Professor Victoria Tischler, Principal Investigator
Victoria is Associate Professor at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Environment and Human Health (Medical School) and Honorary Professor, Geller Institute for Ageing and Memory (School of Biomedical Sciences), University of West London. She is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.
Victoria has a PhD in psychology from the University of Nottingham where she worked for 12 years. She retains an honorary position at the University of Nottingham Medical School. Her research interests focus on creativity and mental health and multi-sensory approaches to dementia care. She is co-executive editor of the journal Arts and Health: an international journal for research, policy and practice. She serves on the scientific advisory board for Boots UK archive.
Hannah Zeilig,
Co-Investigator
Hannah is a Senior Research Fellow at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London and associate fellow at University of East Anglia.
Hannah has a background in the arts and in gerontology. She has a PhD in the arts and ageing from King’s College, London where she has worked for 15 years. Her research interests focus on the arts, creativity, ageing, dementia and mental health. She works closely with people with dementia in the community and in care homes.
As Senior Researcher at the Wellcome (Created Out of Mind Hub 2016-2018) she explored artistic co-creativity with people with dementia.
Julian West,
Co-Investigator & Music Lead
Julian is Head of Open Academy, at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has worked with organisations throughout Europe, South East Asia and Canada, supporting the development of their socially engaged practice.
In 2016 he was invited to become a co-director of Created Out of Mind, recipients of Wellcome’s Hub Award. He is currently principal investigator for an ESRC funded research project looking at connections between the UK and Japan in the field of arts and dementia. He is a co-investigator on Culture Box, and alongside Hannah Zeilig is a co-founder of the transdisciplinary research group, Unmapped.
Dr Errol Francis , Content Producer
Errol is Artistic Director and CEO of Culture& which works to open up the arts and heritage sectors to a more diverse workforce and audience. Errol was awarded his PhD from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where his research focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of West London in 2017.
He has substantial experience of community engagement around mental health and the arts and was formerly Joint Programme Lead at the Sainsbury Centre of Mental Health and Programme Manager at the Department of Health Race for Health programme. He was programme manager at Arts Council England, Inspire Curatorial Fellowship Programme; Head of Arts at the Mental Health Foundation and artistic director of the Anxiety Arts Festival London 2014, Acting Out Nottingham 2015, Hysteria 2017-2018 and Cyborgs 2019 public engagement programmes. Culture& has also delivered programmes using creative approaches to support people living with dementia: Imagination Café, 2018 and Memory Archives, 2019.
Emma Barnard, Artist &
Visual Arts Lead
Emma is a visual artist specialising in lens-based media, inter-disciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. Her artwork inspired by working with ENT specialists and their patients is currently being exhibited widely in galleries, universities and hospitals in the UK and internationally and most recently in ‘Primum Non Nocere’, a solo exhibition in Berlin. She has presented her work at several university conferences including at UCL, Kings and Cambridge University.
She led on a project titled ‘An Exploration of Photography and Creativity Workshops as a Mechanism for Improving Reflective Practice and Resilience Building’ at Surrey University and collaborated on a project titled ‘A Dry and Silent World: Living with Hidden Disabilities’ at Kings University.
Emma sat on the Arts and Ethics Subcommittee at the World Congress in Bioethics 2016 and is also a member of the Arts and Ethics Research Group (AERG) - CT1 Approaches to Understanding Patient Experiences and Medical Texts - at the Mason Institute, University of Edinburgh.
Hilary Woodhead,
Activity Consultant & Care Home Lead
Hilary is a dementia specialist with a special interest in the arts, safeguarding and staff support. Her skills lie in project management, service improvement, training, resource and practice development.
Hilary is the Executive Director of the National Activity Providers Association (NAPA), a charity and membership organisation that supports the care sector to prioritise wellbeing. NAPA promotes the importance of activities, arts and engagement by providing Advice and Information and Learning and Development services. Their expertise lies in the development and circulation of activity ideas and resources to the care sector, especially care homes and in developing the skills of the workforce to provide opportunities for meaningful engagement with activities and the arts.
