Creative Renaissance 

Comedian Denise Scott and creative ageing researcher Associate Professor Helen English explore the benefits of tapping into your creative side – proving it’s never too late to start, and why your creative best may still be yet to come.

About the episode – brought to you by Australian Seniors, in partnership with RSPCA.

Join Jean Kittson for the seventh season of DARE: The time of your life (formerly Life’s Booming), called Better With Age. 

Too often ageing is painted as decline. In reality, Australians are discovering new creative energy, fresh purpose, and unexpected second acts later in life. 

Denise Scott is a beloved comedian, writer and actor who landed her first lead television role at 67, in ABC’s Mother and Son, earning a Logie nomination for her performance as Maggie. After coming through breast cancer treatment, Denise is now back on stage for the first time in 10 years with her acclaimed show, Tickety Boo, bringing her trademark honesty and humour to audiences across the country.  

Associate Professor Helen English is an academic at the University of Newcastle, whose work explores ageing, wellbeing and the benefits of artistic expression later in life. A former musician and music educator of 20 years, she founded a creative ageing research program in 2019 and later formed The Unforgettables, a choir supporting people with dementia and their carers through music, connection and community. 

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For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast 

Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency

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TRANSCRIPT:​

Jean Kittson: Welcome back to the podcast, DARE: The time of your life, formerly Life’s Booming, brought to you by Australian seniors, in partnership with RSPCA.

This season is called Better With Age, where we are flipping the script on what it means to be older, and chatting with over-50s who are rewriting the ageing rule book. 

In fact, they're erasing the rule book. They're telling rules to rack off!

And in this episode, we are exploring the benefits of a Creative Renaissance, and how you can have one, too.

To help shed some light, meet University of Newcastle associate Professor, Helen English. 

Prior to becoming an academic, Helen worked for 20 years as a musician and music educator.

In 2019, she founded a creative ageing research program with fellow academics from the universities of Newcastle and Melbourne, focusing on creative activity programs that promote wellbeing and brain health in older adults.

Helen also formed a dementia choir known as The Unforgettables, to provide people with dementia and their carers a creative outlet and social connection. 

And joining Helen is writer, actor and comedian and dear friend, Denise Scott, who has been providing brilliant comedy on stage and screen and making us laugh for decades.

But you might be surprised to discover it wasn't until the tender age of 67 that Denise landed her first lead role on TV on ABC's remake of Mother and Son, which earned her a Logie nomination for her role as Maggie. 

At about the same time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and after coming through the other side, she is now back on stage with a brand new comedy show, Tickety Boo, that's taking Australia by storm.

Denise and Helen, I am so thrilled to have you both with us on the show. 

Jean Kittson: Denise, you are all right to be here after performing last night? You're not feeling a little tired or anything. 

Denise Scott: Mm. No, no, I'm lying.

Jean Kittson: You don't– we're all lying. It's like five o'clock in the morning and so, no. Scotty, we've known each other for a really long time. 

Denise Scott: Very!

Jean Kittson: And I know you've been creative for your entire life in all aspects of your life really. But in terms of your work, how has your creativity changed over the years?

Denise Scott: I consider creativity a very basic kind of thing that you just, like I grew up in a house where craft was the going thing. I learned to knit and embroider and stitch things together. And that was– and I found that a creative outlet and still do, although, you know, because you've seen my show that I also colour in.

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Denise Scott: Which is not, it's not creative. That's the joy of it. It requires no effort, brain or otherwise, you just… 

Jean Kittson: …choosing colours. Sure. 

Denise Scott: Oh it, you just, you know. No, it's not. But as far as my work goes, I have been– when I got this last show together, this show, current show, which is my first solo show in 10 years, it was a really different approach. Like I used to have an office and I'd go and sit in that or I'd hire, rent a room somewhere, go and sit in that and it was like school assignment and create my scripts that way. And this time, I lay in my bed, which is one of my favourites. It's so bad my obsession with just lying in bed.

I know no shame. I know everyone who walks past, because our bedroom window faces onto the street. I still, and I hand write a few things. A few ideas and then, I don’t know, I'll colour in, listen to a podcast or something, write something else. So yeah, it's a lot more relaxed. 

