Editorial introduction

This chapter uses a ‘cultural animation method’ which involves deploying a range of creative activities to elicit responses from participants. As such, this and the following chapters are examples of creative techniques being used as part of a research methodology. By the end of the chapter, it remains an open question whether these techniques provide insights that are different from traditional techniques. Nonetheless, they are used to successfully draw out participants’ own understandings of resilience and the personal, social and cultural factors that shape their resilience across the life span.

Introduction

This chapter produces new understandings of the relationship between cultural engagement and resilience in older age. It uses data from a cultural animation (Kelemen et al, 2015) workshop and qualitative interviews with a range of older people to understand their conceptualisation of resilience and the strategies they have used to overcome challenges experienced throughout the lifecourse. Findings develop the field of cultural gerontology by revealing how cultural participation, as defined by the participants themselves, can foster psychological, social and cultural resilience (Wild et al, 2013).

In contrast to the successful ageing paradigm (Foster and Walker, 2015), the notion of resilience comes with an acceptance that older people will face adversity, and that such challenges are a normal part of life (Wild et al, 2013). The concept is particularly applicable to understanding older people's lives because, while people face extreme life adversity, the term also encompasses the negotiation of more normal upheavals associated with normal ‘life transitions’ (Bauman et al, 2001). Mindful of how resilience is in danger of becoming the ‘new emancipatory buzzword’ (Luthar et al, 2000), this chapter charts how engagement may inform the everyday processes, the ‘ordinary magic’ (Masten, 2001) of human adaptation.

Older people's voices are missing from arguments shaping the conceptualisation of resilience (Gattuso, 2003; Wild et al, 2013). This study used creative methods to stimulate and articulate the challenges that older people faced and how they addressed them. A facilitated cultural animation approach (Kelemen et al, 2015) was used, as the method has been argued to place the day-to-day experiences of ordinary people at the heart of the inquiry.