Culture & Hospital

DUCA (Urban Alzheimer's Culture Program) is designed to accompany Alzheimer patients or with other related disorders with a focus on the needs and the evolution of the disease. This program is based on a collaboration between hospital, medical-social and cultural professionals who interact in cultural venues, healthcare settings and at home in case of disability. Various artistic and cultural activities are offered directly at the patients' residence. Their objective is to delay the progression of the disease and to improve the intellectual and psychic autonomy of the patient in a cultural and urban setting. Most of the activities are proposed for the caregiver-assisted couple in order to preserve and reinforce the relationship in a context different from the daily one. There are several workshops from theater, dance, music, pottery, photography proposed for the patients.

Culture & Hospital association and geriatric establishments have been presenting the event “Let's sing at all ages – National Week of Singing and Music with the Elderly” for 19 years already, each May.
Since the pandemic, for the 3rd consecutive year, a hybrid edition is organized with virtual musical events accessible to all. Each year, establishments are called upon to organize a double musical action: one open to the city, in connection with an external cultural structure (music training, conservatory, choirs, etc.); the second, internally, highlighting a musical activity carried out regularly in the establishment (music workshop, choir, etc). Th project has several objectives: to create a new dynamic of meeting and exchange between geriatric establishments and artistic/ cultural partners; to promote the musical activities carried out by cultural managers, facilitators, volunteers and caregivers; to federate geriatric establishments and affirm the role of the elderly person as a creator of links within social life; to raise awareness about the place of music in the care given to the elderly.

The Solidarity Stages project is an invitation for artists ( musicians, bands, orchestras, choirs, everyone singing) to give a little of their time and share their talent with ill and isolated people. In partnership of the offered scene, the artists commit themselves to give an intervention in a hospital. Each band or musical group programmed gives a second performance to sick people in health establishments that cannot travel. This principle makes it possible to propose to the healthcare settings a multidisciplinary programming of quality in a social and united dynamics. The project is a initiative of Culture&Hospital Association created in 2003, with a federative social project attentive to any person in need of care, support and social ties. They bring culture as a unique resource for improving the health and quality of life of people with neuro-evolutionary diseases and depressive disorders as well as to their caregivers. It favors self-expression and reconstruction while being a powerful social bonding enhancer.