A Life More Ordinary (ALMO) was designed to bring together thinking around the arts, memory loss and dementia friendly communities in a way that would give people living with dementia and their family members more choice, control and greater access to leisure and cultural opportunities at The Dukes Theatre in Lancaster and other art venues that would become part of the ALMO programme.

The overall aim of ALMO was to enable The Dukes, in partnership with Age UK Lancashire, to make a significant transformational step from being a ‘provider’ of art- based opportunities for people with dementia and their family members to being a central ‘stakeholder’ in dementia-friendly access development. Its three core objectives were to:

• Improve the quality of lives for people with memory loss and dementia and their families through the development and delivery of specialist arts-based services and activities;

• Give people living with dementia more choice, control and greater access to leisure and cultural opportunities at The Dukes and other arts venues across the county;

• Create a body of expertise, understanding and good practice to be disseminated to arts venues and providers of dementia services across Northwest England and beyond.

The Centre for Ageing Research, Lancaster University, led the evaluation of the ALMO programme. Using a mixed methods approach, the primary objective of the ALMO evaluation was to assess the impact of the programme on the lives of people living with dementia and their family members/carers, including their subjective sense of wellbeing.

Secondary objectives were to:

• Evaluate how the spaces offered by theatres or cinemas involved with the ALMO programme could be adapted/designed to be more inclusionary for people living with dementia; and
• Assess the impact of the ALMO programme on staff and volunteers involved in running and supporting ALMO within these venues.

Milligan C., Mossabir R. (2018) ALMO Final Evaluation Report. UK: Lancaster University Centre for Ageing Research