Jean Kittson: It sounds so relaxed. I mean, you write a few ideas and then you go and perform them or do you fine tune? How do you fine tune them? Because I suppose once you would've just done that at a computer, would you just 

Denise Scott: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: Like write every pause and… 

Denise Scott: …when I was doing treatment for cancer, which is the last few years, I didn't like screens. I just didn't wanna look at them for any reason. 

Jean Kittson:Yeah. 

Denise Scott: And I, yeah. Started handwriting.

Jean Kittson: Handwriting again. Do you think there's a connection, a different connection between the brain and the hand? Or is it just purely because you wanted to lay in bed… not have anything on your lap?

Denise Scott: Oh no. I'd have my colouring in on my lap. Oh, don't you worry. I think it's just– yes. I think there is a connection.

Jean Kittson: When you got the lead, this first lead role at 67. 

Denise Scott: Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: In Mother and Son, huge, a huge opportunity and a huge show, and two series and a nomination. You were also diagnosed with breast cancer at exactly the same time. 

Denise Scott: Yeah. It was a heady combination. It was a really heady combination and in hindsight. I would not do that again.

Jean Kittson: Wouldn't you? 

Denise Scott: No, but at the time I thought your brain's just going, oh, well, in two weeks time I'm going to live in Sydney for three months and film this. And I'm, you know, very excited. And even though the rage against me because I was daring to play Ruth Cracknall’s iconic role.

There was that going on. But yeah, the chemo, yeah, that was full on and working every day. I'd have a day off a week. I'd have a chemo day and a chemo recovery day, and that meant the other three days of the week, I would have to film for 12 to 14 hours to get all the stuff done. 

Jean Kittson: Gosh, I mean, you wouldn't do it again, but the distraction from your having the chemo.

Denise Scott: I think that's the lesson I learned that really, I would say I dissociated. Like, the only way I could get through was to not feel anything. Like, to just, alright, you can't start feeling. Being aware of how hard you're finding this or any– because you're in it now and you've gotta just get through to the end. And I think that's taken me quite a long time to recover from. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. To be in that sort of place of denial. 

Denise Scott: And I think the colouring in… 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Denise Scott: …was to do with that as well. I just zoned out. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah, it's like my mother used to play pokie machines because she said that it's the only time I don't worry about you kids. We were, you know, all 50 at the time. But, you know, like she just switched off by it. She only played the 10 cent one, but she used to play them and switch off. And I, you know, other people do Sudoku and just things that are sort of a bit mindless. You're just focused on that and you're not letting all other fear and grief and everything impose.

And Helen, you are a researcher and you've researched creativity and how important it is for people in later life. Tell us about your research. 

Helen English: Okay well, I've got quite a few different sort of research angles. I mainly like doing qualitative research where I interview people or hold focus groups about why they love their music group, mainly music groups, but also in art and what it gives them.

And when you were just saying before about having to do the filming, and I was thinking about some of the recent interviews I was reading from someone who'd had, her son had a mental health disorder. Her husband was diagnosed with dementia, then she got cancer. And she said that every time something happened, it was her goal just to get back to music.

And that kind of kept her going. So I think it can work like that. So in terms of the research, there's quite a lot to say that it is wonderful to be creative. We are– we get more creative as we get older, which is an excellent attribute and a superpower that we have. Getting involved in creative activities does get that sense of flow that you were kind of describing with the colouring in, except you are also being challenged.

So it's a really a kind of a positive pleasure, but it's not a hedonic pleasure. It's a fulfilling sort of eudaimonic pleasure that you're getting. It's much more about fulfilling yourself and feeling that you have a sense of purpose, you have something to offer, you can make something for yourself and for others and share it.

And that's– that sort of really brings something as you age because oftentimes you're seeing, you know, the sort of def– what we call a deficit view of ageing, where, oh, you know, you're too old to do anything new. You can't do this, you can't do that. So you're pushing back against that and you're saying, ‘Hey, look at me. I took up art or I did my first play at 67.’

Margaret Sutherland, who's the Australian woman composer, got her first commission at 67, and then she also had a diagnosis of a heart problem. But, you know, people have these adversities and then something can happen when you're older which is very liberating.

So how does being creative sort of help your health? Well, being creative and having that engagement and flow and sense of purpose are really good for health. They're connected strongly with having healthy lives because healthy lives are much more than absence of disease, as we know.

