Colleagues from Dementia Alliance International (DAI) participated in our first STRiDE team meeting and Theory of Change workshop earlier this year. DAI is a partner in the project, and is a “collaboration of like-minded individuals diagnosed with dementia providing a unified voice of strength, advocacy, and support in the fight for individual autonomy for people with dementia”.

It was great to meet Eileen Taylor and her husband Dubghlas Taylor who represented DAI in London. Eileen and Dubgh presented on DAI and their work and spoke to us of the importance of ensuring people living with dementia are involved in research on dementia. They ran an excellent exercise on the last day of the meeting to give everyone a glimpse of what it is like to live with dementia in a virtual experience which we all found extremely useful.

Eileen’s report of the meeting is available on DAI’s website. We’re very pleased that Eileen and Dubgh travelled the thirty-three hours to get to the meeting and definitely agree that “Spending four intense days in a closed room with thirty odd people and eating and working together allowed us to bond with these folk and form close relationships”. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with DAI and colleagues across the STRiDE team!