The Thinking Eye has been awarded a UCL Grand Challenges grant for 'Culture Connections: supporting psychological wellbeing and healthy ageing through online art conversations', in collaboration with Dr Mine Orlu, founder of the CelebrAGE initiative and Prof Seb Crutch, who leads the UCL Rare Dementia Support study.

Summary project:

Research has shown that engaging with art activates the same brain networks as complex social behaviour. It is also known that different dementia syndromes specifically affect these social brain networks. Furthermore, having an active social life has been shown to protect against dementia. The Culture Connections project will develop and pilot a novel online art conversation workshop within the broad University College London (UCL) community, which aims to engage the social brain networks to promote psychological well-being and optimal cognitive functioning. The workshops will be designed for small groups, with 15 participants max, and will be tailored to different adult age groups and diverse cultural backgrounds. A cross-disciplinary approach, combining art, psychology and social neuroscience, will be used to explore how art conversations affect (neuro)psychological wellbeing in a social context. The aim of the pilot workshops is to i) scope public interest, ii) test the content, structure and delivery and iii) measure the impact of the online art conversations on psychological wellbeing. This project is a spin-off from the UCL I&E-funded CelebrAGE network, and will expand on a successful working relationship with the social enterprise The Thinking Eye, while simultaneously developing a new cross-disciplinary collaboration with the UCL Rare Dementia Support study.