But gosh, the researchers have just caught up with us. So the point that the World Health Organisation, who in 2019, they commissioned a big review of how does creativity help people, and that was published and then they set up their own, sort of, initiative about arts and health, and they've been pursuing that ever since, realising how important they are in many ways across the lifespan. 

Jean Kittson: Across the lifespan, yeah. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: But particularly in later life, you think? 

Helen English: I think so because a lot of people don't have the chance to pursue greater arts because they have to make money, support their family or whatever. So, they can return to it later and that's what a lot of the interviews I've done have been about people who either always wanted to do something and never did, and then they go, oh, well… 

Jean Kittson: …now's my chance. 

Helen English: Now's my chance. I don't have to care for my children anymore. I don't have to care for my husband. I can do anything I like. Like one woman in Newcastle who was in her 80s and she realised, my children have all moved to Melbourne, my husband's died. I can do anything I like. And she went to a ukulele festival and she said, that's it. Ukulele. I need to do that. 

Jean Kittson: You know all about ukulele. 

Denise Scott: Oh my partner John, been with him 45 years and he has played ukulele 24 hours a day for 45 years. So I have a slight aversion to the sound of ukulele! But yeah, it brings him and others a lot of joy. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: Well, it's a great sound and it's easy to pick up. I mean, which, and it's, and these, you are talking about it being good for ourselves to pick up a creative outlet. 

Helen English: Yes. Because we're doing something for ourselves. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Helen English: And at a time where we might be losing, diminishing in some ways, we're making something, we're doing something new, we're showing what we can do. And I– in interviews with older adults, I found they all want to keep learning because, you know, as long as you're keeping learning, you're still alive, you're still growing, you're still, you know, embracing new things – which is a great thing, I think. 

And I think that was what the Royal Commission meant when they said they felt that older adults should have had the right to pursue their possibilities. And I love that ‘possibilities’ idea – we should all have– be able to pursue our possibilities. 

Jean Kittson: Absolutely, and you've set up The Unforgettables, which is particularly a choir for people with dementia and their carers. So it's not only, I think, creativity. Do you think, not only for yourself, but the idea of sharing with others, and I've read that people, I mean, I love it that it's for the carers as well that they're sharing with each other, but also the connection with everybody else in the choir. So creating– being part of a creative activity like the choir is connecting you. And being social and sharing your feelings and… 

Helen English: …yeah, absolutely. Because music is very emotional of course. 

Jean Kittson: Yes. 

Helen English: And there's a thing called emotional contagion. So if you're in a choir with other people, you're getting this emotional contagion as well. I'm picking up on people's, you know, little expressions.

Jean Kittson: Oh that's nice.

Helen English: Yes, but I think, yeah, I think it's really good that you picked up about the care partners because they are very important. It is great for the people with dementia, but it's really great for the people, the care partners, because they get to talk to each other. They have– and they form a support group.

And there's not one dementia. There are many kinds. So, they get to talk about that and, but they also get to do this lovely thing of singing, which is not focusing on dementia or memory or anything like that, which is focusing on everyone singing together and it gives them that moment, you know, that time maybe they get a little bit of a feeling of their partner as they used to be while they're singing. I mean, some of them are nonverbal, but they sing all the words. 

Jean Kittson: Really. 

Helen English: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Jean Kittson: And how does that work? 

Helen English: Yeah. People are always amazed at that. And I was actually looking at it again today, and I saw that it, I knew that– so music uses more parts of the brain than any other activity. So even if you lose one part, it's still somewhere else.

But also, there's a couple of other things. So one is, you know how when we're adolescents, we often use music or arts to rebel, and those years are very important because we're finding ourselves. So the brain tags our memories from that time as very– as emotional and therefore important. So if they're associated with music, it tags them as something that you need to retain so they get well and truly embedded. 

But the other part that I was reading about today is that because music moves in time, it has almost a motoric sort of aspect to it. So we kind of experience it almost like learning to ride a bicycle. It sounds crazy, but, so we're going along and we're listening to the music and it's embedded somehow, and embodied.

And if we keep singing those same songs several times, then for people living with dementia, they can come back just embedded there, with the words… 

Denise Scott: …Ukulele John… 

Helen English: Yes. 

