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The village of Hogeweyk in the Netherlands has been compared to the Truman show. It houses 152 people with dementia and is run by caregivers who maintain a false reality 24 hours a day for residents. Hogeweyk resembles a 1950s village, with caregivers acting as butchers, marketers and fruit and vegetable sellers, allowing residents to "relate to things of their youth". Residents are free to shop, visit the local café and wander around, all within the confines of this "dementia village".
The model has won numerous awards and is presented as a new way of caring for people with dementia, preserving the appearance of a life independent of previous decades – even if it is a little false. And this model of "travel in time" is spreading. Plans are underway to develop the first UK Dementia Village in Canterbury for £ 15 million. This model of time travel is even being adopted by existing nursing homes.
shift
When designers create nursing homes and villages for people with dementia, there is a risk that the way they think about residents and perceive them themselves often does not fit.
Designers of Bingley and Birmingham nursing homes in the UK, influenced by the Village of Dementia model, spent a lot of time and money building 1950s-style "memory lanes" with confectionery and old-fashioned bus stops (where bus never comes). All these elements make use of the common notion of nursing home residents preferring to live in a 1950s sepia-toned landscape.
Placing people with dementia in the past is influenced by the so-called "reminiscence hump" observed between ages 18 and 32, where memories encoded during this period are often easier to remember. recover later in life. But some people living in nursing homes were born in the 1940s and 50s and formed their most memorable memories in the 1960s and 1970s; the decorations of the 1950s are out of date for some residents.
Villages with dementia are just that: villages. They do not correspond to the experiences of people who grew up in more urban or rural environments. These villages are also often built on the outskirts of cities, separating people who could benefit more from the feeling of connection with their local communities.
Then there is the question of social clbad. Hogeweyk has a distinct sense of the middle clbad. But all kinds of people catch dementia and end up in care, not just middle-clbad whites born in the 1930s.
As designers, we are hearing more and more calls to respond to this diversity.
VR and 360⁰ cameras
Our research has taught us that observation of the past can be effective against some symptoms of dementia, but only when it is specific to the person's life. Rather than directing people with dementia to the past, we can exploit their still important abilities of spontaneity and creativity. And their ability to think about their future.
This is not to say that nursing homes and dementia villages can not be great sites for innovation. At the University of Newcastle, we work with people with dementia and their families to create immersive media, such as virtual reality (VR), 360 ° photography, and new methods of combining physical and digital.
With the help of VR and 360 ° cameras, people with dementia and their families took part in custom excursions to capture videos that they could read with the help of a VR helmet. In another study, we created a virtual reality concert for a lady with dementia who had never seen her favorite artist – Shania Twain – perform live.
James Hodge
The use of virtual reality allows people with dementia to remember or search for an experience that places them in the moment, depending on their mood and their wishes.
In another project, we created digital musical instruments for people with advanced dementia and found that, rather than fleeing technology (older people are often seen as technophobes), they adopt it and enjoy.
Designers and caregivers should not be afraid to use the present and the future to innovate in the treatment of dementia. Rather than spending millions of dollars designing facilities to bring people back to care homes on time, it would be better to spend money to fund more aid training, higher wages, and more. new ways to benefit from the experience of people with dementia. For example, this could involve designing care services alongside people with dementia, their loved ones and caregivers, to ensure that their values are represented in the final design.
As attractive as they may seem, villages for people with dementia and nursing homes that use these time travel techniques run several risks. They may become obsolete as the population ages. They may alienate people of different origins. And they risk freezing residents in time, often at a time that they have never lived or that they can actively reject.
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