I am involved in a joint bid with Riding Lights Theatre Company to use storytelling, theatre and digital coding to create an app to help families affected by dementia. To promote our bid we created this video to tell the story.
The film features two people who are affected by dementia. One of them, Paul, is the artistic director of Riding Lights Theatre Company. His father is in the advanced stages of Altzeimer’s Disease.
If we are successful in our bid for funding we’ll be working with young people to develop an app that will both explore and capture the stories that will help families engage with dementia suffers who are close to them.
The line in the film that sums up the ambition of the project is “Make a present out of the past.” A lot has been developed to help sufferers but there’s little to help younger members of the family to engage with the stories from the past their relative is living in. They need a virtual time machine. By gathering photos, stories, objects and professional tips the family will populate the app to present valuable insights into to how to deal with the confusion.
