David Walsh, founder of the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), has rejected praise for giving back to his Tasmanian hometown by choosing to set up Australia’s most experimental and popular gallery there. “People keep saying, ‘It’s so great that you did this in the place where you were born’,” he said in 2016. “But I couldn’t give a fuck about where I was born.”

That assertion seems ever more unlikely given the latest surprising move by the so-called “museum of sex and death”: Mona is in talks with Glenview, a provider of aged care homes and services.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Walsh, founder of Mona. Photograph: Rémi Chauvin/MONA

The two organisations are in discussions about Australia’s first “dementia village”, sited just outside the Tasmanian capital Hobart. Everything about the design of the village, Korongee, will be dementia-friendly. the 12 or so homes will be built on cul-de-sacs to keep the feel of local streets, and the businesses – including a cinema, supermarket and beauty salon – will be staffed by 350 people with dementia training.

The pressures of an ageing and ailing population are already keenly felt in Tasmania, the “silver state” with the highest median age of any in Australia (at 42, it’s four years above the national average). With nearly one in five residents of Hobart aged 65 or older, Korongee is the kind of venture that’s likely to fill a need. Glenview has received international interest ahead of its scheduled 2019 opening, but priority for the 96 spots will be given to locals.

Mona is consulting on the village’s design, and there are plans for it to host an artist in residence. The museum’s co-CEO, Mark Wilsdon, says it is in talks with Glenview over exactly how the collaboration will work. “We support progressive development of our local area and believe that Korongee is a fantastic initiative that could be of great benefit to the community,” he says.

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Collaborating with Mona makes perfect sense to Lucy O’Flaherty, the chief executive of Glenview. “Glenview designs residential care – not villages like this – with cafes and performance spaces,” she says. “Mona knows how to do things differently, so we need to borrow their thinking.”

The village will be located on a derelict plot bought by the Glenview board several years ago in Glenorchy, a working-class suburb about 7km north of Hobart, where Walsh grew up. After making his fortune from a gambling system he developed, Walsh established Mona in 2011 in the suburb of Berriedale, a few kilometres north.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest “Mona knows how to do things differently, so we need to borrow their thinking” ... Hobart’s Mona gallery. Photograph: Jesse Hunniford

“He had a vision for what an art museum could be,” says James Vickers, a Glenview board member and the director of the University of Tasmania’s Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre. “What we are trying to achieve with Korongee is something that will be really successful, different and cutting-edge globally.”

Dementia is now the second leading cause of death in Australia, where it affects more than 340,000 people. Without a medical breakthrough, this number is expected to increase to more than 900,000 by 2050, forcing aged care service providers to adapt.



I realised we needed to go from being a generalist provider to looking at a more niche service that specialised in dementia support Lucy O’Flaherty, Glenview

Almost 65% of Glenview’s clients who live in community home care in Hobart have dementia or similar conditions, as do more than 75% of those living in a residential facility. Yet Glenview’s services and residences aren’t designed to accommodate their conditions.



It is a similar story in residential homes around the world. “I realised we needed to go from being a generalist provider to looking at a more niche service that specialised in dementia support,” says O’Flaherty. “It was an ‘aha’ moment.”

O’Flaherty embarked on a global fact-finding mission, visiting residential and aged care homes around the world to see which were best serving people with dementia and their families. Her search took her to Hogeweyk, a gated village near Amsterdam that’s home entirely to people living with dementia. Residents have been found to live longer and take fewer medications.

But Korongee will not be a replica of Hogeweyk; O’Flaherty says their team is already working on a different model, informed by the lessons that Hogeweyk has learned since it opened in 2009.



“They built Hogeweyk in a gated setting. They said to me, ‘If we’re going to build from scratch [again], we need to make sure the village is connected to the community,’ so from day one we have consulted with businesses like Mona.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Korongee will not be a copy of Hogeweyk; the Glenview team are working on a model informed by the experiences of Dutch facility. Photograph: Anita Edridge/De Hogeweyk

Vickers argues that Walsh purposely built the museum in Hobart’s northern suburbs to give a cultural and economic boost to the area. He hopes Korongee could be similarly transformative.

“We could have built it in a more affluent catchment area where there would be people with large amounts of money,” Vickers says. “But I also grew up in the northern suburbs, and not a lot of people from Glenorchy would end up going to university – they end up in trades and services, and they deserve access to good and affordable aged care in their final years.”

We need more planning like Korongee for a state ageing more rapidly than the rest of the country Lisa Denny, demographer

Construction on the village has already begun. Applicants will be matched with housemates who share similar cultures, interests and backgrounds, using a survey developed by the University of Tasmania. Staff will also be screened for similar values.



Korongee is expected to cost $25m and is being jointly funded by Glenview, the industry superannuation fund Hesta, the social financing organisation Social Ventures Australia and the commonwealth government. O’Flaherty says economic modelling shows that “it will cost no more than any average residential facility in Australia” for concessional residents on a pension.

Tasmania’s ageing challenge is unique, says Lisa Denny, a demographer and a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Social Change, because as well as its existing residents living longer, the state also attracts many older people. Retirees often choose it for its bucolic setting, while younger people leave after finishing school to further their education or find work.

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“We need more planning like Korongee for a state ageing more rapidly than the rest of the country,” she says. “I think its model and the intent behind it is also really important as it shows a shift in thinking about ageing.”

Society can sometimes devalue its elderly, as well as those who help care for them in often low-paid and low-skilled roles, Denny says. “Korongee presents an opportunity to reduce that negativity around moving into your last stage of life.”

These negative stereotypes have sometimes seen Hogeweyk be compared to the 1998 film The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey’s character is unaware his entire reality is staged. O’Flaherty can’t stand the comparison; Korongee aims to help Hobart’s community understand “there is nothing to be frightened about dementia”, she says.

“What we are creating is real life.”

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