Time and place: Okt. 30, 2020 1:15 PM–2:30 PM, Zoom Webinar

Abstract

I will present my ethnographic fieldwork on a creative project of the Dutch healthcare-clowning foundation VisiteClowns. Fieldwork on the project took place in a day-activity centre for people living with dementia in the Netherlands. Presenting selected field notes, I will reflect on the conceptual frame that helps transform our understanding of dementia. Moving beyond stories of dementia as individual human loss this project helps to see playful imagination, embodied skill and creative possibility.

Bio

Ruud Hendriks, Department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. Ruud has worked as a care worker in mental health care, before his studies in Health sciences and training in Science and Technology Studies. His academic work focuses on art- and technology-based interventions in mental health care. He has widely published on clowning in dementia care and on autistic spectrum disorders. For his ethnographic work on elder-clowning, he was trained as a ‘miMakkus’ clown himself. Ruudwas project-leader and co-researcher in the project ‘Beyond autonomy and language’ that aimed to develop a disability studies’ perspective on dementia. His current interest is in the moral role things play in dementia care (project: ‘Make-Believe Matters’, that reflects on the ethics of technologies of make-believe in person-centred dementia care).

Panelists 

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with three researchers from the Artful Dementia Research Lab:

• Ann Therese Lotherington: Professor in social sciences researching how to promote interaction and integration in society without standardizing ways of living.
• Rikke Gürgens Gjærum: Professor in applied theater, developing innovative research designs in health & cultural settings related to investigating the meaning of aesthetic experiences in people’s everyday life. 
• Lilli Mittner: Postdoc at ADLab, researching how situated art interventions help us to understand and simultaneously change the world.

Contact

Please contact Lilli Mittner if you have any questions.

Organizer

Artful Dementia Research Lab

Recording