REMINISCENCE TRAINING: A CELEBRATION OF MEMORIES

Every Monday I participate in a reminiscence group in North London. It’s part of my apprenticeship, which began with a two-day course as soon as I arrived at the end of September. Pam was kind enough to offer me a place in this scheme, and she also invited Lorenzo to participate.

The students who took part in this course came from the most diverse backgrounds but had a common interest in reminiscence. Some had ample experience in social work; for example, Kate Moffatt, Julia Statman and Darren Gormley work visiting people with dementia who live alone. Kate told me it’s difficult to imagine how many lonely people live in this city, some of them for not having children, others for having their relatives too far away. Others use art as a way or reaching to people: Reena Clare, a sweet girl from Malaysia, uses her amazing drawing skills to illustrate people’s memories and Jo McCauley, who comes from Donegal,  uses music to awaken reminiscence. There were other artists, like Australian documentary maker and storyteller Dvora Liberman or Dutch painter Marenka Gabeler. Marenka has a very special relationship with the preservation of memory, as she’s making a project based on her dear grandma, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and lives in Holland.

I’d recommend you to visit Marenka’s blog in which you can find more about this beautiful work.

There were other participants I would like to mention here: Genevieve Rudd, Margaret Roberts, Joy Kirkup and specially my friend Christine Novy, a very enterprising woman who came all the way from Canada and who is about to start her own reminiscence group over there.

The second part of the apprenticeship consisted on joining the reminiscence group I have mentioned before. Only Marenka, Julia, Reena, Dvora, Jo and Kate decided to move on to this stage. I must say that I am impressed by the way they manage to make older people feel comfortable. I learn from them every day and I think they’ll become great facilitators.

In the reminiscence group we work together with a group of veterans: Pam and Caroline Baker are the energetic leaders, Sue and Kate also give a hand. Kate started to come to the reminiscence groups as a carer and, when her husband passed away, she continued as a volunteer. Sue always brings delicious homemade cakes for tea. They are joined by Jill and Ciare from Camden carers, the social workers who are the links with the families. And let’s not forget the man of the house, Alex, Pam’s husband, who is a great listener and has the ability of making people feel at ease (he’s also a great photographer).

On the first day, we met the rest of the participants. These are fascinating people with amazing lives to tell. For instance, Hermione, one of the stars in the group, followed the air force operations in Malta during World War II (when I suggested that she had been a spy, she started to giggle). Tom used to work in a brewery, where he met Fay, a remarkable woman with a cockney accent who is also an amateur singer and actress at the age of 77. Lyn used to ride around London in her Vespa when she was 17 and taught a little girl with no arms how to manage herself using her feet. Ludwig was in the commandoes and was (still is) a man who knows how to charm a lady. Lucy left her home at the age of 14 to work as a maid in Dublin. Trudy was evacuated to a farm in Cornwall during the Second World War. This memory cannot leave her. She’s amazed as how vivid it is compared to the sometimes blurry memories of what she did recently. June is an expert dancer.  Shirley is one of the persons who amaze me the most. In the first session, she looked a bit lost, but thanks to reminiscence and the expertise of my fellow apprentice Kate, she’s making incredible progress and now is one of the keenest participants in the group.

What do we do in these sessions? Basically, we help people to remember and share their memories. Each meeting has a topic: childhood, school, my first job, going out, weddings and relationships, etc. Pam suggests different exercises that facilitate the recovery of these memories.  We never ask them questions; we are just there to listen to what comes to their minds. Being able to remember and seeing how the rest of the participants celebrate what they say gives them confidence, and their relatives confirm that they are more open at home and look forward to the sessions. Also, these meetings give members of the same family or friends the opportunity to do something pleasant and rewarding together.

At the beginning I was also a bit lost. I was afraid of not understanding the people, of not knowing how to relate to them. But they made me feel welcome and at ease from the very first moment. Now I look forward to see them every Monday.

Photos: Lorenzo Hernandez                                            www.photolorenzohernandez.com

ONE NIGHT AT THE THEATRE ARCHIVE

One of my favourite places to work is the Reminiscence Theatre Archive in the Old Baths, Woolwich. As soon as I arrive, Jason, the caretaker, hands me the keys with a big smile on his face. I have to sign in on a register book and then I go up the stairs to my little office. I switch on my computer and I start travelling down memory lane.

Pam Schweitzer donated the Reminiscence Theatre Archive to the Drama Department of the University of Greenwich. This archive contains her work of thirty years. Each box contains all the material related to a single play: photos, flyers, touring schedules, scripts, recordings of the interviews that inspired the play, etc. You can discover all about this archive at www.reminiscencetheatrearchive.org.uk

Last Tuesday I had a visit from Finland! It was Elvira, the lady who had preceded me as an assistant at the ERN. She told me about how much she loved the place, she asked me not to forget to water her dear plant and she told me a bit about the boxes she had been working on until she left. The last one contained all the material related to Can we afford the doctor? This play is based on the testimonies of people who lived in the 1920s and 1930s and who were interviewed in 1985. In those times before the creation of the National Health Service, the first question that many people asked themselves when someone got ill was exactly this one. In a time when the health cuts make the front pages of our newspapers, both in the UK and Spain, this play becomes especially relevant.

