21st
TimeSlips Launches!
TimeSlips.org is a storytelling tool designed for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, their loved ones, and their caregivers. The app uses improvisational storytelling “to replace the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine.” In 1996, founder Anne Basting began researching the use of creative drama techniques to facilitate communication by people with cognitive challenges. Since that time the TimeSlips project has trained 2000+ facilitators and embedded the method in 30+ facilities/organizations. TimeSlips features:
- Photographs to encourage imagination
- Question prompts
- Invitations for friends to collaborate on a story with you
- Publishing and sharing stories
Green River worked with Basting, Director of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center on Age & Community and Sway Design to develop the TimeSlips online application. Green River provided programming for this custom software application, built in Ruby. We particularly enjoyed the challenge of building collaborative editing functionality to allow geographically separated family members to participate in the story telling process. “It was a great collaborative process” said Basting, “bringing together knowledge of the needs among families and the capacity of the technology, we created an inviting, accessible tool that can really help ease the social isolation that is too common in the dementia experience.”
Users can choose an image or get a random image suggestion.
Question prompts help people if they are not sure where to start their story.
Try it out! TimeSlips.org
jstrothman
