Third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation TENOR 2017

The third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation seeks to focus on a set of specific research issues associated with Music Notation that were elaborated at the first two editions of TENOR in Paris and Cambridge. The theme of the conference is vocal music, whereas the pre-conference workshops focus on innovative technological approaches to music notation

Planning Dementia-Inclusive Suburban Neighbourhoods

Globally, the population is ageing at a rapid rate, and with that comes the prevalence of dementia. Dementia is an umbrella term to describe a progressive set of symptoms impacting cognition that will affect 115.4 million people worldwide in 2050. In Canada, an estimated two-thirds of the 402,000 people living with dementia (PLWD) live in community, as opposed to congregate living settings (Alzheimer’s Society of Canada, 2010). PLWD are likely to experience a ‘shrinking world’ effect (Duggan, Blackman, Martyr, & Van Schaik, 2008; Shoval et al., 2011), making it essential to investigate supportive features in public space near their homes. These features can enable the positive outcomes associated with continued access to one’s neighbourhood, such as maintaining daily activities, improved physical and mental health, independence, and a sense of dignity (Burton & Mitchell, 2006; O’Connor et al., 2007). Most older Canadians have expressed the desire to age-in-place, and PLWD deserve to access this option and their neighbourhood, just like any other citizen (Fainstein, 2010; Swaffer, 2014). However, there is a paucity of research on the impact of the built environment on PLWD, with the majority of studies being based in Europe, and no research on North American suburban neighbourhoods. Existing studies are critiqued for a lack of attention to the relational experiences of place, and lack of focus on planning processes. Despite this lack of evidence, policies continue to be put forward, such as ‘age-friendly cities’ and the newer ‘dementia-friendly cities’. In response, this dissertation explored how PLWD experience their local suburban neighbourhoods and what planning practitioners can do to support them. The research then focused on three broad objectives: 1) to investigate everyday outdoor practices of PLWD and how they are shaped by their socio-spatial relationships; 2) to identify barriers and supports to PLWD’s mobility; and, 3) to investigate the accessibility of the planning process for PLWD. Using a socio-spatial relational approach, and applying a critical disability lens to Fainstein’s (2010) ‘Just City’ to form a framework for conducting planning research with PLWD, a mixed-methods case study was employed. Participants included seven (7) PLWD from suburban areas in Waterloo Region who were engaged using several methods: introductory and multiple go-along interviews, GPS tracking, travel diaries, experience sampling methods, as well as a field experiment using participant observation and a post-experience interview. The findings are described in three separate manuscripts focusing on each of the objectives. The first manuscript highlights the socio-spatial relational complexities associated with outdoor practices as a PLWD. It was found that PLWD care for themselves in place over time (including the past, present and future); that they care for close others and build interdependencies in place; and encounter with un/familiar others in public spaces is a form of support. This also speaks to the importance of understanding PLWD as complex individuals, disrupting their consistent portrayal in media and academia as dependent (Swaffer, 2014). The second manuscript focuses on what planning practitioners can do to support PLWD, by identifying recommendations to support mobility through land-use, urban design, and wayfinding, as informed by socio-spatial understandings. Finally, the third manuscript found that the open house, a public engagement tool, could be made accessible to PLWD with a few modifications, and considers the implications for using this to make further claims to citizenship for PLWD. This dissertation makes several theoretical, methodological, and substantive contributions to planning scholarship and practice. Overall, this research provides planning practitioners in suburban areas with empirical evidence conducted in a context similar to their own. This could serve as a starting point upon which to begin incorporating dementia-inclusive recommendations in terms of land-use and design, as well as how to alter the planning process itself. Ultimately, the goal must be to change how planning professionals view PWLD, and to work collaboratively with PLWD to build more accessible, inclusive neighbourhoods

Reconceptualising relationships in the dementia context: Imagining the caring process as fertile ground for friendship between persons living with dementia and paid care partners

