The fourth and final scheduled secondment to Luxembourg took place during May. The Luxembourg secondments have often been about taking stock, writing and planning. This meeting followed on in that vein. During an extended fortnight, 13 people participated, including five colleagues from Alzheimer Europe (Ana, Dianne, Cindy, Chris and Owen). Two people from the group, Vjera Holthoff and Rosa Almeida, gave presentations to public meetings organised by the Info-Zenter Demenz (Luxembourg). Both were well attended and well received. One major task was completing the MinD Dementia Design Guidelines, relevant for a designer readership and anyone intending to hold co-production workshops.
Alongside this, the meetings were used to draft a set of policy recommendations. Owen Miller, Alzheimer Europe’s Policy Officer joined the meeting, during this section of the programme, to discuss writing policy guidelines. These are still being circulated within the project team, for comment and later consultation. The intended audiences are policymakers, educators, designers, design regulators and voluntary organisations concerned with older people’s issues and dementia.
Half of the group were working on publication of the phase 1 data collection and on more recent data from the evaluation of the Good Life Kit. There was a presentation by Vjera Holthoff and Rosa Almeida about the baseline findings from interviews with people with dementia. The four themes identified from the data were quite positive; for example, about feeling empowered and reporting how people adapted to life after a diagnosis of dementia.
Preparations for the international MinD conference (19-20 September 2019, in Dresden, Germany) are also in progress. The full programme is now available and includes three keynote speakers (design, health professions and lived experience speaker), as well as a variety of papers, design proposals and workshop sessions, delivered by a wide range of international presenters. The MinD project is grateful to hosts at the University of Luxembourg and Alzheimer Europe. They were particularly impressed with the excellent facilities for working in, as well as the catering and commented on how beautiful and green Luxembourg is, in springtime.