, Gerrard founded 'John's Campaign', named after her father, which fights for more compassionate care in hospital for people living with dementia.
Hannah Zeilig is a senior research fellow at the University of the Arts, London and visiting research fellow at the University of East Anglia who has written extensively about the role and value of the arts for people with dementia. She has also worked with an interdisciplinary group – including neuroscientists and musicians at the Wellcome Institute exploring dementia through science and the creative arts. Most recently she has investigated the possibilities of artistic co-creativity with people with dementia.
This event will be followed by a Q&A.
Book signing after the event
Nicci Gerrard will be signing books in the Burlington Gardens Wohl Entrance Hall, outside Pace Gallery, from 2–2.45pm on the day of the event, Tuesday 11 September. Free, no need to book.
30 seconds with Nicci Gerrard
What’s the best work of art you’ve seen this year?
A book that came out many years ago but I've only just read and now urgently want everyone to read: The Unwomanly Face of War by Sveltana Alexievitch, the Russian journalist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. She talks to hundreds of Russian women who fought in the Second World War but who have been largely invisible and unheard since then.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in your field?
You can’t be a writer without being a reader, and you need to be dogged. Also, you have to have faith in yourself and at the same time be full of doubt. Above all I guess, you have to have to write…
What do you need for creativity to flourish?
Maybe see the answer above. I don’t really have another. Faith and doubt and compulsion and if you’re very lucky, a room of your own…