Engaging adults with dementia can sometimes be a difficult and frustrating experience; a new storytelling initiative, however, called TimeSlips seeks to “[replace] the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine.” TimeSlips operates under the premise that storytelling can be therapeutic.
Participants in a storytelling session generally sit in a circle, view a photograph, and then create a story revolving around that picture. This according to NPR “gives people who don’t communicate well a chance to communicate.” It allows people with dementia, NPR reports, “a low-stress way to communicate, one that [does] not rely on memories.”
To find more information on the TimeSlips program, visit: http://www.timeslips.org/
For more resources linking memory and the arts check out the Alzheimer's Poetry Project (http://www.alzpoetry.com/) and Music & Memory (http://www.musicandmemory.org/)
I adapted this idea for a group of nursing home residents I visit monthly. Most of them are non-interactive. I copied 10 random pictures of people in various poses and situations out of a photography book. As I handed each resident a picture, I told the group that I was going to come around and help them make up a short story about each picture. It was a huge hit! One woman who had a picture of a king and queen exclaimed, "Well, I'm the queen. I waited on people my whole life," so I introduced her to the group as "Queen Eleanor" and said that she waited on people her whole life and now everyone has to wait on her. The residents were really engaged! Some were smiling, some laughed, one woman stopped yelling and kept pointing at her picture of a girl jumping rope saying that was her--that she did that a lot as a little girl. Afterwards, they clutched their pictures to their chests as if I had given them precious gems. Definitely something I highly recommend and that I'll do again!
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