“Storie ad Arte”. BeGo for Alzheimer sufferers and their carers
“Storie ad Arte” is the social and cultural inclusion project for people who suffer from Alzheimer and their carers, consisting in creative storytelling activities, inspired by the BeGo collection. The project sets out to promote and support the participation of fragile people at risk of social exclusion in Museum activities, and to promote new strategies and tools for presenting the museum heritage to elderly people affected by dementia.
One of the objectives of the project is to experiment new communicative approaches between people suffering from dementia and their carers, whether relatives or professionals, with a view to recovering a gratifying relational dimension in a context that is open to dialogue and intent on valorising individuals rather than judging them. For people who suffer from dementia, the possibility to experience culture and to interrelate with the museum heritage is tantamount to reacquiring dignity as an individual and belonging to a normal social and cultural network, which frees them from the state of isolation created by cognitive disabilities and offers fragile people an opportunity to improve their life quality.
Vivere un’esperienza culturale e instaurare connessioni significative con il patrimonio museale significa anche incoraggiare e far conoscere le potenzialità creative delle persone con demenza, restituire a chi è malato la dignità di persona, essere inserito all'interno di una normale rete sociale e culturale per poter uscire dall’isolamento che le patologie cognitivamente invalidanti causano offrendo alle persone fragili e a chi se ne prende cura un'opportunità per migliorare la qualità della vita.
Since 2014, activities for people with Alzheimer and their caregivers are part of our offering of Educational Services.
Experiments have also been implemented in collaboration with the RSA and Daily-Care Centres, thanks to the reproduction of details from Benozzo Gozzili’s works on large panels.
Our activities are conducted by museum educators and geriatric animators with the aim of combining and enhancing the skills and knowledge matured in various professional ambits. Groups are composed of no more than 15 elderly people together with their caregivers (relatives, professional carers, voluntary workers from local associations), for a total of 20/25 people. The sessions are open to both elderly people living in the RSA or attending Daily-Care Centres and to non-institutionalized people living with their families.
The activation of an important network to support and promote the project among the local voluntary organizations assisting elderly and fragile people in various ways, is an important channel for recruiting people from the families in the area.
Since November 2017, to mark the experimentation of new activities with the artist Marco Borgianni, we promoted a cycle of 4 weekly sessions. This project, which involved elderly people in an artistic and creative experience of an unprecedented kind, is being valorised and showcased in an exhibition (from 16 February to 29 April 2018).
In the same way, in 2015 we started to experiment an extension of such experiences in many museums in the Empolese-Valdelsa area. This initial phase enabled us to rethink our activity in the light of a network and a collaboration involving local museums, which may also be seen as the first step towards a collective and shared project.
The results of this experimentation have led to the “Musei per l’Alzheimer” project, involving many museums in the Empolese-Valdelsa area.