Dementia Positive

Events & new publications

picture of John Zeisel and John Killick deep in conversation & congress banner with picture of Bournemouth




In conversation
John has been invited to take part in a conversation about memory and dementia, organised by the Wellcome Trust in London on 9th October 2008.

This will take place in the presence of an audience. He will be talking to John Zeisel, founder of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care.

Look out for more information about this event on the Wellcome Trust website.








Dementia Congress 2008
This year's Congress is taking place in Bournemouth on 28-30th October. We are very involved in presenting, running workshops and chairing sessions. Find out more by clicking here.

cover of 'Dementia Diary' New book!
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book of poems made from the words of people with dementia, together with some writings and poems from John about things he has learned from the work.

The cover of Dementia Diary
features a collage (entitled Safe Haven ) by Ray Maloney, a man who took up collage as an artform after he developed dementia. John and staff at Hawker Publications are very grateful to Ray and his wife Jan for their permission to use this image.

The book is available from Hawker Publications.

various pictuers from Oz 08 trip Reports of past events

We had a great visit to Australia in June!

The first picture shows us behind the banner for Hammond Care's 7th Biennual dementia conference held in Sydney's Convention Centre. We opened the event with a presentation giving perspectives from people with dementia. We also took part in discussions and ran workshops. It was an extremely stimulating experience, and a review of the event will be written by us and published in the Journal of Dementia Care.

It was also a busy social time as we caught up with old friends. This picture shows Margaret Muir who we first met at a conference in Nottingham last year. She is doing a PhD about creative work with people who have dementia. The other person is John Zeisel, from Heathstone in the US. We are hopeful that the coming months will bring more opportunities to work with John in the UK, and we'll share any news about that with you.

You may already know that in 2004-5 we undertook some work in Australia exploring communication with people with very advanced dementia (see Communication Projects for further information). We made some very good friends there, and it was great to see a lot of them again.

Along with Richard Fleming (Director of the Dementia Services Development Centre and conference supremo), these show (clockwise from top) Pat Murdoch, Michelle Andrew, Cheryl Atkins and Nina Green, who all work for the organisation.



This picture features the Brisbane skyline and riverwalk. We gave a lecture at Queenland University of Technology, ran a day's workshop for practitioners, and also managed to fit in some good street jazz and the AMAZING Sydney Nolan art exhibition.









Next we had an all-too-brief but wonderful trip to the Red Centre of Australia to view the remarkable rock formations Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta. This is something we have always wanted to do.






Then it was back to Sydney to stay with very dear friends, Marie and Andrew Thompson, and enjoy great company, conversation and food. We also shared our appreciation of Australian art and the cartoons of Michael Leunig. Many thanks to them for their delightful hospitality.



Finally we stopped off in Singapore to visit Changi Village where Kate's parents and eldest two siblings lived before she was born.



And after all that... it was back to work!

John and Robert Dilts




John becomes a model!

For two days in February John was privileged to be the subject of a ‘modelling’ course at the Northern School of Neuro Linguistic Programming and Associated Studies in Whalley, Lancashire.

Robert Dilts, who is the world’s leading expert on modelling, used DVD clips of John communicating with people with advanced dementia, and had extensive dialogues with him in order to draw out some of the essentials of his approach. He then embodied these in a model, and devised an experiential exercise for teaching these to the participants of the course.

John found it humbling and affirming to see his words and actions assembled in a form that was both meaningful and communicable to others.

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US trip November 2007

Our first stop was Kansas City for a reunion and one-day event with our good friends and mother-and-daughter team, Mary Sharp and Rachel Kail, also known as the Edcon Group (see Meet new people!). We simply had the best time!


Mary and Rachel together with Mary's husband, Bill, an essential member of the Edcon team who put an enormous amount of work preparing for the event, were our hosts. They gave us a fantastic welcome and wonderful hospitality. The day before the workshop they took us sightseeing in Kansas City (the Missouri one!), and fed us at Bryant's barbecue place (listed in '1000 Places To See Before You Die').











There we met Dan Kahler (aka DK and/or 'the Silver Fox') who is a great friend of the family and who introduced the event the following day. DK is a delightful and fascinating man - teacher, poet and baseball coach. He is interested in everything!

The event itself was a high point in our careers (and we think the participants enjoyed it too!). We were priviledged to have a session with renowned music therapist 'Bongo Barry' Bernstein, who had all 60 of us standing in a circle shaking, drumming, composing rhythms for our names and putting it all together in a spine tinglingly memorable experience. Wonderful stuff. It made us want to find out a lot more about drumming for people with dementia.

It was our pleasure also to meet Deborah Shouse and Ron Zoglin of The Creativity Connection. We now have a copy of Deborah's new book Love in the Land of Dementia.
See Reading, listening and viewing for a review.




Jolene Brackley is the author of this new book Creating Moments of Joy
, and joyfully we met her and came home with a gift of her book! Again watch out for more information on our Reading, listening and viewing page.





We could not have had a more fun, stimulating and affirming time in KC with Mary, Rachel, Bill and the rest of their family and friends. We want to say a heartfelt THANK YOU! and WHEN CAN WE COME BACK?!


Once we left KC, we were off to Ann Arbor to get ready for taking part in the Edna Gates conference near Detroit. Our hosts were Myrna and Newell Miller, who we were very happy to see again. They took great care of us during our last visit to Ann Arbor, and did so again!

The Edna Gates conference is an annual gathering of people interested in supporting people with dementia. This year the event was attended by about 800 people. It is mounted by Anne Robinson and her team at Optimal Life Designs in Dementia Care. We were last here to speak at the 2003 conference.

It was lovely to see Steve Sabat again. It is always a treat to hear him speak and then to have some time to catch up and have a laugh. We wish he wasn't so far away (from Auld Reekie!).

We met for the first time Richard Taylor, a psychologist with a diagnosis of dementia who has just published his first book Alzheimer's from the Inside Out.
(John has written a review of this which will appear in the Journal of Dementia Care.) Richard is a fascinating and provocative man and we could happily have spent much more time with him wrestling with issues of mutual interest!

Along with us in this picture is Pam Schweitzer OBE, an old friend from the UK. Pam is best known for her drama work with older people in the organisation she founded, Age Exchange. She energises, delights and inspires people wherever she goes!

Then Kate returned to the UK and John went on to visit his son in New York City. Whilst he was there he met John Zeisel, President of the Hearthstone Alzheimer Care Ltd, and visited one of the residences. Hearthstone is practising some enlightened approaches to people with dementia through the arts, and John has written an article about the organisation for the Journal of Dementia Care. Keep an eye on Arts news for more about John Z and Hearthstone!

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