Tony: Sporting memories is a network we’ve established that was spreading across England
and we work with older people, those living with dementia and memory problems and we use
sport as a focus for reminiscence. People are comfortable talking about sport, we spend
most of our lives reflecting on sporting results and we are a sporty nation and it seems an
obvious subject to use to improve not only the mental wellbeing of people but also the
physical wellbeing. Jeanette: Sport obviously is something that
many people on all different levels are able to connect with and the way that sporting
memories was working we felt that it would be a really good way to connect people together
Man 2: Oh ye I know that’s Ricki Charlton Jacky: Reminiscent is a great way to connect
and engage with a person and the sporting memories are personal to them and its actually
opened up a really big gate to communicating more.
Woman 1: I could do the splits. Woman 2: You could do the splits could ya?
Woman 1: Ye, almost probably still could I don’t know I haven’t tried it lately
Jeanette: It kind of raised the quality of care that people were receiving as well as
helping the people that were bringing their memories forward.
Man 2: Jimmy Alec Tony: From talking about sport and reminiscing
about sort people often get the urge to then revisit the sports that they either once played
or watched and inevitably the groups lead to people actually playing sport and exercising
and we now that that’s so important, that exercise is a key focus in terms of people
living well with dementia Jacky: Not only do we do the reminiscent but
we do the re-living so we think about the sensory part of it, about the smells the sounds
and the environment. So we’ve taken some of the people to football matches, we’ve
taken them spectating swimming. I don’t think many people would think about taking
a 96 year old lady ice-skating but it’s all very very positive.
Tony: Central to triggering the conversations are the powerful images that we use of sporting
legends and we have a number of sports that we covered, cricket boxing football rugby
tennis. One of the other resources that’s been fascinating to see develop is the sweeter
reply websites where we’ve asked a few stars of sport to share a few memories because memories
trigger memories, and actually in the space of 18 months we’ve got over 3,000 memories
that have been shared and they make great reading in themselves but they also give us
a great opportunity to raise awareness about dementia and other mental health conditions
to fans who wouldn’t necessarily be aware. Graham: The memory game was a game we selected
as a football club and as a community department to promote the sporting memories programme
as best we could. Tony: We get fans sharing memories ahead of
the match; we work with local media to raise awareness of what the games all about which
is celebration of the history and heritage of the club, but actually raising aware ness
of dementia. Jeanette: The match that raised awareness
was really well received and I think we can sort of take from that and learn that those
sort of events are really valuable Tony: The approach has a number of possible
benefits, in terms of engaging people, in terms of getting the health promotion messages
out across generations, in terms of tackling social isolation, in terms of tackling depression
and in terms of engaging people living with dementia.
Graham: The spin offs of the sporting memories are just never ending and you know so exciting
and so enlightening, it’s been an amazing experience for us and something we’ve embraced
and encapsulated and certainly going to take it forward.
Jeanette: It’s something that most people can find a conversation about so I would recommend
anyone to go forward with it.