First dementia friendly newspaper was distributed within the neighborhood of Amsterdam-South

Henri Snel, researcher on ‘Alzheimer and Architecture’ started a research on a dementia friendly neighborhood with the Odense house, a day care center for people suffering from early dementia (with a strong focus on art creation) and students from the department of inter-architecture, Rietveld Academie.

People with dementia are often disconnected to society and ‘quickly forgotten’; to keep them connected to society we created a newspaper, to keep them connected to their environment. A newspaper specifically for them, for us it was ‘a quest’ how to design it, we did it through clear colored frames, bold words and simple titles lead them through this newspaper. Hopefully memories from the past and today’s topics will stimulate them to conversation and an updated present.

We created a editorial commission with people from the neighborhood, participants of the Odense huis, students of department of inter-architecture of the Rietveld Academie, the for ‘each other week’, the Alzheimer café Amsterdam-South and many more to discuss the topics for this newspaper. Last Tuesday, 28 of January, the newspaper designed by Mees van Rijckevorsel was distributed in the neighborhood and offered to district director Marco Kreuger from the city of Amsterdam.