A.M.C. Swinnen

Dementia in Documentary Film: Mum by Adelheid Roosen

This article draws attention to the fact that documentaries do not simply reproduce the reality that film and audience share but always present a particular view of this reality. This implies that organizations in Alzheimer care, education, and research that often recommend documentaries to inform people about dementia should take into account that these films might reinforce negative stereotypes inducing fear of dementia. An in-depth analysis of the Dutch short documentary Mum (2009), directed by feminist artist Adelheid Roosen, illustrates that the reasoning of the personhood movement in dementia research can be translated into an artistic form. By highlighting instead of veiling its means of production, Mum stimulates viewers to imagine people with dementia as other than lost selves.

Healing words: A study of poetry interventions in dementia care

The personhood movement in dementia research has established the theoretical foundation for implementing cultural arts interventions in care practices. The underlying assumption is that professionals from the visual and the performance arts are well equipped to see the person behind the condition and to focus on possibilities for meaningful relationships in the here and now. This article focuses on poetry interventions as one example of cultural arts interventions. The use of poetry might seem counterintuitive, given that people with dementia lose their language abilities and that poetry is regarded to be the most complex literary form. I will argue that expanding on existing research on poetry interventions from a health and science perspective with a humanities approach will help illuminate how poetry works to enhance the exchange with people with dementia. Drawing on participant observations of poetry interventions by Gary Glazner (Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, USA) at the New York Memory Center, I will frame poetry interventions as a specific form of oral poetry in which people with dementia are positioned as cocreators of embodied texts and directly benefit from the power of the spoken word.

Popularizing Dementia: Public Expressions and Representations of Forgetfulness

Fiction film is one of the most influential vehicles for the popularization of ndementia. It is likely to have a particular influence on the way dementia is nconstructed by society at large, not least due to its consumption in the guise nof entertainment. In this paper, we will argue that such popularization is nrarely innocent or unproblematic. Representations of people with dementia nin film tend to draw heavily on familiar tropes such as global memory loss, nviolence and aggression, extreme dependency on heroic carers, catastrophic nprognosis, and early death. Audiences may therefore uncritically absorb ndiscourses which reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate the biomedical northodoxy that everything a person with dementia says or does is ‘a nsymptom of the disease.’

Seksualiteit van ouderen : Een multidisciplinaire benadering

Negatieve attitudes ten opzichte van de seksualiteit van ouderen zijn alomtegenwoordig vandaag. Waar komt de idee vandaan dat lust en passie enkel voor de jeugd gepermitteerd zijn en ouderdom niet alleen met gebreken, maar ook met gematigdheid komt? Dit boek biedt een antwoord op de vraag hoe het lichamelijke verouderingsproces van invloed is op de seksuele behoeftes en activiteiten van oudere mannen en vrouwen. Daarbij wordt ruim aandacht geschonken aan de denkbeelden die in onze maatschappij circuleren met betrekking tot het seksuele gedrag van ouderen. Het boek staat stil bij de diversiteit aan seksuele ervaringen van de steeds groter wordende bevolkingsgroep senioren en gaat te rade bij voorbeelden uit reclame, literatuur en kunst om de verschuivingen in de beeldvorming en perceptie van hun seksualiteit beter te duiden.

“Play” and People Living With Dementia: A Humanities-Based Inquiry of TimeSlips and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

This paper is a humanities-based inquiry, applying Huizingas framework of homo ludens (man the player) to consider play in the context of two participatory arts programs (TimeSlips and the Alzheimers Poetry Project) for people living with dementia. Play, according to this Dutch historian, is at the heart of human activity and what gives meaning to life. Despite empirical research on play across the life course, play in dementia care is a relatively new idea. In addition, there is a dearth of reports based on humanistic inquiry which has slightly different goals than the growing body of qualitative and quantitative studies of participatory arts interventions. Play is not used to infantilize and trivialize people living with dementia but as a way to explore potential for expression, meaning-making, and relationship-building in later life. The arts programs were conducted at two residential care facilities, Scharwyerveld and De Beyart, in the Netherlands over 10 weeks. Close readings of the transcripts and notes from the programs resulted in three observations: people learned to play again, there is power in playing together, and play often led to expressions of joy. Overall, the notion of play may be a helpful framework for future research into innovative arts-based approaches to dementia care.

Participatory arts programs in residential dementia care: Playing with language differences:

This article examines connections between language, identity, and cultural difference in the context of participatory arts in residential dementia care. Specifically, it looks at how language differences become instruments for the language play that characterizes the participatory arts programs, TimeSlips and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. These are two approaches that are predominantly spoken-word driven. Although people living with dementia experience cognitive decline that affects language, they are linguistic agents capable of participating in ongoing negotiation processes of connection, belonging, and in- and exclusion through language use. The analysis of two ethnographic vignettes, based on extensive fieldwork in the closed wards of two Dutch nursing homes, illustrates how TimeSlips and the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project support them in this agency. The theoretical framework of the analysis consists of literature on the linguistic agency of people living with dementia, the notions of the homo ludens (or man the player) and ludic language, as well as linguistic strategies of belonging in relation to place.

Writing to make ageing new’: Dutch poets’ understandings of late-life creativity

ABSTRACT This article presents the results of a study that examines how older professional writers experience and understand creativity in later life. In psychological, humanities and gerontological approaches to ageing and creativity, this question is still under-explored. The studys data-set consists of transcriptions of lengthy interviews conducted in spring 2015 with five Dutch poets over 65 who have achieved some eminence in the field. By means of interpretative phenomenological analysis, three superordinate and 12 subordinate themes came to the fore that offer an account of the ideas, thoughts and feelings characteristic of the way these writers perceive the later stages in their career. The first superordinate theme, Securing Sustainable Writing Practices, comprises the subordinate themes of maintaining continuity in writing approach; drawing on wealth of experience; emancipating from earlier literary conceptions; and reinventing oneself as artist throughout the years. The second superordinate theme, Negotiating the Literary Field, encompasses the following subordinate themes: challenges regarding finding or keeping a publisher in later life; developing self-acceptance and relativising literary awards; handling continuity of reception, or the way literary work is pigeonholed by critics; and staying visible in the literary scene. The third and final superordinate theme, Writing as Art of Living, refers to: not feeling old(er); writing as a practice of good living; writing as a way to recreate what is lost or unknown; and confronting cognitive decline. Together, these superordinate and subordinate themes diversify ideas of late-life creativity that are based on questionable generalising conceptualisations of the psychology of later life and artistic careers.

Bruggen bouwen met de blues

SamenvattingHet Alzheimer Café is al jaren een begrip in Nederland. Sinds psychogerontoloog Bère Miesen in 1997 met dit concept begon, zijn er door heel het land meer dan 220 Alzheimer Cafés opgericht, naast enkele Alzheimer Theehuizen die specifiek bedoeld zijn voor de Marokkaanse en Turkse gemeenschap. Maar het Alzheimer Café is ook een ‘exportproduct’ geworden. Dat heeft wel voor verschuivingen in de aanpak gezorgd. In de Verenigde Staten bijvoorbeeld ligt het zwaartepunt vooral bij sociale interactie, meestal in de vorm van een kunstzinnige activiteit. Een kijkje bij het Memory Arts Café in New York.