Ingrid Gjessing Linhave calls for changes for people with dementia and their families

Posted On: May 16, 2023

The NRK Demenskoret series won the audience award at this year’s Gullruten Awards. The program was nominated along with Bordtenniskamatereten from VGTV, Julian Rassat from Kompani Lauritzen: Tropp 1 and wrestler Morten Thoresen from Hodet i klemme.

It was Ingrid Gjessing Linhave who was the program manager for the project where singers with dementia worked together for a concert to a packed house at Le Chat Noir itself.

– In the TV show “Dementia Choir” you get to know some of the nicest and toughest people I have ever met, promised Ingrid Gjessing Linhave in an NRK press release before the start of the issue.

The program took off and had ripple effects: after the premiere of NRK’s documentary series “The Dementia Choir” on NRK, there was one report after another of people wanting to copy the choir into their local environment. Ingrid Gjessing Linhave herself never doubted that she wanted to do this.

– I only needed to hear one sentence about the project before shouting “yes!” When I saw the BBC version I knew after a second that it would be the biggest and best thing of my professional life, she previously told the weekly Here Now.

Aftenposten says that the grandmother and the grandfather his was affected by the disease, and today his father lives with dementia.

– We were concerned that some would criticize the fact of asking sick people in vulnerable situations to go on television. But we were completely wrong – the response has been absolutely fantastic, and the choir has been received with nothing but love, according to Aftenposten, Ingrid Gjessing Linhave recently told see and hear.

This was not the case. On Saturday, Ingrid Gjessing Linhave and choir singer Jan Runar Eliassen could receive the audience award during the Golden Route, on behalf of the entire choir.

– It’s so important that we talk about this disease, and we have to put in place a completely different regime than what currently exists, said Ingrid Gjessing Linhave, according to The online newspaper shortly after the awards ceremony.

She hopes the series has made dealing with the disease easier, both for those affected and their loved ones.

At the same time, it has a very clear political message:

– We have to put in place a completely different plan around this disease. Now, that’s kind of how you have to figure things out for yourself, and it can’t be like that. It’s a huge effort to work with this disease because there’s so much understaffing and there’s so little funding. Now I’ve gotten very political, but that’s how it happened, she says.