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Read the full open call in English and French.

Piece of Mind, an arts-based knowledge mobilization project, is looking for researchers studying neurodegenerative disorders and/or dementia to contribute to the project as scientific consultants. Graduate students or postdoctoral fellows are also welcome to apply to be a member of the core project team. This HBHL-funded project is led by post-doctoral fellow Naila Kuhlmann under the co-supervision of Dr. Stefanie Blain-Moraes and Dr. Aliki Thomas in McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy.

To help bridge existing evidence-to-practice gaps, Piece of Mind will create performance pieces that equally integrate the latest scientific knowledge from researchers, lived experience
from Parkinson’s disease (PD) and/or dementia stakeholders and the vast skillset of performing artists. The project's primary goal is to move information across levels of neurodegenerative research and into the public sphere, incorporating the experiences of affected individuals along the way. This will be accomplished through a series of workshops and brainstorming/content creation sessions between researchers, artists and the stakeholder community, culminating in 2 separate performances (one on PD and one on dementia). These will be presented within Montreal in Spring/Summer 2021 and filmed for wider online distribution, along with supplemental materials outlining the creative process, the main scientific findings that were integrated, and interviews with team members. Following its completion, the project will use a knowledge translation approach to evaluate whether the project was successful in connecting researchers across scales, sparking collaborations between disciplines/communities, fostering empathy and effectively engaging the public in neuroscientific research. The project's hope is to facilitate research uptake by the healthcare community and beyond, and present a more holistic, person-centred view of these conditions in doing so.

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