Denise Scott: So my mum was in a dementia unit for some years, and so he would take his ukulele and there was a common room, or you know, a lounge where everyone would gather and it really brought everyone together and he would sing, you know, the mostly sort of World War II songs and what was the song? 

Anyway, this one time, this song was requested, oh, I don’t know what it was, but I'll say it's, you know, ‘I'm forever blowing bubbles’, or whatever it was, and everyone was singing and it was great. And then any other request, ‘I'm forever blowing bubbles’.

And we'd sing it again and again and again. And it was just as euphoric every time and it was really joyful and funny. It's funny, like the repetition isn't in life, in normal life, but in this context it was just like, and as much as John would try and move on to something else, this song was what they needed and yeah, really wonderful. And yeah, they knew all the words. All of them. 

Jean Kittson: Like Helen was saying earlier that there were some, you were saying there were some people who had not had any access to the arts when they were kids or at school. None. No music. No art, it seems unforgivable… 

Helen English: It does.

Jean Kittson: … that we would have young people that haven't had an opportunity.

Helen English: Oh, well they're not young. They're people in their 80s now. 

Jean Kittson: But when they were young…

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: They didn't have an opportunity to, you know, play music, sing songs, do art at school. I mean, having the artsy… 

Helen English: Yeah. Some of them made their own music. 

Jean Kittson: Yes. 

Helen English: They made those, what do you call them? The box bass.

Jean Kittson: Oh, yes. 

Helen English: With their own, yeah…

Jean Kittson: …the washboard… 

Helen English: …and the… 

Jean Kittson: …spoons and…

Helen English: …but yes, it was fairly amazing to find that people in, some people in Australia, not far from here didn't have access at all. And then some of them said that later on they got an LP player and they listened to three, they had three LPs.

Jean Kittson: Yeah, that was like me. I had three LPs. That's right, Buddy Holly, the Beatles. And… maybe two LPs, actually. I can't remember the third one! Not a lot of music, but we used to play the same LPs over and over, you know, you're talking about getting music embedded. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: But the idea of sharing things through the arts, like your comedy show. Brilliant shows, standing ovations. Congratulations, Scotty. It really is a wonderful show and a lot of it is about what happened to you when you were diagnosed with cancer. 

Helen English: Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: And you said all the things you'd done in the past didn't seem relevant anymore. Do you wanna explain that a bit more?

Denise Scott: Sure. So, when I got sick, and I was sick. The treatment, you know, does that to you.

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Denise Scott: Diabolical. And so it made me stop, eventually, everything, and I wasn't thinking about coming back to work. I didn't care. But then I thought, ‘well, I have to do something.’ I don’t know what I'll do. And then I thought, ‘alright, I would get John,’ because I didn't even have the energy or interest to write stuff by hand initially. 

So I'd get John, I'd dictate to him just– and he wasn't allowed to say anything like, you could do a joke about… It was not that. It was just, I wanna remember this particular story and I wasn't remembering stuff very well because I had just had so many drugs in me. And yeah, so that's how the show came together. You know, I had this book of notes that John had written under strict instruction and… 

Jean Kittson: Did he stick by that? 

Denise Scott: Yes.  

Jean Kittson: Oh good, he didn't… 

Denise Scott: …he didn't go, ‘oh, that’ll never work,’ or no, and that's– so there was something inside me that knew I could. Maybe these stories would come in handy because I can't write. Oh, Helen, I haven't got imagination. That's the thing. I just write what's happened to me. If it hasn't happened, I can't think of anything. 

Jean Kittson: You can't make it up. 

Denise Scott: No, I can't. But, so what I found though, was when I did think, all right, I'm gonna go back to do standup, I found every single word I'd said prior in my life as standup, it had gone. 

It just seemed stupid to me to be talking about, you know, whatever it is. It was a lot of ageing stuff, but it was sort of like, oh, it's all gone. It's not that important to me so I thought, all right, well, I'll tell this particular story, I'll make some money out of it! And in fact, it wasn't about that either because you know, I didn't have to do it. But I've loved turning something into humour that wasn't particularly humorous at the time, and I love sharing it. It's a really great feeling. 

