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    The Lived Experience: Tunbridge Wells Museum Object Handling Group

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    Alexandra Menezes
    The document discusses a program that brought museum objects to people with dementia through "object handling groups". The Tunbridge Wells Museum staff would bring a suitcase of objects to engage people with dementia and pique their curiosity. Interacting with the objects surprised the staff, as people with dementia would notice things and articulate responses they didn't expect. One man, a retired geography teacher, became verbal again when looking at a crystal in a cut rock, creating full sentences for the first time in a long time. The object handling provided benefits like lifted moods, reduced anxiety, and a sense of achievement from learning.

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    The Lived Experience: Tunbridge Wells Museum Object Handling Group

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Menezes
    29 views2 pages
    The document discusses a program that brought museum objects to people with dementia through "object handling groups". The Tunbridge Wells Museum staff would bring a suitcase of objects to engage people with dementia and pique their curiosity. Interacting with the objects surprised the staff, as people with dementia would notice things and articulate responses they didn't expect. One man, a retired geography teacher, became verbal again when looking at a crystal in a cut rock, creating full sentences for the first time in a long time. The object handling provided benefits like lifted moods, reduced anxiety, and a sense of achievement from learning.

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    The document discusses a program that brought museum objects to people with dementia through "object handling groups". The Tunbridge Wells Museum staff would bring a suitcase of objects to engage people with dementia and pique their curiosity. Interacting with the objects surprised the staff, as people with dementia would notice things and articulate responses they didn't expect. One man, a retired geography teacher, became verbal again when looking at a crystal in a cut rock, creating full sentences for the first time in a long time. The object handling provided benefits like lifted moods, reduced anxiety, and a sense of achievement from learning.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    29 views2 pages

    The Lived Experience: Tunbridge Wells Museum Object Handling Group

    Uploaded by

    Alexandra Menezes
    The document discusses a program that brought museum objects to people with dementia through "object handling groups". The Tunbridge Wells Museum staff would bring a suitcase of objects to engage people with dementia and pique their curiosity. Interacting with the objects surprised the staff, as people with dementia would notice things and articulate responses they didn't expect. One man, a retired geography teacher, became verbal again when looking at a crystal in a cut rock, creating full sentences for the first time in a long time. The object handling provided benefits like lifted moods, reduced anxiety, and a sense of achievement from learning.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    DEMENTIA AND THE ARTS:

    SHARING PRACTICE, DEVELOPING UNDERSTANDING


    AND ENHANCING LIVES

    WEEK 2 How can moments be understood, experienced and measured?

    STEP 2.3 The Lived Experience: Tunbridge Wells Museum Object Handling Group

    TRANSCRIPT

    Professor Paul Camic approached us as supporting people with dementia to see if our
    groups would like to access an art-based therapy and linked us up with the Tunbridge
    Wells Museum. So I was able to provide the link between the two groups, so introducing
    the concept of object handling to people with dementia and supporting the staff of the
    museum to operate the groups to run them with confidence and to approach the subject.
    The museum staff would come out to us with a suitcase full of objects and engage with
    people and pique their curiosity. We certainly saw a lot of things that we weren't
    expecting. People with dementia that we work with constantly surprise us and we
    constantly learn from them.

    And so people would say things. They'd notice things about objects that we wouldn't have
    expected them to be able to articulate. In some people, a very intense emotional
    response was produced. We had one particular service user who was a retired geography
    teacher, and we had a beautiful rock cut open to reveal a crystal, a beautiful piece of
    geology. And he was pretty much nonverbal by the stage, and he just started speaking. He
    started speaking one word at a time to begin with. He just said, "That's beautiful. That's
    really beautiful," and then creating sentences, which was a fantastic breakthrough. It
    really unlocked his verbal skills that had been so impaired for so long. It's all about
    discovery.

    People with dementia are very often encouraged to reminisce, and this goes beyond
    reminiscence. The pressure is off. You don't have to try and remember something. You

    FutureLearn 1
    simply engage in what's in front of you. And it has benefits in a group sense in that, as a
    group, you're discovering and exploring something new together. And it also has
    individual benefits. So it can really unlock feelings and verbal expression in people who
    might otherwise find that quite difficult. There are clear benefits for people with
    dementia experiencing object handling. There are clear changes in mood, lifted mood,
    reduced anxiety, and just a sense of having achieved something, having learned
    something and feeling rewarded by that experience.

    Someone with dementia doesn't stop learning, but they may find it just more difficult to
    remember.

    FutureLearn 2

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