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Arts 4 Dementia London Arts Challenge in 2012
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Arts 4 Dementia offers new outreach at arts venues around London
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Arts outreach to bridge the gap in provision, bringing life-enhancing stimulation for people living with dementia in the community, and their carers – from diagnosis.
As artistic stimulation elevates patients above symptoms of dementia, our weekly courses encourage arts activity between sessions. Arts 4 Dementia's multiple art form programme – covering art, comedy, dance, drama and scriptwriting, music, photography, poetry and communication – has been recommended for the London 2012 Inspire mark and will be evaluated to provide both qualitative and quantitative evidence, in association with Canterbury Christ Church University.
‘Dementia is one of the biggest challenges our society faces’, says the Care Services Minister Paul Burstow. While memory loss leads to anxiety, confusion, increasing stress and isolation, the creative brain of people with Alzheimer’s remains intact for years.
Dementia is a degenerative brain disorder of which the most common form is Alzheimer’s Disease.
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820,000 people in England and Wales have been diagnosed with dementia (Alzheimer’s Research UK).
- 64,000 Londoners are living with dementia (NHS, Healthcare for London’s Dementia Services Guide)
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Two-thirds live at home, anxious to retain their brain and increasingly stressed isolated.
Our London Arts Challenge in 2012 answers the National Dementia Strategy call for action to enable people with dementia to live longer and better in their own home, through improved learning networks and personal support services for people living in the community with dementia. The Dementia Services Guide recommendscreative arts activity as a means of living better with dementia.
Engaging in arts activities
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brings instant enjoyable relief from anxiety and confusion
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maximises cognitive function (and according to 2011 German study, slows cognitive decline)
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restores the person’s confidence, sense of identity.
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encourages the person to lead a more fulfilled, socially interactive life in the community.
The National Dementia Strategy also calls for the stigma associated with dementia to be eradicated. Photographs of participants engaging in arts activity will provide useful evidence to diminish the perception that sufferers do not have a thinking, feeling brain behind their confused words. Friends and colleagues who misguidedly keep away will learn through our programme that communication is indeed possible, with positive focus on the arts interest.
Arts 4 Dementia chief executive Veronica Franklin Gould, who will lead the evaluation, with Professor Paul Camic of Canterbury Christchurch University, is liaising with community mental health teams to assist referral to each course, which will be signposted by art form on the Arts 4 Dementia website. The programme will be launched in January with a printed publication, and separate flyers produced per project, for distribution in surgeries, memory clinics, libraries and arts venues and marketed through the press.
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