Jean Kittson: It's a great feeling. I mean, do you find that people, when they create something, it's therapeutic for them and the people in their family as well? Can they express their feelings more? 

Helen English: Being creative apparently leads to a more open mindset, which we really need as we age because we have to adapt all the time. You are successfully adapting all the time and still doing what you can do and extending what you're doing there. So that's a great thing about creativity I didn't mention, that it helps us to have a better, more open mindset. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah, that's a very good point. 

Helen English: And not give up and say, well, you must be a grumpy old person. 

Jean Kittson:Yeah…

Helen English: Yeah, instead you start… 

Jean Kittson: …which is a pretty lonely place to be really. 

Helen English: Definitely. Yes. And if they do a group activity like, songwriting – I've had quite a lot of songwriting courses for old adults, then they get to share their stories, find commonalities, and write a song about it, then they get to put it to music. And when we did that, we always got it mixed and mastered, so it sounded good. And then they can share that with their families and they're really, really proud. So that's great. 

And then the other thing is that people often say that things that they've learned or experienced in a creative course, they then can apply elsewhere. So that's really good too. For example, one woman in a UK orchestra who was very unconfident, said that she gained confidence and that she found herself more confident in other areas of life.

So transference of skills is great, and a lot of people say, ‘well, I'm gonna share my creative work with my grandchildren.’ Or they say something like, ‘now I can talk to my grandchildren because they're right into music and I can talk about this and that.’ And they feel more connected, so… 

Jean Kittson: That's fantastic. Because of course when you become a grandparent you have to reconnect with your creativity like crazy! On the floor, on all fours. And what else can I do with a ball? 

Denise Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And you're right, like I feel really lucky to have grandchildren. I didn't think I would, but I’ve got two grandchildren. 

And just yesterday, because I live in Melbourne, and so I got an update of what John had done with our grandson, the 4-year-old yesterday, and it involved a lot of Lego business and a doll's house and John was getting gaffer tape to make jet packs. Is that what you call them? So the Lego characters and the rabbits that live in the doll's house could fly. They needed to fly and so there was gaffer tape, things being made and yeah it's so beautiful. It's so much fun playing. 

Jean Kittson: I mean, you've been lucky to have a creative– creativity all through your life, but I mean, often people don't have that. And there are some people who are creative who actually become more isolated because they're writers or they paint, they're artists who paint on their own and they're…

And then I've, you know, met people who are now, you know, my age or our age, and they're finding suddenly they've been isolated and working alone for so long. How do they reconnect with friends and family? Whereas performing, of course, is, you know, is a very communal way of expressing creativity, but other things can be very isolating. 

Helen English: And isolation and loneliness are key determinants of health and mortality. So apparently being isolated or feeling lonely is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and its impact on our health. So that's why it's been a big focus recently; social connectedness and loneliness focus.

Jean Kittson: So all this research, what have we got in the community that we can access? You know, how do we find it? I have a friend, she has Parkinson's and she was– belonged to a choir, but now her Parkinson's is, she's unable to sustain her work with the choir, which has been devastating because she's been singing for a long time.

Helen English: Is she in a Parkinson's choir? 

Jean Kittson: I was wondering, is there a Parkinson's choir? 

Helen English: Well, there is one in Newcastle. I'm sure there must be other choirs. Yes. 

Jean Kittson: So it is important really to find the people who are sharing your experience really. 

Helen English: Absolutely. Yes. Go. Well, Dementia Australia is very helpful with helping people to find groups that suit, you know, because the thing is, okay, so social connectedness is very important, but it's important to do an activity that you like because otherwise you’re just going to disengage from it. 

So the whole point is that it's very engaging, you get drawn in and then you get that flow and then you, you know, feel you are with like-minded people. People say that a lot, ‘like-minded people, it's just lovely to be in this group.’ 

There are organisations that run things, like Creativity Australia runs choirs that are open to anyone across Australia. But there's also lots of grassroots things, which you probably might find out about if you go to your local community hall or… 

Jean Kittson: Local council. 

Helen English: …local council. Maybe an ad in the supermarket or something like that. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's just a big problem of finding and we've been doing some research on people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, how they find that stuff out. And oftentimes it is mainly printed things that they still want to see rather than something buried on the internet somewhere…

Jean Kittson: Yes, yes. 

