Veronica (Vron) is passionate about supporting YODyssey – the art of living well with young onset dementia. Her husband Kevin exhibited in 2023 and his artwork Pilbara Sunrise – Wildflowers was nominated for the People’s Choice Award. Vron observed firsthand the rich experience YODyssey provided to Kev. He remained engaged in many ways, zoom meetings while planning, speaking with Vron at the opening and closing events and guiding family and friends through the gallery many times. Kev had lived with young onset dementia (YOD) for 7 years and began creating art as a way of expressing his emotions in 2019, as the disease progressed. YODyssey allowed Kev to be meaningfully engaged through his passion of creating and proudly exhibiting his art in the last few months of his life. Kev’s lived experience with both YOD and the positive outcomes he experienced from participating in YODyssey flowed through his networks and family, friends, support workers all either visited the exhibition, watched events on-line from across Australia and other parts of the world and bought prints of his art. All these forms of engagement were an opportunity for people to learn about YOD and appreciate the individual’s ability to live well with this disease. Kevin exemplified living well with YOD.
Vron qualified from Curtin University in 1995 with a BASc Library and Information Science. She has gained extensive experience over more than 30 years in community development in regional, remote and metropolitan local government. This experience enabled Vron to partner Kev as he lived with YOD to ensure that together they lived the best quality life possible while they could.
Over Vron’s career she has worked across a range of disciplines and developed many skills – staff & project management and coordination across libraries, community and cultural development, stakeholder engagement, aged care services, disability access and inclusion, youth services, community events, cultural events and festivals, facility management, theatre and cinema management, grant application and management. Construction of a remote skate park, redevelopment of a pioneer cemetery and sourcing funding as a member of a lead team to establish a major remote music festival.
Vron’s experience in community and cultural development is based on the contemporary approach of asset-based community development (ABCD) A strengths based, capacity building foundation, which supports co-design of projects with community working collaboratively and inclusively. A solutions focused approach aimed at sustainability. Vron is passionate about the benefits of this way of implementing community development and has an IAP2 (International Association of Public Participation) qualification as a community engagement practitioner which is founded on the ABCD approach.
