Darnall Dementia Group

During the summer the BBC ‘Flower Pot Gang’ took on several challenges to re-vitalise unused land by creating community gardens.  Woodland View was the first one worked on by Anneka Rice, Joe Swift , Phil Tufnell and the local volunteers support group.

In September our Wednesday Group made an afternoon visit to the garden to see how much it had changed. It now has a summer house, a vegetable patch, tall flowers which are easy to reach and aromatic herbs.  A safe cushioned path leads to the ‘beach area’ where there are large pebbles, a boat shaped seat and a sound post.  From this you can hear seagulls, waves on the shore and ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’.

Our group were really impressed by being able to get up close to everything in the garden and use all their senses.  Well four of them, sight, sound, smell and touch but we had to go indoors to get our taste buds going with the hot drinks and chocolate biscuits.

Volunteers from Cardiff, who presents Lost Cord, come to Darnal Dementia Group Centre (DDGC) to entertain people attending the group who are still living in the community. The attenders seemed to have enjoyed all the songs which were being sang, they also sang along most of the songs and joined in dancing with the support from the students and volunteers.

Observing the attenders, singing along, I realised that volunteers from ‘ Lost Chord’ had an understanding of the therapeutic value of live music and that makes a real difference to how they approach the members of the group. They appeared to involving the all the attenders in the activity and they performed very well. The ‘Lost Cord’ had some few questions for the attenders about the names of the original singers the songs which they sang, most of the attenders managed to remember the names and shouted the right names. I personally thought it was a challenge for the attenders, but it was amazing some of the attenders could recall and remembered the songs and the singers. This was supported by Oliver Sacks (2007) that “Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory, it brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can”.

I have learned that music can affect all of us, calm us, animate us, comfort us, thrill us, or serve to organize and synchronize us at where ever we are, it was powerful and have great therapeutic potential for attenders who live with dementia. I have seen how music can also open and stimulate minds of everyone especially attenders.

Priviledge S Thulambo (MH student nurse)