European Mobility Week runs every year from 16 to 22 September. It is about cycle lanes, public transport, car-free streets. It is a week about how we get around.
For some people that question has stopped existing. A person who is bedbound in a palliative care unit, or in a care home, does not get around. Their world is the size of the room, and the view is the ceiling and the window — when there is a window.
It is not giving back what was lost
Virtual reality gives nobody their mobility back. It is not motor rehabilitation, and saying otherwise would mislead whoever is deciding whether to use it.
What it does is smaller: for twenty minutes, it changes what is in front of the person's eyes. They stay in the same bed, with the same team beside them. The room simply stops being the only thing there is.
A horizon, for someone who only sees the ceiling
For someone who spends the day lying down, what is missing is often not a specific place — it is distance. Their gaze always lands on the ceiling, the wall, the curtain.
So for these people the team often chooses scenarios with a horizon: the sea in the distance, an open field, a square with people passing far off. The point is not to be spectacular. It is being able to look far away again, and for the person to decide, with the team, where.
The movement that shows up on its own
There is a detail teams notice. Someone who has not moved in days turns their head to follow what they are seeing. Sometimes they bring their hands together, in front of an altar.
We do not call this therapy, and we do not promise it. It is the small amount of movement a meaningful place invites, and it is the clinical team who decides whether that movement is welcome or whether the session should stay stiller.
What the week could include
A week about mobility could, just once, remember the people who no longer go out. Not to sell them a solution — to recognise that the question "where can this person go?" still makes sense, even when the answer is a room.