Abstract
Art connects us with life. It shows us things, it tells stories. It seeks meaning and makes us think. Moreover, it triggers memories. This contribution from our art education department documents the pilot program of a workshop series at Dom Museum Wien, developed especially for people with dementia. In it, the theme of the ‘center’ is addressed on a variety of levels. The pilot project, which took place between October 2017 and January 2018, with clients from a day center run by the Viennese association Caritas Socialis, was subsequently included as a permanent fixture in Dom Museum Wien’s program. The workshop series aims to trigger memories from the participants’ lives and bring them back again, focusing on the person in order to help both their own self perception and how society perceives them. In involving all the senses, the goal was to help them experience and perceive the here and now. The program facilitates cultural participation in the present and the experience of a changing cityscape. Along with talks about historical and contemporary art, the creative activities at the museum’s own studio, Dom Atelier, help participants to express their personalities. The pilot project was used to gather experience for art-educational processes and asked the following questions: How suitable are the gallery spaces and exhibits at Dom Museum Wien for working with people living with dementia? How do they receive the program and how do they perceive it?
