Events

Eldercare Speaker Series Presentations

We’re excited to announce the Dementia Action Co-Lab will be featured as part of the Eldercare Foundation’s speaker series this spring at the Yakimovich Centre in Victoria.

On May 28th, Dr. Jae-Yung Kwon and Dr. Mariko Sakamoto will talk about their research looking at better ways forward, improving care for older adults in our hospitals’ emergency room departments. Learn more here.

Then on June 11th, Dr. Sakamoto will share insights from a nationally led project she’s co-leading focused on developing meaningful quality-of-life supports for people from underserved ethnocultural groups in Canada who are living with dementia. Register to attend here.

New Dementia-Inclusive Guidebook for Comox Valley

We’re excited to announce the completion of a beautiful new guidebook and accompanying poster promoting dementia inclusivity in businesses throughout the Comox Valley. Informed by local people with lived experience, the resources were researched and co-designed by Emily Carr University’s Health Design Lab in partnership with Comox Valley Healthcare Foundation and UVic’s CARING Dementia Collaborative.

The project began with the question, “How might we foster a dementia-friendly community in the Comox Valley through education and training for local businesses?”

Dementia Action Co-Lab Launch Event

November 28th, 2025

We’re excited to announce the official launch of the Dementia Action Co-Lab at UVic was a success! On November 28th, a group of people with lived experience, researchers, trainees, and representatives from Island Health and the Alzheimer Society of B.C. came together to collaborate on a grant submission focused on understanding what people living with dementia need from their communities to live well as they move along their dementia journey.

Launch Event, November 28

The hybrid event, held both in-person at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health and online via zoom, drew folks from all over the lower mainland, and from many different communities around Southern Vancouver Island. The room was bursting with a shared passion for advocacy, and a strong sense of possibility.

Research lab staff would like to thank everyone who contributed to this successful event. We look forward to more insightful discussions about fostering dementia-inclusivity more broadly.

IALH Staff at the Dementia Action Co-Lab Launch

This “Co-Lab” session marked the first of what we hope will turn into many more sessions as part of the lab’s commitment to community-based participatory research.

The group explored key questions related to how needs and priorities shift as a person moves through their dementia journey, what the community might need to consider to ensure good quality of life and meaningful connection, and how the lab’s research could best facilitate this.

Call to Mind’s “Becoming a Granddaughter Again” wins Silver at the Signal Awards!

Ashley Sharma’s episode ‘Becoming a Granddaughter Again‘—featuring her nani, Devki—just won Silver at the Signal Awards in the Activism, Public Service & Social Impact category!

Ashley’s story was recorded with her grandmother in their multi-generational home in Abbotsford, BC for the second season of the podcast “Call to Mind: Audio Diaries of Love and Memory Loss.” It tells a story about racism and gaps in the healthcare system, and the urgent need for human-centred and culturally sensitive healthcare supports for people with dementia.

It’s also an emotional story about the messy humanness of loving and caring for someone with advanced memory loss, and how a young woman finds her way back to being a loving granddaughter again when she becomes lost in the role of caregiver.

The podcast is part of a bigger research project led by Mariko Sakamoto, assistant professor of nursing at the University of Victoria. Sakamoto hosts the podcast’s second season of intimate stories recorded by spouses, children and grandchildren journeying alongside a loved one living with dementia.

“This year’s Signal Award winners illuminate how audio is shaping discourse. From investigative work that exposes truth, to personal essays that make the intimate universal, and cultural commentary that reframes how we see the world — this year’s winners remind us why podcasting has become not just relevant, but essential.

This year’s winners represent an extraordinary range of voices, genres, and production styles, underscoring the diversity and creative range that define today’s podcast landscape.

With a growing international cohort of creators and submissions from the U.K., Australia, Canada, Germany, Qatar, and beyond, the Signal Awards Winners reflect not just individual achievements, but the maturation of podcasting itself as a mode of creative expression.”

~Jemma Rose Brown, General Manager of The Signal Awards.