Helen English: …which you can't find.

Jean Kittson: Can't find. 

Helen English:  A form you can't find. Yeah. So yeah, there's not one size fits all. It has to be a many-pronged approach, and sometimes it's just talking to friends and someone saying to you, ‘why don't you come along?’ And then do say yes, because you've got a friend to go with and give it a go. 

Jean Kittson: I think having the– involving the carers in what is a really a difficult journey with a loved one… 

Helen English: Very difficult. It’s very, very difficult. 

Jean Kittson: … is wonderful to have a different way of– because we've gotta learn new ways of connecting.

Helen English: Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: And emotionally and, you know. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: So…

Helen English: I don’t know if you've heard this expression. It's so beautiful. People living with dementia often can't remember what they did, they can remember how they felt. 

Jean Kittson: Oh, right. 

Helen English: Yes. So I remember somebody sent me a message saying– we were driving home and so and so turned to me and said this was the best day. And it was just so lovely. So that means a lot to, you know, to both people. 

Jean Kittson: Yes.  

Helen English: They had the best day for that day. 

Jean Kittson: That's sort of a new way of measuring or calibrating what's important too. 

Helen English: Yeah, that's right. And it– so if you have a choir that's very, you know, accepting and community minded, then, I mean, a lot of people are worried about joining such a thing because they feel like they're putting their hand up and saying, ‘yes, you know, we have dementia.’ But then when they get there they find, oh, well it's actually quite relaxed and everyone's the same. So it's not a big deal. 

Jean Kittson: There's so many ways to be creative. Have you written a list, Helen, of all the different ways that you can express creativity? Is there an academic sort of… 

Helen English: There probably is. I haven't personally written a list, but I, for example, I think cooking is great for people with dementia and some, a lot of homes now encourage people with dementia to do it because they– if you have dementia, you can remember those embedded skills like riding a bicycle, but in this case cooking.

So you can still, you can still do it. And it's sort of a dignity thing too, because the dignity you have– you're giving the person the dignity to do something that could be seen to be a bit risky, you know, having, handling knives or whatever. But yeah, so I think cooking is definitely creative and some people are very creative…

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Helen English: …with cooking, just thinking of that, was it The Vicar of Dibley where there was the woman who put marmalade and marmite in the same cake and tuna. Do you remember that one? 

Jean Kittson: No, I don't, but that's familiar to me. 

Helen English: Yeah. I think creativity also, there's an everyday creativity too. So there's the creativity of just, ‘oh, we've got a problem, how do we solve this?’ And actually, I was going to say that we get more creative as we age and I forgot to say more about that. 

So from the 1990s, I think there was a sort of idea that we actually do get more creative as we age. But more recently in 2019, a PhD student called Areeba Adnan did these fMRI studies of young people and older adults older than 60, and found that when it's quite, you know, for young people it's quite hard to get their creative– we say side of the brain, but it's actually called the default network, which is very dull, but you could say imaginative, which is better. 

Jean Kittson: Default network. I love that 

Helen English: Default. So.. 

Jean Kittson: we've lived in our default network all our lives 

Helen English: We're default. Yep. So, imaginative network coupled with the executive sort of frontal thinking, it's quite hard for young people to get those to work together.

But when you're– when you become– when you're older, it's very, they're just connected, so…

Jean Kittson: Oh really? 

Helen English: Yeah. So, when you're thinking, trying to problem solve, you're just drawing in all this creative and semantic knowledge that you've had for years and solving problems. So I think, you know, if you are getting older, and you know this, it should be very empowering because you're a better problem solver.

You might forget some details, but you're a much better problem solver because you can imagine not just one solution, but multiple solutions.

Jean Kittson: Of course, because you've experienced them. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: Well, seeing them in action. 

Helen English: I don't, I like.. 

Jean Kittson: …love that… 

Helen English: … saying I like the Miss Marple thing. I don’t know if you like Miss Marple, but she draws on her semantic memory.

She says, you know, ‘Hmm, it very much reminds me of Tommy in that village in the 19–whenevers,’ and you don't know what, but she's making a connection. Her brain's making it like kind of…

Jean Kittson: …yes… 

Helen English: …what we might call lateral thinking, but it's just natural when you get older. And that's how somehow Agatha Christie knew about that, I think. And that's how she's solving, that's why she's an older detective. 

