The Alzheimer Fest arrives in Florence: 150 events in the name of culture and art
It is estimated that older Italians with various forms of dementia are now 1.3 million, nearly 10% of the 14 million over-65s.
In Tuscany, with one of the longest-lived populations (950 thousand elderly people) there are over 85 thousand people suffering from dementia, equal to 8%. Solo in Florence there are 20 thousand cases.
To overcome fear and loneliness that the sick often live and those of them who take it arrive in Florence “Alzheimer’s Festival” a traveling festival started by the homonymous association diato che è born in 2017 in Florence and which in 2021 received recognition from the Presidency of the Republic.
“Renaissance: the art of care” is the title chosen for the Florentine edition that will be an opportunity for meeting and party in the name of culture and art.
The sixth edition will be held in piazza della Santissima Annunziata and in the spaces ofInstitute of the Innocents, carrying well 150 events spread over three days, from 9 to 11 September.
Among the participants, many protagonists of the Tuscan and Italian artistic and cultural panorama: Paolo Hendel, Daniela Morozzi, David Riondino, Virgilio Sieni, the Music School of Fiesole, the Musiquorum, Clet Abraham, Franco Cardini, TerraProject.
For the regional councilor for social policies this event is an original and creative way of putting at the center of the limelight a complex theme that concerns not only the sick but also their families. With this artistic and cultural interpretation, he highlighted, the word Alzheimer’s and dementia is allowed to find social spaces, sharing and communion. In a region like Tuscany, he concluded, where the percentage of elderly people is very high, Alzheimer’s is a real social disease to which it is necessary to work to improve the quality of life of people and to enhance and support those who assist them by involving them in the treatment process and guaranteeing a system of global, unitary, integrated and radical services in the territory.
Michele Farina the president of Aima Firenze (Italian Alzheimer’s Disease Association) explained the philosophy of the festival. “The menu – he said – is easy to say: health and culture, the art of living together. the protagonists will be healthy and less healthy, family members and operators, museums and institutions, doctors and clowns. And many realities of the social fabric, of services, of the cultural panorama not only of Tuscany. We will all come together to discover the other side of Alzheimer’s: because it is not true that there is nothing to be done about dementia. If the community is friendly, aware and supportive, if the services are offered properly, then Alzheimer’s does not cancel life. A sanitary approach is not enough: art helps cure, and the art of cure chases away loneliness, promotes prevention. There can be well-being in sickness, in difficulties. It is valid for every age of innocence, for young and old, for every level of frailty “.