Meetings with complexity : dementia, meaning and participation in art educational situations

• In January 2013, a three-year project, ‘Meetings with Memories’ (in Swedish: Möten med minnen), was launched in Swedish museums with guided tours for dementia-afflicted audiences. The project involved altogether 88 Swedish museums and was headed by the Alzheimer Foundation (Alzheimerfonden). Many Swedish art museums were part of the project, with the purpose that the art educational situations would create participation and dialogue with a group of people usually absent from the museums. Art in particular is regarded as a possible therapeutic rehabilitation for people with neurodegenerative diseases, where dialogue and making of art enhance cognitive abilities and quality of life. The therapeutic promise within art pedagogy is part of the larger context of the art educational situations we have studied. In this chapter, the aim is to explore how these situations are done and how participation can be made and interpreted in relation to the target group, people with dementia. We focus on the participation in terms of the meaning making, dialogical processes of the art educational practice of the project ‘Meeting with Memories'.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Geriatrik (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Geriatrics (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Konstvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Art History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Art Education

Dementia

Participant observations

Neurobiological self

Embodiment

Art History

Konstvetenskap

Art science

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)