The role of music in sustaining resilient and healthy communities – A Nordic perspective. : Promote inter-generational meetings between young people and senior citizens - using internet based music videos

Abstract

Promote inter-generational meetings between young people and senior citizens - using internet based music videos   Online music videos from I-pad, as a mediating element for communication between the youths and the elders, has been studied in a project in Sweden. It is a multi-purpose, arts-based intervention project for young adults interacting with 68 members of the elderly population who have dementia. The project aims to harness the technological sophistication of young adults to offer elderly sufferers of dementia access to music videos which the elderly participant remembers from their youth. The process also includes nurses and family relatives to the elderly. The interactive outcome of the project was analysed with qualitative data. The dementia sufferers were emotionally stimulated, and for the families of the residents, it provides a model and a transitional space within which to connect to their family member with dementia. For the caretakers, it enriches their programme and humanize the heavy work load of caring. For the youth, it helps counter a culture that is too involved in computers by redeveloping experience with non-verbal human interaction based on empathy and emotional and embodied knowledge. On the other hand, the I-pad activity was also experienced from the nurses as a threat to their own role, pushing them away from more meaningful emotional interactions with the resident. The nurses also felt they had no time to do these “meaningful” things because of heavily work load. Non-verbal embodied communication, emotional mind and arts in health theories will be used to discuss the findings.   Keywords:  Dementia, Embodied communication, Inter-generational meetings, Internet-based music, I-pa