Memory in the artist's focus: Evaluating the reconstruction of broken identities by Alzheimer's and other mild-stage dementias

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the result of an artistic proposal entitled "In the focus of memory", carried out in the subject Artistic Education in contexts of Health and well-being of the Master's Degree in Artistic Education in Social and Cultural Institutions at the Complutense University of Madrid. The artistic proposal was designed to respond to the objective of validating the identity of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other mild dementias, confined to their homes and away from therapeutic routines, during the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Spain. The importance of this analysis is established by the specificity of the preventive isolation context, which requires the proponents to organise the actions in such a way that they respond to a reality that is observed in a delayed manner and on which it intervenes, training family carers in the application of a series of artistic techniques. The results obtained, after the application of the qualitative panel technique adapted by De Keulenaer (2008), show how the artistic language established through the intervention of photographs and other biographical documents stimulates sensory memory, facilitating the validation processes of the person's identity in the present. In conclusion, the artistic proposal implemented has made it possible to safeguard the participants' memories in bundles. Through an approach focused on reminiscence, it has been allowed to get in touch with the emotions associated with the memories, avoiding to a certain extent the lack of memory through the committed action of art.