A week, seven days. I asked my grandad the same questions every day for a week, documenting his answers. The main question that I needed answering was ‘What is his favourite colour’ as I know the question to that answer should have been blue as that’s been his favourite colour since he started buying tractors. My findings showed that 5 out of 7 days he would say blue without hesitation. The other two days he would be confused asking why I was giving him these questions.
These anomalies can be to do with the confusion with him just giving me an answer off the top of his head. Taking these findings and applying them to the wax casting. Whilst creating the casts I decided to take them out whilst they were still setting I got my grandad to interact with the waxes creating the deformities that are seen in each individual cast.
Trying to get a man with dementia to do anything is difficult. Trying to get him to work on anything for more than 5 minutes is impossible. My grandad can become stubborn when he gets fed up about doing something. With my questions and small activities that i’ve had him completing, asking him to continue by drawing a tractor becomes boring and he would rather sit down and watch telly.
To persuade him in continuing with the drawing I had to bribe my grandad with cups of teas and biscuits. He would also demand that he was allowed to use his mug as a stencil for circles and the domino box that was on the table as a ruler. I told him that this would be cheating and that he wasn’t allowed to use them but he strained to me and said that it wasn’t cheating and that he was being resourceful and that he would only finish the drawing if he could use what he had found, in the end, I agreed and allowed him to use the found items.
