Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today: Nurturing relationships through the arts  

Schweitzer P (2024) Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today: Nurturing relationships through the arts. Journal of Dementia Care 32(6)37-39.

Pam Schweitzer describes a typical RYCT session in which trained volunteers welcome and support eight couples to explore key memories through the arts, a process that helps to put their current challenging situations into the context of a lifetime, build up self-confidence and the sense of being valued members of the group

Imagine a large light room set out with twenty chairs in a circle. On each seat are placed images for people to look at on the theme of the day, which in this case, is ‘Starting Work and Working Lives’. Someone is unpacking a suitcase full of memorabilia connected with that theme and laying it out on a central table for people to look at on arrival. Someone is drawing on a flip-chart images of topics we hope to touch on. Shortly before the session starts, the team now comes together for a short physical and vocal warm-up and a last check through the planned order of events.

The team are the two session leaders, two volunteers and five or six apprentices. The apprentices are freelance arts and health workers, who have followed a two-day experiential training course in Reminiscence in Dementia Care. They will now participate in the weekly sessions with the participating families, with a view to starting their own groups or using the ideas in their ongoing work.

Here they come

Now the eight families start to arrive: couples, aged between seventy and ninety, all living with dementia, caring or being cared for at home. Every couple is welcomed, hugged (where that feels appropriate) given a name badge and shown to the table of work-related items to handle and documents to look at. This helps focus everyone’s minds on the topic of the day. Some people have brought items from home, such as certificates and photos of fellow workers. When everyone has arrived, the families join the circle for a more formal welcome, often choosing to sit with a family or volunteer they have got to know already. The session begins with a recap on what we did at the previous session, referring back to special contributions made by people with dementia, and an introduction to the topic of the day.

Stimulating body memories 

To warm up, everyone who can do so stands up. The rest participate from a sitting position. The leader shows an action connected with work, and everyone copies that action. Someone else takes over with a different action, and everyone follows that, until several new actions have been introduced and tried out by all. Actions include clocking in, hammering, laying bricks, painting a wall, tailoring, typing, making tea, waitressing, shop work, etc. 

Playing a memory

Now the big circle breaks into four or five small groups, each group supported by a volunteer, an apprentice, or one of the group leaders. In these groups, participants listen to one another’s work stories, including how much they were paid, what skills did they learn, what friends did they have at work and what bosses or supervisors.

Then the group leader invites the groups to see if they can make a scene out of one of the stories emerging from their discussion. Because the ‘actors’ (everyone in the small group) need more to make the scene come to life, they ask the ‘story teller’ for additional information, often on points of detail. Then they try putting their ideas ‘on the floor’. This improvisation process generates additional memories from the ‘story-tellers’ and increases the adrenaline level in the room. After about ten minutes of ‘rehearsal’, everyone is fired up and ready to show their scene, prompting each other as necessary. Each scene lasts about a minute and is totally improvised. The ‘audience’ is everyone in the other groups, and the little scenes seem to stimulate a sense of recognition and a spontaneous round of applause and laughter.

Show Time

One lady, Beryl, finds a notebook and pencil and goes into her boss’s room to ‘take a letter’ in shorthand. Another person in that group is the boss and dictates a standard letter, which Beryl actually writes in shorthand. She then reads it back, word for word, from the shorthand, to everyone’s surprise and admiration. She mentions where she worked and shows her shorthand notes to everyone. She has surprised herself with what she can still do. One man, Josef, measures the arm and inside leg of another man in his group; a third takes notes for tailoring and a fourth starts machine stitching. Barbara enters the role of factory foreman and tells everyone to stop chattering and get on with their work. She tells how she was a strict boss and barks at her juniors to show she still can. Joyce is busy with a needle and thread, remembering her work in a high-class firm of tailors. There is plenty to talk about in the tea break that follows.

Drawing or writing a memory

The volunteers or apprentices find the personal scrapbooks one for each family. These have already been filled in for the three previous chronological sessions: introductions and origins, childhood and family life, school days. While further discussion takes place, often enlisting the help of the family carer, the volunteer or apprentice offers to draw or write their memory and put in captions for the pictures. Two apprentices have taken copies from the Internet of people and places relating to a story told the previous week and this goes into the personal scrapbook with explanatory captions. This is a quiet one-to-one activity going at a gentle pace. When it finishes, some of the scrapbooks are shown around the group, which again stimulates more memories to share.

Wrapping up with a song

The imminent end of the session is announced, but first people are asked to think of any songs they can sing together related to the session: quite a challenge with this topic. Someone comes up with the seven dwarfs singing “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go” and another recalls the tune of “Workers Playtime” the radio show. Sometimes, the group leaders use digital sources with added speakers to remind people how the song goes.

There is then a recap of what has happened in the session, with high praise for memorable contributions by individual participants. Everyone gets an individual goodbye and a hug or handshake and thanks for their presence and for sharing their memories. The theme for the next week is given and people are asked to search their homes for relevant objects and photos on the topic of ‘Going Out and Having Fun’.

Debriefing and evaluation

Good practice points that underlie these activities

Welcome: Preparing the room so that it is a stimulating visual and tactile environment enables early arrivals to explore the theme-related resources, handling objects and images, while being supported by one of the team. It also shows the families that we have thought about them as individuals between our meetings and found pictures related to what they have talked about.

The greeting of participants, whether it be with a handshake or a hug given to each couple as they arrive, emphasises their importance as individuals and members of the group, rather as one would greet a valued guest arriving at a party. Participants who may be anxious or shy quickly feel, “I belong here. They like me here.” As they are being given a name badge, they are informally reminded of something they said or did in the last meeting, which people in the group had enjoyed and remembered.

