Lorraine Robson

Changing Ideas Award
These hand-polished cast and ceramic maracas serve as a metaphor for the "lost function" inherent in the dementia diagnosis journey. Traditionally instruments of rhythm, joy, and communal creativity, these objects have been altered; they are now silent, fragile, and encased in Perspex.
In the UK, the often necessary transition from home to residential care is frequently a journey from personhood to "inventory." I interrogate the systemic failure of privately funded care providers who prioritise profit over the human spirit, reflecting how the "one size-fits-all" approach to those with Dementia diagnosis.
This piece is also tribute to the minimum-wage frontline workers, the carers, holding together a fractured system where they themselves are trapped for long exhausting, often emotionally draining shifts with limited resources.
When care is commodified, it is reduced to a checklist of basic physical requirements designed to satisfy a Care Inspectorate audit, leaving the profound mental and emotional needs of the resident unmeasured and significantly unmet.
The "confusing background noise" often with the TVs pretence of entertainment in a care home replaces genuine human interaction save sporadic, infrequent “activities”.
Encased in a Perspex tomb—symbolising both the clinical isolation of the institution and the "social death" of the individual , surrounded by noise but devoid of meaningful connections - the blood red-glazed interiors suggest a hidden, pulsing humanity that remains even when the ability to communicate has been stripped away.
This piece is a call for a not-for-profit model of care that honours the fundamental human right to be included in society with “The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Mental Health" (Article 12 of the ICESCR) rather than stored under the guise of safety in isolation.