As a healthcare student and filmmaker, I am proud to be a part of a team of community organizers, artists and researchers dedicated to shifting common-held narratives about mental illness and aging. To me, this project is a practice of bringing into focus what is and what could be and connecting people along the way.
Being a filmmaker, it is always really thrilling and exciting to see how stories unfold before my very own eyes and ears. To be part of this project and to see how people share their experiences and reflections makes me realize how simple and important it is to connect, to have the will to fill up the gaps so we get closer to one another.
I am really looking forward to spending more time being an ethnographer, which allows me to let go and sink into an experience and literally get to sense what's happening, and falling into stories-, that's what I really love about hanging out, it's a different way of understanding by being with others without a lot of words.
Mostly, you will see us hanging around, just listening to understand your experiences. Please contact us if you are a person living with Alzheimer's or other related disorders, a carer of persons living with Alzheimer's and would like to share your experiences with us!
You may see us conducting interviews with our partners, the facilitators of the activities, or participants in activities. You may see us with our cameras at activities or public events. This is to help us capture details on the context and document the changes over the next several years and promote the project. There will be signs up if we are filming and public events and at activities, we will always ask permission.