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Issue Addressed: As the population ages the prevalence of dementia increases and children are increasingly experiencing family members and older friends living with dementia. Unfortunately, stigma about living with dementia is common. Increasing understanding about dementia among children has the potential to reduce this stigma. This paper reports on the qualitative findings of Project DARE (dementia knowledge, art, research and education), a school‐based, multi‐modal, arts program designed to increase understanding about dementia among children aged 8–10 years. Methods: A constructivist grounded theory approach was used to understand students' experience of the intervention. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes emerging from interviews with randomly selected students (n = 40) who had taken part in the program. Results: The data analysis generated three themes related to students' awareness of dementia and experiences of the program: (1) nurturing empathy, (2) memory loss is complex, (3) learning about dementia through the arts to promote resilience. These themes show that the intervention increased students' awareness of dementia, and empathy towards people who are both directly and indirectly affected by dementia. Conclusions: Although dementia education can be viewed as too sensitive for primary aged students, the current study demonstrates that such initiatives are feasible and can be effectively implemented with this age group. So What?: Changing student's beliefs about dementia can positively impact their relationships with people living with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Andrea Fiore sketches the notion of familiarity in Dewey's thought, particularly in its relations with education, aesthetics, and art. The importance of that notion emerges in Dewey's well‐known writings such as How We Think, The School and Society, and Art as Experience, where he shows that not only does familiarity play a fundamental role in our lives, but it also constitutes a helpful tool to make our experience deeper and richer. This is particularly evident in two aspects or functions related to familiarity: recognition and interpretation. For Dewey, especially the latter has an educational value through aesthetics and art, because it allows us to activate the peculiar capacity of human beings to transform the quality of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst the link between young people's well‐being and the creative arts is strengthening, there is a lack of research which focuses on the roles that artists play to help teachers and parents engage young people in the creative arts. This paper explores the benefits of and barriers to artists working in education in six European countries (England, Iceland, Germany, Greece, Italy and Austria). Using the '5A's model of creativity' and a view of professional development taking place within 'landscapes of practice', the data were analysed in order to explain how creativity is operationalised in the different contexts. Our study highlights the need for policy at a national and transnational level to value the creative arts in order to help teachers cross boundaries and utilise the full potential of the creative arts in schools. Our study also highlights that further research is needed into how artists shape teaching and curriculum and how schools engage parents in the creative arts in order to build an evidence‐base relating to young people's positive mental health that can affect policy at these levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context The arts and humanities are gradually gaining a foothold in health professions education as a means of supporting the development of future clinicians who are compassionate, critical and reflexive thinkers, while also strengthening clinical skills and practices that emphasise patient-centredness, collaboration and interprofessional practices. Assignments that tap into trainee creativity are increasingly used both to prepare learners for the demands of clinical work and to understand the personal and professional challenges learners face in these contexts. Health professions educators need methods for interpreting these creations in order to understand each learner's expressions. This paper describes two theoretical frameworks that can be used to understand trainees' unique learning experiences as they are expressed in arts- and humanities-based creations. Methods The authors introduce the philosophical underpinnings and interpretation procedures of two theoretical frameworks that enable educators to 'hear' and 'see' the multilayered expressions embedded within arts- and humanities-based student creations: Gilligan's Listening Guide and Kress and van Leeuwen's approach to visual rhetoric. To illustrate how these frameworks can be used, the authors apply them to two creative summaries that learners made as part of a humanities-informed, interprofessional education intervention that took place in a non-acute-care teaching hospital. The interpretations of two creative summaries, a poem and a pair of paintings, highlight how applying these theoretical frameworks can offer important insights into learners' experiences. Conclusions This cross-cutting edge paper describes how the Listening Guide and visual rhetoric can help health professions educators listen to and read the arts- and humanities-based creative expressions made by learners. Insights gained from these interpretations can advance the understanding of students' personal experiences in different learning environments and can inform curriculum development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]