Using Internet based arts to promote inter-generational meetings between young people and senior citizens: The Playmäkers project in Sweden

This article studies the application of a multi-purpose, arts-based intervention for young adults interacting with members of the elderly population who have dementia. The project studied uses online cultural products as a mediating element for communication between the youths and the elders. The project aims to harness the technological sophistication of young adults, here called Playmäkers (PM), to offer elderly sufferers of dementia access to music, movies and visual arts, which the elderly participant remembers from their youth. This process includes the nurses and family as additional participants and culminates in a group presentation of the arts. This article, using a qualitative case study method, aims to explore the phenomenological impact of such a programme on the residents, nurses, youths and residents’ families in two residential wards with 68 patients. The theoretical frame of analysis includes non-verbal embodied communication, emotional mind, arts in health and psychosocial interventions for youth. Implications for applying this programme are derived from the data and discussed.