Life History

I went to the life history training today. Again, as with all training I go to, it was not what I expected and yet it was still really interesting.

The course firstly focused on how important it is to use life history within care homes of any kind, though more specifically in those that care for people that live with dementia. There were lots of small exercises to get us thinking about what memories we have, how we use those memories and what we keep in order to help us remember.

Truly knowing the people that you are working with and caring for, knowing their histories, their families, relationships and jobs, as well as good and bad experiences helps you to understand them more. It makes sense of the things they might be saying or doing and equips you with the tools to make them more comfortable.

'The goal of person centered care is to promote well-being.'

Again the name Tom Kitwood came up so I'm going to have to get myself a book!

As with the dementia awareness training course I heard a lot of scary facts about care homes that makes me want to do a Gerry Robinson. Although I do feel better that I now have new skills and ideas to take into homes when we are doing our activities.

If I write in yellow performance

On Monday I did a performance that I've been meaning to for a couple of months and finally got the opportunity. It is based on a piece I have posted about before 'If I write in yellow III' which illustrates the a desperate attempt to communicate with a loved one through writing in yellow ink on the inside of a window.


The performance took place at in the AirSpace Gallery window and will only be up for a few days. I was persuaded to film the performance although I'm not sure I'll do anything with it.


I'm really pleased with how the piece turned out and I enjoyed that the exercise forced me to pay more attention to my surroundings.

\"home\" talk at AirSpace

Last weekend I went to a talk at AirSpace Gallery in Stoke on Trent. It was a talk about the exhibition that has just ended \"home\" and included the curator Rachel Marsden, two artists from the show Chinmoyi Patel and Kashif Nadim Chaudry and David Schischka-Thomas the Senior Curator at the New Art Exchange.

The talk was mostly focused on the idea of 'home' and what that is. Though the most interesting part of the discussion for me was about Chinmoyi Patel's art work. Her piece for the exhibition 'B.P. & S.P.' is a pair of head phones hanging on an orange wall. When you listen to the audio you hear, as she described it, her grandmother telling stories that she used to tell Chinmoyi as a child. Whilst these stories are told Chinmoyi speaks about the memories that these stories evoke.

'B.P. & S.P. specifically examines how memories are formed during childhood then remembered as adults. It is about retaining a certain feeling or emotion, rather than the explicit details and particulars. Patel is fascinated to see how one's mind then tries to fill in these blanks - reality merges with fantasy to form a rich and multi-layered narrative.'

This reminds me of work that I was creating about a year ago, where I was discussing the labyrinth of memories that builds up in our mind through our lifetime, one memory triggering a seemingly unrelated one causing a chain of memories. It also hints at the idea that two people can remember the same event in such a way that it sounds like two completely different events.

Developing Arts for Health

I am currently studying the Developing Arts for Health course at Staffordshire University, it's not quite what I was expecting but it is proving to be quite interesting.

The course has helped me to better understand the project that we are doing at the dementia care home in Stoke on Trent and is making me a lot more passionate about the project. I'm using it as a case study for the research I'm doing as part of the course.

I've also had a look at the Dementia Studies courses that Stirling and Bradford Universities do, these look really interesting, especially this module at Stirling:

'Working with people with dementia: This module investigates different approaches used when working with people with dementia, focusing strongly on the role of communication. The roles of life story work and the arts, as well as design and technology in dementia care, are explored.'

I'll be doing some Life History training in work next week, so it will be interesting to see how that goes.

Yellow Wallpaper

With this poster I am attempting to disguise the changes that have been made to the city of Stoke on Trent with wallpaper, a technique used in dementia care homes to prevent residents from entering rooms they are not meant to. By covering doors with wallpaper the doors become almost invisible to the residents, this is a proven technique to avoid unnecessary confusion. This use of disguising is similarly seen with the use of hoarding in city centres, the knocking down and rebuilding of city spaces is masked from the public with huge boards for our own protection.

Yellow is the last colour in the spectrum that a dementia sufferer loses, by using yellow images from the City’s past I am offering a visual memory of a time that many dementia sufferers may still remember, an alternative view to the now constantly changing city that would perhaps confuse those that only remember the times gone by. Alzheimer’s is a regressive disease that takes you back in time through your life, slowly removing the people and places that you know.