Museum helps unlock forgotten past for city dementia sufferers

The Streetlife Museum is one of the first in the country to be used as a mental health resource as part of a national study, Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today, or "Remcare".

A total of 69 couples from Hull, from husbands and wives to mothers and daughters, have taken part in the project, which health professionals have declared a major success.

The results will be considered alongside those from other schemes in Wales, Manchester, London and Bradford.

As well as attending costumed performances at the museum, participants have handled objects from memory boxes containing nostalgic items such as old school uniforms and fashions from the 1950s and 60s.

There has been particular emphasis on using materials linked to positive experiences in a subject's life and sometimes re-enacting them.

This has ranged from a woman who wore her actual wedding dress to revisit her wedding day, with a facilitator acting as the priest, to stirring the memories of a gardener by growing a plant.

Kevin Delaney, community education officer at Hull Museums, said: "We were planting seeds and they took them home with them. By taking care of that plant and watching it grow, every time they went to the plant they remembered something.

"The groups sessions have been a very effective way of bringing people together to talk, have fun and share their memories of the past.

"Sometimes we give them photographs and sometimes they don't remember anything at all. It's a new way of using museums. We are one of the few if not the only one to be working with the NHS."

Prof Esme Moniz-Cook, from Humber NHS Foundation Trust, said the results had been remarkable and had helped some people rediscover each other.

She said: "Until now people thought if you had dementia there's no point trying because nothing can be done; even the drugs only work for some people and for a short time.

"Our work has begun to show that people tend to retain pleasurable memories for longer and as you get older that becomes more important for you, we tend to sift out the not so nice things.

"We devised a 12-session course where people and their families come together and we take them through their life course, celebrating and reinforcing pleasurable memories.

"Carers get stressed and what we are already seeing is carers not getting stressed and families beginning to discover they have still got a relationship with each other.

"They don't then have the fear they are going to create problems for each other and end up in residential care. People get great enjoyment being with each other. People whose families thought they had lost their memory and couldn't speak can now educate other people. It's a huge change."

Other sessions have been carried out at the Hull Memory Clinic, in Coltman Street, which will reopen on Monday after refurbishment.

Although the course is funded until March, Prof Moniz-Cook said she hoped to be able to continue using the museum.

"It's been hugely successful to see people carrying on as normal people despite living with what is a significant dementia. My hope is despite all the cuts the museums will help us to continue with that. It takes away the stigma of dementia."

People who have taken part in the course will attend a celebration event at the museum on Friday, from 10.30am to 3.30pm.

Sarah Howard, senior education officer at Hull Museums, said: "The project has exceeded our expectations and we are pleased that older people have enjoyed the sessions and increased their wellbeing."