Patterns of Perception in Parkinson’s Team wins Parkinson’s UK Excellence Network Award

On Wednesday 22nd November 2023, the Patterns of Perception in Parkinson’s (PoP-PD) project was awarded the Sharing Learning and Education Award at the Parkinson’s UK Excellence Network Awards.

Since 2015, these awards have celebrated outstanding individuals, teams and services committed to provide the best support to people with Parkinson’s and their loved ones and carers. The Sharing Learning and Education category was recently introduced to recognise efforts focused on sharing knowledge through course creation, cascading learning across multiple teams or organisations, or bringing people together to address a certain issue. Each award category was judged in two stages (abstract and e-poster/video submissions), by a panel consisting of professionals from different disciplines involved in Parkinson’s care, people with Parkinson’s and care partners, and charity representatives.

Funded by a Wellcome Research Enrichment Grant, the PoP-PD project was a collaboration between Dr Rimona Weil and her team, the Department of Imaging Neuroscience’s Public Engagement Team, artists Anne Marr and Ru O’Connell at Central Saint Martins, Parkinson’s UK and people living with Parkinson’s.

In a series of creative workshops lead by Anne and Ru, the team worked with people with Parkinson’s and their loved ones to explore different experiences of Parkinson’s dementia and open up conversations around the topic. Insights gained from these workshops served as the starting point for a co-development phase during which the team worked together with healthcare professionals and people living with Parkinson’s to co-develop accessible resources on the topic.

As a result of this collaboration, two new booklets were co-created to support dialogue and awareness of Parkinson’s dementia, and improve care and support. The booklets have been adopted by Parkinson’s UK as their official information about thinking and memory changes in Parkinson’s and are freely available on their website and as a print version.

• Thinking and memory changes in Parkinson’s. Designed for people living with Parkinson’s and their families, this booklet provides information and support about Parkinson’s dementia.
• A toolkit for detecting and managing Parkinson’s dementia. Designed for healthcare professionals, this booklet provides practical information on the diagnosis and management of Parkinson’s dementia and dispels the idea that there is nothing that can be done about Parkinson’s dementia.

Upon receiving the award, Dr Rimona Weil said:

“I’m so thrilled that the UCL team have won this award! It is such wonderful recognition for the project, and I am so glad that the resources that we co-developed are being made widely available so that people with Parkinson’s and their families will be able to benefit from them.

I am grateful to our brilliant collaborators: Anne Marr and Ru O’Connell, who are both artists, to Parkinson’s UK for supporting the project and for the award, to the experts in Parkinson’s around the UK who advised on the information resources, and most of all to the people with Parkinson’s and their families who took part so enthusiastically.”

Congratulations to the team!

Read more about the awards here.