With Many Voices

With Many Voices is a project devoted to people living with dementia and their caregivers, which the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi first launched in 2011. For each exhibition, a series of meetings are organized for families and people living inresidential care homes, offering a pleasurable, stimulating and emotionally uplifting experience for sharing and seeking ways of communicating through the emotions triggered by works of art. The meetings are designed and conducted together by the museum educators of Palazzo Strozzi together with geriatric educators.
The main goals were to make exhibitions accessible to people living with dementia and people who care for them, focusing on each individual’s capability rather than on the deficiencies they have built up, and on the goal of “possible well-being” rather than on an (impossible) recovery of all their functions. The project also focuses on the ability to observe, to feel emotions, to imagine, all capabilities that are maintained for longer than their logical and cognitive counterparts. Other important aim is related to caregivers who are shown a new way of communicating. The project also sets out to prompt a change in society’s perception of this condition through encounters with the public in the exhibition, offering people with Alzheimer’s and their family members new opportunities for social relations and reducing the stigma attached to those experiencing this situation of fragility.
During the COvid-19 pandemic, through the project were activated a number of on-line modalities that allowed connection during the health crisis, an especially difficult moment for families having to cope with the stress of dementia.