Increasing concerns about the task-oriented, disease focused, and impersonal culture of Long Term Care (LTC) have led to calls for the adoption of relational caring, advocating for relationships to be at the centre of all caring. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent outbreaks in LTC homes have emphasized the downfalls of the current culture of care, highlighting the need for a reimagining of the LTC system. Relational caring has the potential to rehumanize, destigmatize, and value and honour both residents with dementia and Personal Support Workers (PSWs) working in LTC homes. While existing literature on relational caring emphasizes the importance of building authentic relationships with one another, friendship remains an under-explored concept in caring contexts, especially between residents and paid care partners. Further, experiences of friendship between persons with dementia and PSWs continue to be limited by professional boundaries, misconceptions about dementia, as well as rigid, traditional notions of what friendship is. Guided by relational cultural theory and an arts-based methodology, I collaborated with residents with dementia and PSWs living and working in an LTC home to interrogate and challenge how friendship was conceptualized in the LTC setting, prior to COVID-19. Using collaborative arts, we collectively explored understandings of and barriers to friendship in caring relationships. Through Voice-Centered Relational analysis, which captures the complexity of participants’ relational stories, several patterns emerged in this data that provide a deeper understanding of how friendship is experienced in the home, and what matters most to participants in these friendships. Participants in this study identified nuanced ways in which friendship is impeded in the home and insight into how friendship might be better supported. On the other hand, participants shared several stories of friendship and spoke of three good feelings that emerged in these relationships: feeling like more than just a task, feeling remembered, and feeling loved. This research further informs calls for relational caring and how this culture change may be facilitated in the LTC context, as well as informing new understandings of friendship between residents and paid care partners. This study also supports the use of arts-based research methodologies to conduct critical, social-justice oriented research in accessible, nuanced, and enjoyable ways. Finally, this research can contribute to a re-imagining of LTC settings as we reshape our systems after COVID-19, a future of LTC where relationships and friendship are prioritized for all persons living and working in LTC homes

Social simulation for socio-ecological systems: An agent architecture for simulations of policy effects

Socio-ecological systems (SES) are complex system in which human society is deeply inter-twined with the natural world. Many of our most difficult contemporary problems arise in SES: overfishing, deforestation, damaging tourism, habitat destruction caused by urban and industrial developments, and, of course, climate change. The complexity of SES means that evidence-based policy isn’t always the best approach because the issues that arise in SES don’t typically have a single universally recognized solution. Computational models are one of the most useful tools for policy makers, with agent-based modeling (ABM) standing out as particularly well suited to studying policy effects in SES. However, ABM still struggles with a dearth of realistic social and decision models, which is particularly troublesome. if ABM is to be included in the policy design process for governing systems in which the human component is crucial to the functioning and behavior of the system. In such models, agents need to have a decision process that can operate with social norms and values, at least. Taken together, values and social norms form a particularly stable and consistent framework for the decision making processes of an agent, encompassing both motivations and preferred means of pursuing said motivations. Policy, as another kind of norm, fits in this framework as either supporting/reinforcing (when it promotes the values of an agent or works together with the social norms of an agent) or antagonistic/conflicting (when it goes against the values of an agent or conflicts with and the social norms of an agent). In this work, we present our agent architecture, built to account for human decision making in contexts where norms meet policy, while also remaining lightweight enough to be usable in ABM. As such, it provides explicit representations of the cognitive elements involved, and realistically replicates the normative deliberation process, while remaining scalable. We also present a modular implementation of the architecture, and a visual model builder that leverages the modularity of the implementation to allow for fast agent and simulation setup. Finally, we demonstrate the use of the architecture by simulating a number of scenarios derived from a real-world instance of fishing policy and its effects. The scenarios cover different assumptions about the reasoning and motivations of the agents (profit seeking goal-oriented, normative goal-oriented, value driven self-interested, value-driven community-oriented) and their response to the same policy being introduced during times of abundance or scarcity of resource