Case Study: Mindful Movers

What was Mindful Movers?

Mindful Movers was a Dance for Dementia project initiated in 2020 as a response to the challenges faced by residents and staff in care homes, exacerbated by the Covid 19 pandemic.

In partnership with Barchester Care Homes PLC, the Mindful Movers pilot project focused on the health and wellbeing of care staff, aiming to increase their self-esteem, confidence and morale, and equip them with the skills to support the delivery of creative workshops in homes. These practical dance and sensory workshops are designed to encourage more creative and engaging interactions between staff and residents, to the wellbeing benefit of both parties.

What did Mindful Movers involve?

Via professional development days for care home staff, and online creative workshops streamed to residents across 240 Barchester care homes, the project also supported growing research around the positive impact of multisensory dance activities for the physical and mental wellbeing of individuals living with or at risk of dementia. Dance and music activities offer physical and cognitive stimulation, as well as providing the opportunity for creative expression, all of which promotes social connection and positively reinforces a sense of personal identity.

Evaluation report

The findings of the Mindful Movers pilot project provided clear evidence that the care staff within the selected Barchester care homes developed new skills and knowledge throughout the project.

The evaluation process revealed staff had been upskilled through skills sharing, observation and group discussions in the CPD training and creative workshops. They gained the confidence to recognise and develop their own inherent creative skills, increased their knowledge of facilitating creative sensory play and gained greater understanding of delivery approaches such as demonstration, the use of multisensory props and open language. The staff reported that this empowering growth in skills and confidence made them feel creative, inspired, motivated, and valued in their role.

Click here to read more about the evaluation outcomes. 

At the start of the project we felt nervous as we had no experience of dancing, but once we realised we had some existing improvisation and story-telling skills we felt more confident…we realised this is what we already do!

Care staff

We loved the training it gave us so much confidence, more opportunities to work with ENB would be great so we can continue to develop our skills.

Care staff

For those who are interested in reading the full evaluation report, please email dancehealth@ballet.org.uk.

Mindful Movers, a Dance for Dementia pilot programme, was generously supported by The Linbury Trust, Backstage Trust, the Garfield Weston Foundation, and City Bridge Trust.