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History of Project Magic
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| The concept of Project Magic was developped after David
Copperfield received a letter by an ambitious magician. Judging by
the handwriting, David believed the letter to be written by an elementary
school student. Later he received an article with a picture of the
magician. To his astonishment, he saw that the magician was a young
man in his twenties and bound to a wheelchair. The childish handwriting
was the result of his handicap. |
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It is amazing that this young man has put his handicap aside to become a magician. David Copperfield wants to motivate and help these people. So he started Project Magic in 1982, in cooperation with the occupational therapy department of the Danel Freeman Center for Diagnostic and Rehabilitative Medicine, led by DeJean Julie. It works very simply: the medics, magician and patient work as a team that uses simple magic tricks in therapy. It stimulates the patient to have a magician working with him to controle the techniques and to make the tricks look magical. Since the start in 1982 Project Magic has grown into a worldwide organization with more that 10.000 institutions commited to this project. In 1997 Project Magic started in Belgium, thanks to magician-illusionist Athor (Bart Keutgens). The interest of universities was raised and for the first time, thorough research was done on therapeutic areas. These tests have shown that doing magic can help people with a certain handicap considerably. |
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More information on Project Magic can be found on David Copperfield’s website. |
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