DeMensplek karavaan
Come and meet us
The coffee pot bubbles. DeMensplek Karavaan is a mobile cart where conversations, stories, and connections arise. Open, honest, and equal. It is an open wandering space with more questions than answers. Here, we encourage people to pause and reflect on caring for themselves and others, now and in the future. Because sometimes there is too little genuine attention for each other, too little contact with one another. The conversations are recorded, sometimes in the form of a podcast, sometimes as drawings, and other times as letters or travel journals.
A brief history of DeMensplek
In 2018, caregivers and healthcare professionals worked on the Kiemproject: a research project on art and care from the Image in Context research group at Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen. Together with the Kiemproject group, the Makers Collective created a book in 2021 using design-based research. During these meetings, they wrote letters together, explored the rules and emotional world of care, and built a model for a world for and with dementia. The Makers Collective consists of podcast maker Femke Seele, graphic designer Asa Scholma, and photographer Jedidja Smalbil. Since 2023, DeMensplek Karavaan sets out to collect travel stories.
