10 year Jubilee Meeting Center at Ciepla in Wroclaw, Poland

The 10th anniversary of the Meeting Centre on Ciepła Street was celebrated in a very diverse manner. An exhibition of artistic works by CS participants was prepared especially for this occasion. On 30 October, a beautiful Big Band concert dedicated to CS seniors was held in the concert hall of the Music Academy. As part of the ‘Music Without Borders’ project, the Music Academy also published songbooks with CDs for people with dementia created by music therapist, Katarzyna Turek, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Meeting Centre at Ciepła in Poland. Both the songbooks and the concert recording will be sent to Meeting Centres around the world.

On 6 November (11-14h) the 10-year anniversary of the first Meeting Center for people with dementia and their carers, at Ciepla in Wroclaw (Poland) was celebrated during a special conference at the Congress centre of Politechnika Wroclawska. After an introduction by the director of the Welfare organisation, Andrzej Mańkowski, the conference was opened by the president of the international MeetingDem Network and founder of the Meeting Centers Support Programme in the Netherlands, Prof. dr Rose-Marie Dröes, who emphasized the importance of needs-based, people-centred care and support in dementia (see video). She expressed the wish that further dissemination of the evidence-based Meeting Centres Support Programme in Poland will be stimulated by the Polish national dementia strategy in the coming decade.

Prof. dr Joanna Rymaszewska in her talk looked back at ten-year practice and experience with the Meeting Center at Ciepla together with the leaders and therapists (Katarzyna Bulińska, Dorota Szcześniak, Albert Bielatowicz, Szymon Chrobak, Agnieszka Zygmont and others). She discussed the importance and power of mental resilience and how to build it, with the Meeting Center at Ciepła being the best example of this.

Hereafter the public was offered a beautiful concert by Dorota Kuziela, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist.

In the afternoon several presentations were provided on psychosocial activities that are applied in the meeting centre, also in collaboration with other groups in and outside the centre, with attention for a healthy mind in a healthy body, and activities like yoga, mindfulness and Tai chi. Attention was also provided to the importance of music making and singing.

In summary, it was a very inspiring and solemn anniversary celebration, with hopes for the creation of further meeting centres.

2025: Meeting Centres Scotland conference 2025

2025: Global Observatory of Long Term Care

Below you find the recording of the webinar on Dementia Meeting Centers – development, evaluation en dissemination

2023: IPA Conference Lisbon

Below you find the lecture of Rose-Marie Dröes “the importance and value of psychosocial care in dementia in historical perspective, with reflection and commentary”

Keynote-Droes-IPA-1-7-2023-v1.0refs-Final-1 Download

2019: JNPD Symposium Brussels

The JPND /JPco-fuND Symposium marked the culmination of 51 JPND supported research projects on neurodegenerative disease research as leading researchers on Neurodegenerative Disease (ND) research gather and exchange best practices and new ideas.

Below you find a video with an overview of the JPND symposium 2019

Below an interview with prof Rose-Marie Dröes, coordinator of the MEETINGDEM project and Chair of the MEETINGDEM Network

2018: BestCare4Dem international Congress

At 7-8 June the international congress BestCare4Dem; sharing effective community-based support for people with dementia took place in the DeLaMar Theatre in Amsterdam. The congress was a great success with 280 participants from 13 countries, including professionals, scientists, policy makers and people with dementia and carers.

Photos of this event, made by Anja Robertus, can be found here:

For a nice video impression of the day, please watch below: