Taking up Arts and Crafts in Later Life: A Qualitative Study of the Experiential Factors That Encourage Participation in Creative Activities

Abstract

Background and aim:

Creative occupations promote wellbeing among older people, but how people discover creative occupations in later life, or why they intensify their participation in certain creative occupations after retirement, is unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the experiential factors that older women perceive as encouraging their take-up of, and participation in, visual art-making during later life.

Method:

Twelve older women (aged 61–80 years) were recruited through a magazine for an older readership. Their interview transcripts were subject to interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Findings:

A variety of distal and proximal factors appeared to encourage the take-up of art-making in later life. Distal factors included pre-existing craft skills, family role models and positive attitudes to managing change. Proximal factors included the need to fill occupational voids and the sensitive encouragement of husbands and friends. Serendipitous events featured in some accounts.

Conclusion:

The participants did not uniformly regard themselves as creative. None had participated in the visual arts throughout adulthood. The multiplicity of influences that enabled these older women to participate in art in later life extends previous research findings and may encourage occupational therapists to help clients to regain wellbeing through exploring novel creative arts occupations.