House of Memories

House of Memories

One day dementia training programme and Meet Me at the Museum

Museum of Liverpool

20th and 21st June 2019

Day one

I’ve known about the House of Memories programme for some time now and the success they’ve had with their dementia training for healthcare professionals and family carers. It’s quite pioneering that a museum are delivering dementia awareness training but this has evolved from their experience of using museum objects for outreach with older people in the community and the positive impact they see the use of objects has on the individual.

The course was held in the Museum of Liverpool. Chris Kerfoot who works with the museum learning team was the facilitator for the day. It was a small group of just 7 participants for the course. Chris outlined the programme and how it began, 14,000 carers have participated since it began in 2012. Promotes the need for a value of compassion, respect and dignity in care to achieve better health and wellbeing. Uses museum objects and digital technology to enable a greater understanding of a person’s life story.

We were invited to explore a memory box together which contained a range of ordinary, everyday objects and photographs related to 20th century social and local history. We discussed the power of objects to get people remembering; triggering memories which have perhaps lain dormant for a long time. The museum service loans suitcases of objects with different themes to community groups and care homes.

We then watched some videos (available on YouTube) which were acted real stories. Nancy’s story explored the early onset of dementia and everyone’s dementia is different. Points of interest included - denial, mis-diagnosis, fear of losing self. Robert and Peter’s story explored missing the person that was, guilt of family member to not be able to care, sense of loss, impact on wider family, multiple challenges and giving people a purpose.

We then explored some facts and figures about what is dementia, 850,000 diagnosed with dementia in the UK, likely many more undiagnosed. Further videos explored the ideas of - meeting the person with dementia in their own reality, ok to feel anger and fear, challenges to quality of life but with support can be possible, reminiscence helps to improve brain function and find out more about the person, creating a memory tool such as a tree or box enables person with dementia to re-connect with their past.

After lunch we had a walk around the museum with members of staff Steven and Sarah who took us through how they conduct a Memory Walk with older visitors to the museum. The walk is used is a tool to evoke memories calling upon all the senses to explore the past using objects as triggers and to find connections with people’s own lives and experiences.

We then had some time to explore the App created by the House of Memories. The App can be accessed on a tablet or ipad and allows the user to upload images and music of their own or use the museum’s collection of images to create a personal memory tree relevant to to the user.

We watched a final video ‘Museums are Houses for Memories’ and took some time to reflect as a group on the day.

Day two

‘Meet me at the Museum’ happens once a month at Liverpool Museums various venues. Today the session is at the Museum of Liverpool and the theme is transport. There were two museum hosts who helped to facilitate the session and 3 participants. The hosts shared some items with the group from a memory box and we talked very informally about what the objects were and if they had any meaning to us. There were some very interesting photographs, pamphlets, objects and books all relating to transportation in and around Liverpool. Everything seemed to have some relevance to someone in the group and evoked memories of the docks, ferry travel, learning to drive, tunnels, buses and bikes. It was a chance to get to know each other better and tea and biscuits were provided as well.

We then took part in two different quizzes - one was a multiple choice quiz with questions relating to general travel and transport and the other a photo quiz where we had to look at pictures of different modes of transport and name them. It was really good fun discussing possible answers. Afterwards we watched a video on You Tube of Liverpool docks and the opening of the first Mersey tunnel. The participants all had their own personal memories of this which they happily shared. It was a very relaxed and informal session which all the participants seemed to enjoy. They said they looked forward to the sessions each month and talked about where the next one was and what the theme would be. These sessions are a great way to engage local older people and welcome them into the museum, utilising museum objects in a very simple way to spark memories and aid cognition. This is such valuable and rewarding service.