Timeline
August 2025 – December 2025
Stores and businesses are an important aspect of a dementia-friendly community when effort is made to adopt dementia-inclusive practices. A dementia-friendly community enables people living with dementia to feel safe, included, and respected. The goal of this project was to nurture a dementia-friendly community in the Comox Valley – a small tight knit community with a large aging population – by providing information and tools about dementia to people who work in the Comox Valley.
Guided by community members living in the Comox Valley who are affected by dementia, and in partnership with researchers from the University of Victoria, we developed a 16-page educational booklet aimed at people who work or own businesses in the Comox Valley. We pulled on existing resources on dementia while contextualizing the information specifically for the Comox Valley community by embedding the stories and experiences of real people who live there.
To co-design the resources, we created a 6-person Dementia-Friendly Partners Group. Everyone in the partners group lives in the Comox Valley and cares for someone living with dementia. We held 4 co-design workshops with the Partners Group, including an initial in-person workshop in the Comox Valley to get to know the team and the community face-to-face. Through collaborative discussions and workshops, the group exchanged stories about the challenges and misconceptions experienced by Comox Valley residents affected by dementia, and they identified key lessons they wanted to share with local business, workplaces and employees.
It was important for this resource to reflect the aesthetics and values of the Comox Valley. Through multiple workshops identifying places of communal and sentimental importance in the region, we co-created a visual language which evoked rural west-coast community life, with appreciation of local natural landscapes.
Multiple online and in person meetings were held, workshopping the wording, imagery, and personal stories shared in the booklet. Each iteration involved Comox residents providing insight into what they felt was most important to share with their community.
The project concluded with the creation of two resources:
These resources have been distributed throughout the Comox Valley community with support from Island Health, the Comox Valley Healthcare Foundation, Comox Valley Community Foundation and the Dementia-Friendly Partners Group. These resources will also be used to support education sessions and workshops offered by the University of Victoria for businesses in the Comox Valley.
In April, a public installation including street banners, infographics on benches and window decals was displayed on the main street in downtown Courtenay, BC as part of a knowledge mobilization event led by the Dementia Action Co-Lab from the University of Victoria.
