A showcase of a design jacket collection inspired by dementia
How can we articulate the experience of dementia as a culture? OK Dementia Jacket Collection is about CARE & CUROSITY with the aim to develop dialogues to co-create Dementia Culture. Enable Foundation, a design research collective & education charity, explores the concept of magic and performance to articulate medical knowledge as well as social care service tactics. Thus, we created design artefacts and environments to help the public (especially those people who are totally unaware of dementia) to truly feel and even be in the experience of a Person with Dementia (PwD). We called this design method, ‘Dementia Things.’ The concept further unpacks the speculative design question: What if the subject experiencing dementia was not a person but rather an everyday object or the city around us. We invite citizens to associate dementia with everyday objects and include the needs and wants of PwD but to translate their experiential struggles in a meaningful way allowing the people around them to truly understand and act from a place of empathy. OK Dementia Jacket Collection launched at the Dutch Design Week in 2019, 5 customised jackets were created to demonstrate different attitudes we identified from our design journey with dementia care since 2015. After showcasing in Hong Kong (2021) and London’s Alzheimer’s Dementia & Care Show 2023, the collection is traveling to the north and landed at ZAKKA (www.zakkasine.com), a miscellaneous goods shop in Malmo since 2017. OK Dementia Jacket Collection was developed and designed by Enable Foundation (London & Hong Kong) with Pascal Anson (London), find out more: https://youtu.be/QkviEediCy4?si=F78Hv4e9WifZIPQc
