In November 26th, the Library of Ostend organised an E-activity for policymakers and stakeholders.
We invited the City Aldermen, the head of the HR department and heads of other departments of the city of Ostend to listen to our learnings of our I improve project about dementia and informal learning. The CEO of the City Administration also joined our reflection on our learning journey, as well as people from Foton and the coordinator of senior policy in Ostend.
Why is a project about dementia, that started in the city library, so important for the city of Ostend? The number of people with dementia is increasing rapidly in Ostend. This group of people, with a lot of relatively young people, becomes a part of society that we cannot and will not ignore any longer. As a library we wanted to find out how we can create a safe and meaningful place for these people. On our learning journey we got acquainted with very useful changemaking methodology. The result was our dementia project “The Forgotten Orchestra”.
As a library we learned how to welcome, address and communicate with people with dementia and make them feel at home in the library. We are convinced that our experiences and findings can be meaningful to other contexts, departments and working areas.
Due to corona, we had an online session for our E-activity. You can rewatch the session here.
But the work is not yet done. The city of Ostend wants to become more dementia-friendly :
1. The HR department of the city of Ostend is very interested in our project and asked to share our learnings.
The changemaking methodology will be implemented to other client-orientated services. Other departments will learn the methodology that we used for our project.
2. The library is part of a dementia-friendly city. There will be an exhibition in 2022 called “turning heads”. In September 2021, there will be quotes about dementia visible on vinyl on different public places and on private houses in the city. The focus of these actions is change: change your attitude towards people with dementia, change the mentality of the general audiences.
We are satisfied that the I improve project of informal learning and dementia has a lasting impact in the city of Ostend.
Watch the interview about the impact of our project on the local environment (link)