Can we afford the doctor? was first performed in 1985. There is a very interesting Channel Four documentary about the making of this play, directed by Pam Schweitzer and performed by the original Age Exchange Company. You can watch it at http://www.reminiscencetheatrearchive.org.uk/page_id__146_path__0p3p.aspx

Today, the Reminiscence Theatre Archive Company  (RTA Co), whose members are drama students at the University of Greenwich, is preparing a new version of this play, directed by Ross Crossby, a very enthusiastice graduate from this university, and Pam herself. Lorenzo and me were lucky to attend one of the rehearsals.

After some warm-up exercises, which everybody joined, including us, Pam asked us to remember a time when we were children and had to go to the doctor. Then, in groups, we had to act up these short sketches. For example, a girl called Jo remembered how she had to be given stitches at the age of ten and her mother nearly fainted at the sight of her blood.

Then the members of the company showed another sketch they had prepared the previous week based on one of the memories gathered in Can we afford the doctor? A girl remembered feeling very ill and being taken to hospital to be put first in an isolation room and then in a ward full of adults who told her to shut up whenever she cried at night. The worst was that she had her hair shaved by the nurses. 

The performance was very well choreographed and we could really feel the atmosphere in the hospital ward. The actors and actresses played different roles each, and moved from one to another skilfully. Still, Pam and Ross made them change some things, which improved the final effect.

Then, Pam divided the company into two groups and gave them the same extract of the original play. It was very interesting to see how different people interpreted the same text.

And finally, we had to practice some of the songs from the play. It was good fun, as some of the names of the remedies were real tongue twisters.

And this was our night at the theatre. It reminded me of the Jumble Sale Theatre Company sessions. It was really good fun. 
Photos: Lorenzo Hernandez www.photolorenzohernandez.com

PAM SCHWEITZER AND THE EUROPEAN REMINISCENCE NETWORK

You’ll wonder what I am going to do in London during the next nine months. Well, I am going to work for Pam Schweitzer, founder and coordinator of the European Reminiscence Network.

What is reminiscence? Reminiscence is the act of remembering experiences and events from the past. And this is what Pam has been helping people do during the last thirty years. She describes herself as a person who likes to listen to people’s stories and she really knows how to make them feel comfortable, how to ask you the right questions and create the right mood for remembering.

Pam started as a drama teacher in the 1970s and one day she experienced by chance how a group of old ladies became young again while telling stories about the time when they were seventeen. She also observed that the act of remembering together created links between them. She then invited a group of her students to record these ladies’ memories and create a piece of drama, which was performed at school and in the residential unit where the ladies lived. 

The show was a success, but it was only performed twice, so Pam decided to set up a professional company, Age Exchange, which would make plays out of people’s memories and go on tour to residential homes, community centres... From the very beginning, they decided that they would not perform in theatres but would take theatre to the places where older people lived or met. After the play, there was a discussion with the audience and this would trigger new memories.

Many were the topics of these plays: childhood memories, people’s first jobs, going to the doctor before the National Health Service existed, emigration to the UK... Along the years, Pam worked not only with professional actors; she also founded The Good Companions, a company of senior citizens that also performed together with young actors.

You can read more about Pam and her projects in her website: www.pamschweitzer.com

There is also a very interesting book I’d recommend you: Reminiscence Theatre: Making Theatre from Memories, pulished in 2006 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Pam founded the European Reminiscence Network in 1993 with partners in 16 European countries. The Network now has partners in 20 countries and many associates in USA, Canada, India, Latin America, Australia and the Far East.

Since 1997 the members European Reminiscence Network have worked with people with dementia and their carers. The first project was called Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today. This led to further projects: Making Memories Matter (which involved artists from seven countries working with individual older people to create ‘Life Portraits’ or ‘Memory Boxes’ around their life experience), or Sites and Signs of Remembrance.

The ERN latest project is Remembering Together: Reminiscence Training (RTRT), which is a development of Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today. According to the ERN website, in these projects “families who are caring for a relative with dementia at home can participate in a series of reminiscence sessions with professional and volunteer support. The purpose of these sessions is to engage families in remembering, recording, celebrating and sharing their long life histories and increasing their social integration in their local communities”. The current project aims at creating reminiscence groups in the countries who participate and train people to facilitate these groups.

This training comprises two stages:

·      A two-day training course.

·      A four-month apprenticeship period.

This year I am going to train to become a facilitator of reminiscence groups. I’ll tell you about this experience in my following post. 

Photos: Lorenzo Hernandez                                      www.photolorenzohernandez.com