Dementia Action Week takes place from 16-22 May 2022 and is Alzheimer’s Society’s longest-running awareness campaign. The aim is to encourage people to ‘act on dementia’, which is something we at Made By Mortals feel really passionate about. In January, we came together with Together Dementia Support for a couple of development sessions with people living with dementia and their carers to create a new episode of our immersive podcast, ‘Hidden’.
The episode tells the love story of two characters, Dennis and Ruby, who are husband and wife. Ruby lives with dementia and Dennis also cares for her. During the creative workshops the group talked about the challenges they face and this lived experience formed our story.
We have subsequently delivered workshops to other people living with dementia, their carers, services and venues and gained further insight on the situations Dennis and Ruby face in the episode.
This additional audio, along with the episode itself will form part of a training package so services and venues can consider what they can do to make places more dementia-friendly. The full resource will be available on our website, free of charge, and will hopefully support others in a similar situation to Dennis and Ruby. We also hope that places and organisations will be able to use it to understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the two characters and reach out to more people living with a dementia diagnosis.
‘Diagnosis’ is the main theme of this year’s Dementia Action Week, and as you’ll hear from the episode of Hidden, it can change a lot of things for people. However, 91% of people affected by dementia say it’s better to know (https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-involved/dementia-action-week). The Alzheimer’s Society would encourage those who might be living with undiagnosed dementia to come to them for guidance and support and feel empowered to take the next step.
If you’d like to know more about living with dementia and the support available, please contact Alzehimers Society or Together Dementia Support
If you would like further information on how to get involved with Made by Mortals please get in touch.