Art and dementia education in times of COVID‐19: Developing topics

Mateus‐Berr, Ruth; Al‐Mousli, Luna; Carli, Christina May Yan; Faißt, Verena; Gharashir, Nargol; Girotto, Lara; Greisberger, Eva; Gruber, Vanessa Lea; Guserl, Stefanie; Hausner, Ida Johanna; Muzler, Susa; Ngo, Nha; Sanglhuber, Anna; Schaitl, Jasmin; Scharler‐Plotnik, Pia Moana; Schroll, Alexandra; Schober, Michaela

BACKGROUND: Around the world, there will be one new case of dementia every 3 seconds. 152 million people are worldwide living with dementia in 2050, by then 2 billion people will be over 60 years of age. There are negative attitudes towards elderly people and ageism is extremely common. Young people often know somebody in their families with dementia and most of the time do not know how to handle it. This project designs the first arts‐based schooling strategy for empathy for people with dementia, creates a dementia friendly generation, age‐friendly environments, supports young people to understand dementia. Objective of the project is to develop artistic strategies to strengthen empathic abilities with arts‐based methods & interdisciplinary collaboration between people with & without dementia. Stress is a daily challenge faced by family caregivers working with people with dementia, isolation became another demanding situation. Isolation has an impact on health, therefore workshops were designed for caregivers and students in quarantine to engage in the questions ‘How can art‐based research affect intergenerational well‐being of people with dementia and students? And ‘How can these means encourage the handling of the topic dementia?’ METHOD: Art and design‐based online‐workshops enable family caregivers and students in isolation to take salutogenetic perspectives. Methods of embodied & experiential learning were applied, an interdisciplinary approach as new methodology of teaching awareness about dementia by innovative arts‐based pedagogies. The workshops on Body & Senses engage in body awareness, trigger senses and exploring movement and touch. The workshop Storytelling collects and rewrites memories from different perspectives and narratives. Other workshops create images in innovative ways, through investigating one’s environment, explore documentary material and designing tangible visualization. RESULT: Workshops resulted in positive feedback and knowledge about dementia by all participants. 281 people, aged between 13‐65 participated at these workshops. Most of them were students, others engaged in family care in isolation. CONCLUSION: Art‐based research facilitated creative approach, self‐awareness about one's own resources and empathy and knowledge growth on dementia. Highlights: art‐based research methods contributed to well‐being in isolation; creative workshops involved participants to experience resources; awareness growth on dementia.