A Window of Opportunity: Everyday Creativity in Life with Dementia

Whether dementia is framed as a socioeconomic challenge or experienced as an existential situation of despair and hopelessness, the disease is conceived in terms of a narrative of decline, of the loss of cognitive ability and perhaps even human dignity. This project challenges the narrative of loss by exploring and promoting the creative potentials of everyday life as they unfold between people living with dementia, relatives, caregivers and others in the institutional and family-based dementia care. The main hypothesis of the project is that a heightened enactment of everyday creativity in life with dementia entails a positive impact on the well-being of all involved parties.

The aim of the project is to develop action-oriented concepts for use in the institutional and family-based contexts of care, which promote the inclusion of people with dementia as active co-constituents of the lifeworlds they inhabit. The project will develop and implement the “Window of Opportunity” as a reflection tool.

The theoretical and practical work is carried out in close collaboration between the partners in the project: The School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University; The Dementia Care Section, The Municipality of Horsens, and VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research.