Gail Elliot, Dementia Care Expert Consultant
Gail is a Gerontologist and Dementia Specialist from Canada. She was previously the Assistant Director at the Centre for Gerontological Studies and is now running DementiAbility Enterprises Inc, an organization that’s aims to change the face of dementia through awareness, education and resources designed to help people living with dementia to succeed and thrive.
DementiAbility focuses on providing multidisciplinary, evidence-based, person-centered knowledge through educational programs which offer tools, along with multidisciplinary evidence, that aim to help care partners understand the connections between the brain, life story, environment and behavioral outcomes and then helps care partners to understand how to move this knowledge into practice. Gail has also personally developed a wide variety of resources that are aimed at professionals, caregivers and also people living with dementia that are available through DementiAbility.
Lynne Phair, Nurse Consultant and Public Health Lead
Lynne is an Independent Consultant Nurse and Expert Witness for Older People and has been working in older people’s services and care settings for the last 40 years.
She has worked in the NHS, at the Department of Health and in the Independent Sector. She is the professional advisor for Milford Care, Quality & Service Director for Abbeyfield South Downs, Consultant to the Crisis Prevention Institute and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Dementia Care and Journal of Adult Protection. She is also the author of the sitandsee® Tool. Lynne has written widely, speaks nationally and has been an advisor to BBC Radio 4 File on 4, BBC Panorama, ITV Exposure, and Channel 4 Dispatches.
Lynne also investigates neglect for the police and most recently, has been collaborating with colleagues to develop and introduce the use of Montessori methods for people living with dementia and frailty.
Mary O’Malley, Co-Investigator
Dr Mary O’Malley is a Chartered Psychologist through the British Psychological Society and Lecturer in Ageing and Dementia at the University of West London. Mary has worked on a variety of dementia research projects, collaboratively with the NHS and third sector organisations.
Mary has a PhD in Psychology from Bournemouth University, on the development and application of dementia-friendly design to support navigation in care environments. She is passionate about public and patient involvement, supporting people affected by dementia, and disseminating research to the public.
In addition to her role as Co-Investigator for the Culture Box Study, Mary is also Principal Investigator for the DEFIN-YD Project, which is a Wellcome Trust funded public engagement project for younger people living with dementia.
Sarah Kent-Lemon, Research Assistant
Sarah has recently completed her Psychology MSc at University of West London and has previously worked as a criminal defence litigator where she represented client’s interests at both Magistrates and Crown Courts for an array of different offences, namely Money Laundering, Conversion of Criminal Property, Murder, Terrorism & GBH.
Sarah also has a background in corporate finance, specifically with FCS directed investigations into banking irregularities and money laundering.
Sarah’s role as Research Assistant primarily involves working on ethics, liaising with care homes, conducting interviews, constructing and administering surveys and the analysis of the data / report writing.
Vanessa Otim, Curatorial & Production Assistant
After completing her BA in English Literature & Philosophy from the University of Sussex, Vanessa was part of the New Museum School where she worked as a Collections Information Trainee for the Royal Collection Trust and achieved an RQF diploma in Cultural Heritage.
Vanessa is very fond of art history and visual art, particularly painting and has been developing her own art portfolio for several years. She also has a background in music and can play the Alto Saxophone.
Vanessa’s role as Curatorial & Production Assistant for the project primarily involves managing the Culture Box website, creating the digital & physical boxes, assisting with the curation of the material, liaising with care homes as well as research and administrative duties.
Chloe Asker, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Chloe joined Culture Box in March 2022, just after submitting their PhD. Their role is to commission a final survey for participants and residents, as well as analysing the qualitative and quantitative data collected throughout 2021. They are currently working to draw out the main findings from the research.
Chloe is a human geographer with a particular focus on health and cultural geography. Their doctoral research was funded by the South West Doctoral Training Partnership, ESRC, and centred around the therapeutic geographies and cultures of mindfulness and meditation. They are particularly interested in the lived experiences of mindfulness and the transformative effects that the practice can have individually and collectively. They recently self-published a zine ‘journeys with mindfulness’ that traces 6 journeys with mindfulness.
Methodologically, they have worked with forms of autoethnography, ethnography, and creative participatory research. In their work, they attempt to foreground feminist, queer, and decolonial knowledges, particularly in relation to mindfulness.