Inclusivity: Gathering together in a circle is an important means of demonstrating the democratic inclusive atmosphere in the group. One of our team summarises the subjects we explored the previous week. Reminding everyone of what we did in our last meeting helps people to feel that the project has a shape and a progression through time, as in each session they revisit a different chronological point their earlier lives. Highlighting some of the memorable moments of the previous session shows participants that their contributions are held in the group memory, and that the stories they shared are valued like gifts.

Positivity: We lay the emphasis on what people can still do, rather than on their deficits. There is a great deal of encouragement and stimulus in every session, enabling people to participate successfully, even when words no longer come readily to mind. We aim to create a level playing field, so that a stranger watching the group would have difficulty working out who has dementia and who doesn’t. That stranger might also be surprised at the frequent spontaneous wit and laughter generated.

Physical warming up and relaxation as a whole group: Standing or sitting in a circle and joining in a physical warm-up helps people relax. The work-related movements help people recall past work skills and help them to engage and keep wide awake. The movements evoke the younger, more energetic version of themselves, as though they have brought their past vitality into the present.

Work together in small groups: Participants are divided into small groups to exchange experience more informally than in the big circle and with the help of one or two of the project team. Here, they often find memories in common, tapping into a ‘community of memory’ related to particular times and events. Often a common bond is established between them; friendships with other families develop and some of these friendships last well beyond the project itself.

The presence of the family carer: It is important to have the family carer present to support their person, but they must also be there to benefit in their own right from the reminiscence process. We run separate sessions for the carers discussing how best they can support their person throughout the project. By active participation, the family carers gain ideas they can try at home to engage their partner, and the project often helps couples to look more fondly on each other as they revisit their joint past through all its ups and downs. When the family carer is a son or daughter, the sessions offer a chance to learn much more about their parent’s younger days, and many report being startled by newly unearthed memories. Out come the family photo albums and notes are added as the project throws up previously unheard stories. 

Playing the past in the present and having fun together: When the session leader asks each group to come up with a little scene, the adrenaline level rises and so does the noise as people rehearse their stories. A strong sense of fun is generated as they find a way to show the experience of someone in their group. A feeling of playfulness fills the room. Everyone gets laughter and applause, which boosts the morale of all players. The performances, however short, tend to stay quite a long time in the minds of the participants and are often referred back to with pleasure later in the project.

Making an individual record of the project: The families all receive a scrapbook to use in the sessions and to take home with them at the end of the project. Apprentices and volunteers write in these books the stories they have discussed or draw illustrations to go with them. Having someone draw for them is a very engaging process, as the ‘artist’ has to ask what they should put in the picture and in what colours.  From week to week, we give out photos of the participants joining in the activities, so they can stick these into their album too. The families can then refer back to the project with pleasure when it finishes. Many families go on adding to the book, and take time to explore photos in old family albums and add captions if more is recalled. 

Celebration and appreciation: All the activities have the same purpose: to give pleasure to the people with dementia and their carers together and a sense of being valued members of a special group. The aim is to stimulate participants to re-connect with their earlier selves, so that their present testing situation is seen in the broader context of their long lives. Ending is always difficult, but in RYCT it always involves a celebration of our past as a group and the high points we have shared. In our final session we invite the group participants to offer a celebration of their partner.
This has elicited extremely tender tributes from the person with dementia as well as the carer, always showing how crucial that mutual life-long affection is proving. There are often tears shed by the carer when their relative with dementia recognises and acknowledges this reality.

A durable project

Although the RYCT project is nearly thirty years old, it continues to run in many of our European Union partner countries, in Canada, Japan and in Singapore. Hundreds of families have participated in it over the years. Our European Reminiscence Network has met every two years since 1997 to share experience and gain fresh ideas. Most of our partners have joined in the apprenticeship scheme we launched in 2012. Many of the graduate apprentices have gone on to run creative reminiscence projects with people with dementia and carers in the community, and others have added their learning to their work in care homes. We have all followed the same basic programme, which the original team devised. This has proved robust but of course there have been many variants emerging to suit different countries and different strengths within the project teams.

On-going evaluation

Many different forms of evaluation have been applied to the RYCT project, with varying results, most basically positive. However, it has been hard to do justice to the warm sense of celebration and affection it invariably generates for the families involved. Clearly, a multi-faceted intervention like this does not lend itself readily to a quasi-scientific and quantitative analysis. Families participating are asked for feedback at the end of the project via a simple form which asks them what they have enjoyed most, surprises they may have experienced, what was their favourite session and why. The apprentices and volunteers record and assess each session, using our specific ‘adherence to schedule’ evaluation forms to ensure that the project remains true to our objectives. Writing a reflective essay on what they have learned on the project is a crucial part of the apprenticeship.

Websites and further reading

www.rememberingyesterdaycaringtoday.com

www.reminiscencetheatrearchive.org.uk

www.europeanreminiscencenetwork.org

Schweitzer PK (2006)Reminiscence Theatre: Making Theatre from Memories. Jessica Kingsley, London.
Schweitzer PK, Bruce E (2008) Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today: Reminiscence in Dementia Care, Jessica Kingsley, London.
Schweitzer PK (1999) Remembering yesterday: a European project. Journal of Dementia Care 7(1) 18-21.
Garvey G (2004) ‘The place where I grew up’: ethnic minority reminiscence comes of age. Journal of Dementia Care 12(2) 20-21.