Overview: In 2020 Music for Dementia launched a new national campaign. They issued a challenge to organisations at every level, from government departments to healthcare providers to arts companies, large and small: to make music an everyday part of dementia care, from diagnosis through to end of life and with economic status no barrier to provision.

In 2021 Wye Valley Music rose to that challenge, forming Wye Valley Music in Mind. (For more details about our inaugural 2021 Pilot Scheme, see below.)

What We Do: 

• We run a monthly Music Memory Café at the St Briavels Assembly Rooms. We welcome anyone concerned about memory loss or living with a diagnosis of dementia, along with their family, friends and carers. We also welcome anyone from the local area simply looking to ‘get out and get active’ and to socialise and make new friends. The Café features a wide range of live music – classical, jazz, folk, pop and rock – and there are plenty of opportunities to sing along and play percussion instruments. We also offer a resources desk, supplying information about dementia support in the area.
• We run group music sessions at Severn View Park, a Local Authority dementia care home in Caldicot (formerly Chepstow), for residents, visiting family members and carers. 
• We run 1-to-1 music therapy sessions at Severn View Park, for individual residents.
• We provide community dementia information sessions, in partnership with NHS Managing Memory Together.
• We provide Basic Life Support and First Aid Training to the wider community, in partnership with Gloucestershire Adult Education.
• We work with young professional musicians interested in community engagement, particularly students and recent graduates, and we provide them with dementia awareness training and music therapist-led skills training. We hope that by investing in our performers in this way, and by paying them a proper wage for their efforts, we can build a lasting legacy for our programme.
• We have built a team of volunteers to support the Music Memory Café and we provide them with regular dementia awareness training.
• We have supported the Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance in the creation of three new Music Memory Cafés, based on our original format. We are happy to advise any other group who might be interested in launching their own Music Memory Café.

The Science: “If you were to scan your brain while listening to music, the screen would light up like a fireworks display. This is because music reaches so many different parts of the brain at once.” (Music for Dementia)

• Familiar music activates regions of the brain associated with explicit memory systems, including the hippocampus and frontal areas. These areas are crucial for recalling past experiences, suggesting that familiar songs prompt memory and its linked emotions and may help retrieve stored information about the context in which a specific tune was first heard. (PsyPost)
• Unfamiliar music activates regions associated with implicit memory systems, such as the basal ganglia, that support our ability to develop new skills, suggesting such music may help to engage the brain’s learning mechanisms. (PsyPost)
• Rhythmic music activates regions in the frontal lobe and cerebellum associated with motor skills and timing, the building blocks of movement and coordination. (ScienceDirect)
• Most music activates those regions associated with emotional processing, including the amygdala and the hippocampus. (Harvard Medicine)

In the context of someone living with a dementia, both science and anecdotal evidence are in agreement: music can have multiple positive benefits, even to the extent of reducing the need for antipsychotic drug treatments and hospital stays.

Funding: We are wholly dependent on private donations and charitable grants for our financing. If you would like to contribute to our work or to find out any more about us, please contact us at [email protected].  

We are very grateful to the following for their support:

Nikkila Thomas (mezzo-soprano)

Cerys Rees (harp)

Olivia Dance (piano)

The Aulus Duo – Georgina Dadson (guitar) and Ellie Knott (flute)

Sarah Waycott (flute)

Amy Hulme (music therapist and singer/musician)

The Rhossili Duo – Gabriella Alberti (flute) and Cai Charles (guitar)

Vicky Guise (music therapist)

The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

Severn View Park, Caldicot

Mindsong

Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance

University of South Wales, Music Therapy Department
 

Directory of Resources: 

We are proud to work closely with the charities Mindsong and Music for Memories and highly recommend their services.

Caring for vulnerable people, including those living a with dementia, can be challenging and there's a risk they can at some point start to 'walk about'. Planning ahead to keep them safe is vital and the Herbert Protocol can help with this, saving you the worry of trying to recall information during the stressful time of someone going missing and allowing the police search to begin sooner. Personally recommended.

We have no personal experience of this company, Dementia Adventure, but the idea seems like a good one: supported holidays for people living with a dementia and their carers, to provide a much-needed break together.

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Pilot-scheme, 2021: We launched our pilot-scheme in August/September 2021, in partnership with Severn View Local Authority Care Home. We provided a programme of three interactive music sessions for residents, performed by mezzo-soprano Nikkila Thomas and harpist Cerys Rees (both students at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama), and a ‘training the carers’ workshop for care home staff, led by music therapist Vicky Guise. The response was inspiring, with several normally non-verbal residents prompted to sing along with the musicians and to recall childhood memories when Nikkila and Cerys talked with them afterwards.

We were delighted that her time working with us led to a new part-time job for Nikkila and we hope that Cerys’s words sum up the experience for them both: 

“I have really enjoyed every moment of it and it has confirmed to me that I would like to continue working within outreach and with the elderly. I have been very proud when I have told people what I have been doing this summer.”