Dancing with Parkinson’s

How can we co-create, communicate and spread experience-based knowledge about the therapeutic use of dance for citizens with Parkinson’s disease?

What potentials and challenges arise in the tensions in dialogue in person-centred, participatory research and research communication?

In the project, these two questions are addressed through a collaborative research design based on a theoretical framework building on dialogic communication theory. In a series of workshops using a range of creative, collaborative methods, people with Parkinson’s disease and their relatives will participate in the co-creation of knowledge about bodily, sensual and aesthetic experiences with Parkinson’s dance courses. The co-created knowledge will be disseminated through graphic narratives.

One aim is to generate knowledge about the involvement of citizens/patients in treatment, research and research dissemination in relation to Parkinson’s disease and also other diseases including other neurodegenerative diseases.

Another aim is to generate knowledge about dance as a form of creative arts therapy in person-centred treatment. In both cases, a central goal is to further develop practices of Citizen involvement in research and research communication and the use of dance in the person-centred treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

With respect to research, the aims are to contribute to the research fields on dialogic communication, patient involvement in person-centred health care, research and research dissemination, and collaborative, qualitative and arts-based research on health including narrative and graphic medicine.

The project is a collaboration between Roskilde University, Parkinsonforeningen og Tivoli Ballet School and is funded with a grant from the Velux Foundation, HUMPraxis Programme (January 2019-December 2021).