Sound Memories Summer Wildflower Gallery

As the Founder & Director of Sound Memoires Dementia Friendly Radio, I know only too well how difficult the Summer can be for older people who can no longer freely come outdoors. As part of my work I have taken into Care Homes pictures of Wildflowers just growing simply on the roadside and they have given so much joy to people. That is what has inspired me to launch the Summer Wildflower Gallery at Sound Memories Radio.

On our facebook Group Page we have invited our friends to take photographs. Each month, we have a Flower of the Month and we launch with the beautiful Foxgloves that are dancing along the West Wales country lanes, just now.

If you would like to take part and exhibit some of your photographs, feel free to join our group page to find out how.

We are looking for a sponsor for our Wildflower Gallery. We need @ £250.00 to cover the admin costs for the whole Summer. If you feel that this is something you would like to sponsor, then feel free to get in touch. Or, if you would like to make a donation, why not visit our gofundme page.

Have a lovely summery day, friends, really feel it, appreciate the wild flowers on your journey, make a memory that one day, you can return to.

With love

Cheryl

Button Up Your Memories: Dementia Friendly Books

For Christmas, I had 4 commissions for my Heartfelt Books , 2 of which touched me deeply, and have informed a new way of working. 

One client commissioned a Heartfelt book for the funeral of her niece. I found this very touching. I asked her questions and sent the poem back and for with her, until she was happy, using materials in her niece's favourite colours ... and then I was contacted by a young woman who asked if I could make a little book for her Grandmother, to help her with her memory, as her dementia meant that she was starting to become confused.

It just so happens that at the time, I was in R&D, creating a poetry book about the buttons in my late Mother in law's old tin and how each button had belonged to a different member of her family. I showed the book to the client and she asked me to make one for her. 

Only this time, I used buttons from her Grandma's tin and the poem story inside was about her family.

I am now working on a Collection of Heartfelt books to trial with the listeners and peer volunteer storytellers at Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio. www.soundmemoriesradio.com

Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio

As Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio moves to Quiet Space Studio with me this week, there are some exciting things in the pipeline. 

Since March, I have only been well enough to keep the radio station ticking over but now that my mojo is tip toeing her way back (since my hearing aids) then it feels right to step back into the arena.

I have a number of projects that I have pitched for so watch this space and pray. I've got no core funding for this project and depend totally on contracts and good will, mostly mine! But it feels like such important work. 

I particularly want to develop the Environmental Soundscapes which we call Story Sound Maps but are actually Ethnographic Sound Maps as they are tailored to meet the sound backdrop of those living with dementia in our area, and the digital stories are then shared on the radio station for our 500 plus listeners to enjoy. Here's an example from a local farm of 2 very pregnant sows the day before the piglets arrived.

We also want to develop our inter-generational conversations through working in education following the success of our Voices of the Valleys Project earlier this year where I trained children from 7 schools, in the collation of oral histories and making of digital stories with the older community in Rhondda Cynon Taff. Here's an example ... 

           

I will leave you with this thought: Sound is the last memory to leave us. It is an old friend reminding us of who we are.