Abstract
This chapter looks at the relationship between personal taste, participation and a care home community. It explores how residents express their personal tastes in arts projects, and how they are negotiated in relation to the social environment of the care home. Following Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, it suggests that taste is a way in which residents negotiate social situations and signal their identity to others. It argues that participation in arts projects can increase opportunities for residents to express their tastes, but can also highlight differences in age, class, education and cultural background. It concludes by considering how the cultural tastes of care home residents are evolving with the ageing population, and the aesthetic implications this has for arts practices in care homes.
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Notes
- 1.
One such project is ‘Men in Sheds’, a project which uses woodwork and other activities to support older men (www.ageuk.org.uk).
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Hatton, N. (2021). Negotiating Space through Taste. In: Performance and Dementia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51077-0_6
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