Implementing the TS program in nursing facilities improves the care environment for PWDs. However, additional studies are needed to offer further insights into the mechanisms by which TS improves both staff and resident outcomes.

The cultural arts have gained attention for their potential to generate social and behavioral changes in people with dementia. Although individual cultural arts intervention studies have reported positive outcomes, most are excluded from systematic reviews because of methodological weakness. We reviewed findings from 27 systematic and integrative reviews of pharmacologic, psychosocial, and cultural arts interventions to identify promising outcomes as well as limitations in current approaches. Although results point to the potential success of interventions tailored to individual interests, most focused on limited measurements of individual change. In moving forward, cultural arts intervention research must not be limited to the tools of the clinical trial model. Instead, researchers should carefully rethink what constitutes rigorous and effective research for interventions aimed at creating a meaningful personal experience for the participant rather than measurable change.

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This essay explores the history of the cultural community development model in the United States and its potential benefits for transforming the lived experience of dementia. Using her work with the 2011 Penelope Project as a case study, the author identifies core elements of a "Creative Community of Care:" open systems; all activities are accessible; the arts are immersed into the environment of care; projects build on existing assets and rituals; projects evolve over long periods of time; and projects have high cultural value/capital.

Scholars and activists within the fields of disability and age studies have fought hard to have disabled individuals of all ages recognized as people with disabilities, rather than a class of the disabled or the old. These two broad categories are peopled with individuals with life experiences and opinions, not just needs demanding attention. To better understand the experience of disability, scholars and activists call for the voices of the disabled, for their stories to be told and heard. But such a call also presents us with several challenges. How can the voices of the disabled be heard-particularly the voices of people with cognitive impairments or severe physical impairments? In what forms can and do their voices have meaning? Might certain forms of narrative and modes of performance actually support ideals of independence and selfhood that fuel fears of disability in the first place? What can the stories of the disabled tell us about the very meaning of the "self"? 1 I want to address these questions by following Time Slips, a creative storytelling project with people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD) 2 that began in 1998 in both Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and New York City. As director of the project, I organized 18 weeks of storytelling workshops in Milwaukee and 9 weeks in New York City. In the second phase of the project, we translated a handful of the nearly 100 stories into a professional play production, a Website, and an art installation in order to deepen public awareness of the creative potential and humanity of people with dementia.Interviews with staff and family caregivers, student facilitators, 3 and the storytellers themselves reveal that the storytelling was a surprisingly moving process. Certainly none of the students expected to be invigorated by an hour of storytelling each week with people with Alzheimer's disease. How and why it worked, what form the stories took, and what the stories can tell us about the performance of selfhood are the questions that fuel the first part of this article. In the second, I look to the production of the Time Slips play in Milwaukee in May 2000 , and how responses in post-show discussions revealed common fears and understandings of the self.

StoryCorps' Memory Loss Initiative was designed to gather oral histories of people with memory loss. This study investigated the StoryCorps interview experience for storytellers who self identify with early stage memory loss and the persons who interviewed them. StoryCorps interviews took place in Milwaukee, Chicago, and New York. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 42 persons with memory loss, along with 27 family members who participated in the StoryCorps interviews. Results revealed that the StoryCorps experience was a meaningful activity that allowed participants to acknowledge the beauty of the present moment, to reflect and engage in meaningful conversations, to re-affirm both the selfhood of individuals with memory loss and their relationships with family members, and to and be a part of national history while leaving a legacy for future generations within families. The findings are discussed within the context of personhood enhancing strategies for persons with memory loss.

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