Festival in a Box dementia friendly showcase – June 2016

On 15 June, I organised a Dementia friendly showcase for the ‘Bloomsbury Festival in a Box’ project at Age UK Camden’s Tavis House.

Every year, the ‘Festival in a Box’ takes the Bloomsbury Festival into the homes of people living alone and with dementia in Bloomsbury and Camden – bringing a ‘cultural meals on wheels’ to some of Bloomsbury’s longest established residents. In 2016, the project has been running primarily as the Bloomsbury Festival’s embedded community outreach programme, although I have also been closely involved with the project and have been conducting research around it.

As part of London Creativity and Wellbeing Week, we invited people to join us for a cup of tea and a chat to find out about the project, meet some of our artists, and enjoy some special Festival in a Box performances.

Vivien Conacher and Bobby Williams performed as part of the event, and I read poetry written by Anthony Hett as part of the first round of Festival in a Box visits in 2014.