Jean Kittson: …an older detective… 

Helen English: If you like. 

Jean Kittson: it makes sense…

Helen English: Yeah. With that ability to put two disparate things together. And.. 

Jean Kittson: So you– that's called semantic thinking. 

Helen English: Oh, semantic memories. Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: Right 

Helen English: The embedded memories. We have knowledge and all of that.

Jean Kittson: Like lateral thinking is…? 

Helen English: So we are bringing that together with the other part of our brain. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Helen English: We're not going, ‘oh, there's only one solution.’ 

Jean Kittson: It's not a linear thing. 

Helen English: Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: Oh yes. 

Helen English: It could be that or that. Yeah. And that's funny because my daughter was doing chemistry, learning chemistry, and they were being encouraged to be more creative in their thinking, 

Jean Kittson: Oh, were they? Wow. 

Helen English: To solve problems. Yes. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. 

Helen English:So that was interesting to me. Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: Oh, that's good. Because that would make them more experimental, I guess, and to look at more possibilities. Yes. 

Helen English: Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. I guess you can lose the ability to do that if you've been specialising in chemistry or accounting. Although that can be creative, I suppose.

Helen English: Creative accounting. Definitely. 

Jean Kittson: Definitely, yeah. So creativity of getting better as you get older. This is good for us, Scotty. We still wanna work. We'll just be booming. Right. You know. 

Denise Scott: Yes. 

Jean Kittson: Well, that's the other thing. There's no used by date. Is there, really? 

Denise Scott: I was so surprised this happened whilst I was having treatment. I realised how small my world was, like, I thought it was a pretty big world, you know? And then I thought about it. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. Traveling around the country performing…

Denise Scott: … no, I've got this tiny little geographical area that I've lived in most of my life and my family, or, well, you know, nearby or some of them, but it's quite terrific because I find the things that I do get to do, I really enjoy and I do them well, rather than I used to sort of be racing around doing so many things and I literally can't do that now. So I just, you know, and I find saying no––

Well, this might be in conflict with your suggestion, Helen, of saying yes to people’s offers and ideas, but I find saying no fantastic too. 

Helen English: Yes. 

Denise Scott: Because it's like, no, I can't do that. 

Jean Kittson: But that's because you are always asked to do so much, and… 

Denise Scott: …but I think that, you know, saying yes to ideas or to offers of come and, you know, see a movie with us, or… I will often, I've now started saying yes, even though it goes against my natural instinct.

It's like I've got into the habit of saying, no, no, I don’t know how I'll feel that day, or I don't know that I want to do that. Or I'll feel a bit goosy. I don't really know the people. And I've now started saying, making myself do good things. It's not like they're awful, but you know, let's do lunch…. No!

Yeah. And I, yeah, take a leaf out of my sister's book. Say yes. 

Jean Kittson: Yes. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I'm trying to do that with my husband Patrick, who's a cartoonist. So he just, he's, you know, 76, so he's still creative and still works, but isolated, can be isolated. So just trying to get him to go out, it's been a really great conversation. Really interesting. I didn't know there was so many facts about creativity, so many, so much research, you know. 

Helen English: Yeah. There's a lot of research and everybody gets older and they wanna research it, I guess. 

Denise Scott: Yeah!

Jean Kittson: I suppose we had a lot more when, you know, before we were so sophisticated. All these, you know, all working and television and everything, just creativity was more part of our lives.

When you were talking about craft and growing up in a household where everyone made their clothes and, you know, made cushion covers and embroidered things and painted their own walls and decorated their own houses.

Helen English: Television has a lot to answer for. Yeah. 

Jean Kittson: Yeah. And now phones. 

Denise Scott: Oh, phones.

Jean Kittson: Oh, we won't even get onto that. That killer. Helen. Denise, thank you so much for coming in today. It's been really great speaking with you both.  

Denise Scott: And with you, Jean Kittson. 

Jean Kittson: Oh thank you!

Helen English: Thank you so much, Jean. Thank you. You're wonderful. 

Jean Kittson: You've been listening to DARE: The time of your life, brought to you by Australian seniors.

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May your life be DARING. I'm Jean Kittson.