5 Tips on How to Create Museum Programs for the Elderly

Today is World Alzheimer's Day and 2 years ago (September 2014) me and my team (some lecturers and students from the Department of Archaeology Universitas Indonesia) developed a pilot project of a museum program for the elderly, especially for people with Dementia Alzheimer's, at the National Museum of Indonesia. We use ancient inscriptions to challenge their brain and memory (read this post for more detail story about the program in Indonesian language: Museum. Prasasti dan Alzheimer's Awareness Month).

Before developing the program, I studied and read a lot of resources from the website of Meet Me @ MoMA and the National Museum of Liverpool's House of Memories program. Meet Me @ MoMA is an art therapy for the Dementia Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Whilst House of Memories is a program of the National Museum Liverpool UK to help the elderly people and the UK's society dealing with Alzheimer's disease. Their program varied from training for professionals and family caregiver, to hosting event for grandparents and grandchildren as well as lending memory suitcases. Last week I also read an article on a Singaporean magazine about the program of the Peranakan Museum Singapore for their senior audience called 'Culture, Kopi and Kueh. Specially-Curated Museum Experiences for the Elderly'.

Whether your museum is a history museum, art museum, army museum, or even a natural history museum, I believe you could design your own program for the elderly. Based on the three museums' programs that I read, and off-course from my own experience, therefore I could give you 5 tips on how to create museum programs for the elderly.

1. Do Preliminary Research

Googling what other museums' do regarding their programs with the elderly or senior visitors with disabilities. Find out about the elderly's characters, needs and expectations. If you want to develop special programs for the elderly with disabilities, learn more about the issues you want to handle. For example, read about the Alzheimer's disease and how to interact with the patients and caregivers.

2. Examine your Museum's Collections to Gather Ideas and Inspirations

Look at your museum's collections. What kind of objects or theme that could be use for the program? Then, try to develop your ideas and choose some objects.

As Indonesian archaeologists my team use ancient inscriptions to develop our program. The ancient scripts of the ancient inscriptions were transformed into brain challenge game. We also explore the inscriptions' theme and content as ideas for discussions about the life story of the participants and bridging their past with the present. MoMA off course use their art collections to do art therapy and to foster participants' creativity. Whilst the Peranakan Museum and the National Museum Liverpool use their collections of everyday objects to recall past memories. The National Museum Liverpool even develop themes such as Jews, Army, Irish, etc for their Memory Suitcases.

3. Collaborate with Other Institutions

Do not run your program yourself! Try to collaborate with other institutions which expertise is on health care or on senior citizen.

We collaborated with one of Universitas Indonesia's research center named Center for Ageing Study, an NGO called Alzheimer's Indonesia, and off course with the National Museum of Indonesia. Later, we also collaborate with senior clubs and nursing homes.

4. Prepare your Museum Building and Staffs

After your decided how will you run your program then you have to choose its perfect route for a museum tour or book a perfect room to run the program. Make sure that the room or the route you choose is wheelchair friendly. So does your museum's toilet. Is it save enough for an elderly to use? Make sure your museum has first aid kit and your staff know what to do when emergency occur.

Most importantly, train your staff before running the program. Let them know how to interact with and handle an upset senior visitor. Especially when you develop program for people with Dementia Alzheimer's or people with visual impairment or with mental health issues. Prepare to tackle any barriers such as physical barriers, language barriers or knowledge barriers. For example, when we run our program, we need to get help from Chinese Literature students on our last session because there was a senior club coming and most of their members only speak Mandarin!

5. Start Small!

This is the advise I took from MoMA's booklet and I am grateful I obeyed it. Starting with a small number of participants allow your staffs to adjust with the reality they will face during the program's duration. Remember to set limit of the participant number. Put quality first rather than quantity.

For example, the Peranakan Museum with their 'Culture, Kopi and Kueh' program is designed only for 30 participants from a nursing home for a 12 weeks program duration.

So, I hope you're now ready to develop your own museum program for the elderly. Good luck!

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