The IHEEM-supported ‘1st Dementia Design Conference’, titled ‘Dementia Design – Making a positive difference to those living with dementia’ (HEJ – September 2012), held on 14 September at the University of Salford’s Mary Seacole Building, examined ‘the adequacy and inadequacy of healthcare environments for people with dementia and their carers’.
The conference was organised by the University’s Dementia Design Group – composed of academics from within all its schools. The Group’s co-chair, Natalie Yates-Bolton, explained that the event ‘reflected their aims of ensuring a positive approach to dementia design’, focusing on making a positive difference to living with dementia; promoting multidisciplinary, multi-sector collaboration that involves people with dementia and their carers; facilitating collaboration in research, innovation, and education, in dementia design, and ‘acknowledging the real-world challenges in this area of work’. She said: “Worldwide, the awareness of the importance of dementia-friendly environments is increasing considerably as the population ages. The adequacy of healthcare environments for people with dementia and their carers is thus of particular importance. The conference aimed at exploring, from a multidisciplinary standpoint, the synergies between supportive architecture and nursing practices for those impacted by dementia. The synergy between these two professions goes back to the work of Florence Nightingale, who promoted attention to the built environment as a way of enhancing health and wellbeing. The conference demonstrated the current intention of a much wider range of professionals to collaborate to make a positive difference to the experience of dementia through design.” Keynote speakers included the Rt Hon. Hazel Blears, and representatives from the Design Council, the King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment team, and the Dementia Services Design Centre. The conference was enhanced by the attendance and contribution of people living with dementia and their carers. Several workshops explored dementia-friendly hospital and care home design, the therapeutic virtual environment, ‘getting out and about’, and the role of assistive technology in dementia. The event was sponsored by the Booth Charities and the design company ‘Find Signage’, and supported by IHEEM, DeNDRoN, and Garden Design. Delegates from all over the country attended, and included representatives from dementia charities, the NHS, academics, architects, designers, businesses, and health and social care staff. The International Dementia Design Network was launched, with the aim of ‘supporting collaborative research, innovation, and education, in dementia design’ (www.international-dementiadesign. org). A series of seminars will follow as part of its work. “The conference’s impact was wideranging,” Natalie Yates-Bolton explained. “From a political perspective, Hazel Blears MP, Vice–Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, took away ideas to share with this Group, while, from a more personal standpoint, a delegate living with dementia, Ann Johnson, thanked the organisers for a conference that ‘contributed to making her life worth living’.” The Dementia Design Group at Salford has now begun organising a series of community and academic events, which will start in January 2013, and plans to hold its first international conference next September.
