The University of Derby's Creative Ageing Research Cluster invite you to attend a seminar on 'Dogs and the Elderly: the significance of interspecies companionship towards the end of life' with Dr Angela Bartram (Associate Professor in the School of Arts, University of Derby).

We seek comfort from other beings, which in the absence of other humans often finds a solution in relationships with dogs. The positivity for health is particularly relevant to the elderly, who may be especially isolated and emotionally vulnerable. Although sharing one's life with a dog gives purpose and comfort, it also brings anxieties regarding care and separation should that relationship change or cease. For the elderly, this concerns being worried for the dog's fate should they be separated by entering housing or care facilities, or by illness or death.

Dogs and the Elderly: the significance of interspecies companionship towards the end of life discusses the dilema of leaving a 'burden' through the art project 'Dogs and the Elderly', which analyses the importance of the interspecies relationships for physical and emotional health and wellbeing.

Dr Angela Bartrum works in expanded sculpture including objects, video, event and text. Her practice concerns threshold and 'in-between' spaces of the human body, gallery or museum, definitions of the human and animal within companion species relationships and alternative strategies for documenting the ephemeral. She is prinicple investigator for the Alternative Document, a large scale project that anaylses alternative strategies for documenting ephemeral artworks that includes exhibitions, symposia and text. Bartrum completed a PhD at Middlesex University and is Head of the Arts Research Centre and Associate Professor in Research at the University of Derby.

Tickets for this seminar are FREE but booking is essential. Please click to REGISTER for this seminar.

This forms part of a series of seminars held by the University's cross-college, interdisciplinary research cluster focusing on themes around arts and health, social gerontology and dementia an initiative of our Arts & Health Centre of Excellence.

For more information about other seminars in the series, please click on the links below or email researchcentre-hsc@derby.ac.uk :

- Sing to Beat Parkinson's

- Dancing with Shadows

- Creative Ageing: Has our time come?

- New technologies & the active ageing

Follow the seminar series on Twitter using #TalkCreativeAgeing

For more information about the Creative Ageing Research Cluster, please email Emily Bradfield e.bradfield@derby.ac.uk

(Image Credit - Angela Bartrum 2017)