Memory Box (Lowewood Museum) project snapshot

Project title: Memory Box Project

Where and when the project happened
Lowewood Museum, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, during 2015.

Describe your project briefly
In 2015 Lowewood Museum launched its new memory boxes for care homes and community groups. To create the boxes the museum and 10 volunteers from the Lea Valley U3A worked alongside a variety of local care organisations, including Belmont View Care Home, Vision4Growth, Cheshunt Aphasia Group and Flexicare and Independent Living provider, B3Living, to create boxes which met a variety of needs including individuals with dementia, visual or speech impairment, or loneliness, providing a fun social activity bringing people of all backgrounds and generations together.

What were the aims of your project?
• Create memory boxes suitable for a range of community and care groups
• Work in partnership with care organisations, providing reminiscence training to these groups
• For the museum to play a supportive role to community and care organisations, using its collection in productive and meaningful ways.
• Encourage more people to visit their local museum

What happened as a result of your project?
Memory boxes are often used for reminiscence therapy, and evidence has shown that it can help to reconnect a person with their identity and to improve communication, mood and overall well-being. For Lowewood’s project, it was vital to work with members from the care organisations, ensuring the needs of their group were met. All those involved received training from a reminiscence specialist on how to use reminiscence therapy in person-centred care. The final result was four boxes which incorporated objects from the 1930s onwards, including a support pack for care staff. The boxes have been fully booked by local care homes and community groups, used in reminiscence sessions by over 300 people. The project has received excellent feedback from its users and care organisations alike.

What evidence did you produce to show your project’s impact?
Each box comprises a support pack with feedback sheets for the sharing of ideas between different care homes and community groups, on what worked well within their reminiscence session. Feedback cards are also given to the organisation themselves, for the museum to collect data on how many people used the box, which box (theme) was borrowed and why, what other topics they like to see covered, and any other comments or improvements. Whilst it is still early days for thorough data to be analysed, within 3 months of its launch the boxes were used by over 300 people and excellent feedback has been recorded. The museum has also been asked to write an article for the Nursing and Residential Care Magazine.

What 2 tips would you offer to someone else running a similar project?
• Contact your local museum to see what support and resources they can offer.
• Work with different care and community groups to ensure their needs are met.

Your contact details to help people find more information
Carly Hearn, Lowewood Museum Development Officer
Tel: 01992 445596 Email: chearn@eppingforestdc.gov.uk

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