Stories of Dementia: Care, Connection, and Community

This event is co-organised by the LRF Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR), the Centre for Environment and Ageing Well (ENgAGE) and Dementia Singapore.

Join us for a special film screening and panel discussion exploring the lived experiences of dementia in Singapore. Featuring three short films by local filmmakers, the event offers a moving and human perspective on dementia beyond medical diagnosis. We invite you to challenge misconceptions, deepen your understanding of caregiving, and reflect on how empathy, community support and inclusive environments can improve the lives of people living with dementia and their caregivers.

About the panellists

1. Anita A. Thomas is a Singapore-based author. Her work explores the everyday forces that shape our lives and the stories we carry. Drawing on her background in photography, film, and music, she moves across creative disciplines, bringing different forms and perspectives to the complexity of relationships, identity, love, joy, loss, and moments of reckoning—the stories she seeks to tell and preserve. CODA: His Final Solo is her fourth book.
2. Gavin Lim is a Singapore-based filmmaker, showrunner and founder of AI Film Lab 2030, a research studio for human-in-the-loop AI filmmaking built on a simple principle: human mastery first, AI as acceleration. He brings 30 years of experience across advertising, TV drama and branded content, showrunning Fighting Spiders, The Best I Could and Diamond Dogs, and formerly Executive Creative Director at mm2 Entertainment. His social impact work includes Dementia Stories, a vérité series on families living with dementia for Dementia Singapore and Lien Foundation. He has taught filmmaking at DigiPen Singapore since 2012 and runs AI filmmaking workshops and hackathons across Southeast Asia.
3. Bernard Lim is Dementia Singapore's Director of Advocacy and Communications. He joined the organisation in December 2022, bringing over 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry. Bernard is instrumental in expanding the organisation's efforts to raise awareness of dementia, which included spearheading Dementia Singapore’s groundbreaking advocacy and fundraising concerts featuring top international acts like Michael Learns To Rock in 2023 and Richard Marx in 2024.
4. Prof Leonard Lee is Director and Lloyd’s Register Foundation Professor of Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR), and Professor of Marketing at NUS Business School, National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS in 2014, he was an Associate Professor of Marketing at Columbia Business School where he spent the first eight years of his academic career. He received a BSc in Computer and Information Sciences from NUS, a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a PhD in Management (Marketing) from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Leonard’s research investigates how emotional and cognitive factors influence consumer judgments and decision making, with applications in public policy domains such as healthcare and sustainable transportation. Additionally, he is interested in understanding shopping motivations and behavior in real-world environments.
5. Prof Emi Kiyota is an Associate Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. She is an environmental gerontologist, consultant and organizational culture change specialist, with more than 20 years of experience in designing and implementing person-centered care practice in long-term care facilities and hospitals globally. Her contributions include a vast array of national and international initiatives focused on quality improvement in the built environment for long-term care and ageing services, especially for older persons in low-middle income countries.