Reconceptualising dementia friendly communities

This Knowledgeshare piece takes a critical look at the concept of dementia-friendly communities by examining how that concept, which aims to build a better place for people with dementia to live, works to conceal and overlook the social, cultural, political, and economic realities of many marginalised people’s lived experiences. Drawing on knowledge from feminist social cultural theories I want to highlight some of the undisclosed subjectivities that are hidden in representations of people living with Alzheimer’s and dementia and to this end suggest a more political approach that seeks to expose discrimination as a more effective way towards finding a dementia-friendly community vision. I want to start by talking through what I initially imagined as a dementia-friendly community. From there, I want to discuss how I then critiqued that vision, and through that critique how I was able to reconceptualise the vision so that it is more radical, more progressive, and more person-centred (Manley et al. 2008).