Laughing to longevity--the work of elder clowns.

摘要

In 1969, at the age of 15, I (BW) accompanied my best friend and his mother to the Chiltern Cheshire Home nearest our house. Ostensibly I was going to help prepare a Sunday tea for the residents of the home, many of whom had lost their mobility, hearing, and sight, during World War I and some were also living with dementia. As I helped deliver the tea I sang to, and with, the residents. I told jokes and stories, and listened to their jokes and stories. What I didn't know then was that I had started a journey that would become a lifetime of work and research in the arts and health care. Many years later, in 2002,I met Peter on a very rainy evening in a cafe in Paris. It was a meeting that very nearly didn't happen. I had been in Spain doing research on the role of clowns in hospitals, while Peter was on a Churchill Fellowship undertaking an exhaustive and exhausting study on the international effect of hospital clown units on the health-care system.