Brief communication Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.
The Northern Ireland Reminiscence Network: promoting social wellbeing by valuing memories Faith Gibson, 39 Glenbroome Park, Newtownabbey, UK The Reminiscence Network was established in November 1998 by a group of interested people drawn from health and social services, libraries, colleges, and museums who wished to meet to share ideas, improve their skills and deepen their knowledge about reminiscence theory, practice, research, and related creative activities. Instead of working as isolated individuals, we shared a vision of exchanging experience and resources and extending awareness of the contribution that reminiscence can make to many people of all ages and backgrounds living in diverse situations.
Activities and achievements The official launch of the Network took place in June 1999. It was marked by a province-wide tour by a professional theatre company from Age Exchange, Blackheath, London, and by a series of related workshops on drama and reminiscence led by their artistic director, Pam Schweitzer.1 From the beginning, the affairs of the Network flourished because people have been prepared to give their time, energy and expertise to a small, open, responsive organization that is committed to sharing ideas, working in collaborative partnerships with others and is uninterested in building a cumbersome administrative superstructure. The membership currently is around 60, and includes both individual and corporate members. An
Correspondence: Professor Faith Gibson, 39 Glenbroome Park, Newtownabbey, Belfast BT37 0RL, UK. E-mail:
[email protected]
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elected board of up to 20 members manages the Network’s affairs. A recent review of its structure and management arrangements has resulted in the decision to work, for the most part, through four subgroups concerned with standards development and training, community development, health and social services wellbeing projects, and art and drama. The Network has established a reputation throughout the island of Ireland in training and project development. It runs regular 2-day basic introductory courses in reminiscence work that have consistently attracted participants from statutory, voluntary and private sector organizations, representing health and social care staff and volunteers, and staff from libraries, museums and housing associations. Many board members have been introduced to the Network via two advanced courses for trainers.2,3 Mentoring arrangements as a means of consolidating expertise and promoting new developments have also been established. Various day and half-day workshops on basic and special aspects of reminiscence have been led by both local and visiting speakers and training has been undertaken for the Northern Ireland Museum’s Council, amongst others. Annual meetings are always combined with participative workshops, usually concerned with the arts and reminiscence. Last year, Barbara Haight,4 a nursing research professor from the Medical University of South Carolina, and the founding chairperson of the International Institute of Reminiscence and Life Review, led a workshop on structured, individual life review and lifestory bookwork. Some Health and Social Services trusts have been most supportive and financially helpful from the outset. They have responded to the Network’s initiative in suggesting joint collaborative reminiscence projects for people with dementia. The expertise developed by the European Reminiscence Network’s Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today projects5 has informed the Northern Ireland work,
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which has been led by Christine Johnston, Rosemary Hamill and Joan Cosgrove. It has proved productive and enjoyable, and has been much appreciated by those people with dementia and their family and professional carers who have participated. The training and development model implemented by the Network involves introducing selected staff in residential and day care facilities to reminiscence. This is carried out by having them undertake initial introductory training followed by reminiscence group work practice undertaken with people with dementia and their family carers, alongside Network trainers, for approximately 12 weeks. Staff progressively increase their leadership responsibilities, while the Network trainers gradually relinquish leadership and assume a mentoring role for as long as funding permits until reminiscence expertise is firmly established within the host organization, which by this time is now equipped to carry on its own development work. Another notable achievement in which the Network has played a pivotal role, together with the Ulster People’s College and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, has been the creation of a consortium known as Community Archiving Network Northern Ireland.6 This group secured a Lottery grant from the New Opportunities Fund to enable it to develop community archives, at this point using Comma7 software, and to make them accessible via the Internet. The Network continues to contribute expertise concerning the reminiscence process, which underpins the involvement of neighbourhood groups, often from socially and economically disadvantaged contested areas and different religious and political standpoints. These groups, whose members frequently have limited formal educational backgrounds, are taught multimedia authoring skills that enable them to produce multimedia archives of their communities that are an historical record and a tool for enhancing personal and communal understanding. Inter-generational work and cross-community reconciliation projects have also flourished. The Ulster Museum’s education staff, equipped with reminiscence skills and confidence nurtured by the Network, have collaborated with an umbrella voluntary organization, Engage with Age and a local primary school to undertake inter-generational work. They have also partnered a neighbourhood
women’s health centre. Here reminiscence has been used as a vehicle to explore older women’s health issues and to introduce a group to the museum. Access has been widened and the resources of the museum opened up to a group who had never regarded the museum as having relevance and value, despite its close geographical proximity and rich resources.8 The Museum has also recently begun to develop themed memory boxes, which it will lend to people wishing to undertake reminiscence work.9,10 The Network facilitated introductions that enabled an older people’s group connected to a museum in County Mayo in the Republic of Ireland to meet and exchange visits with a community group from the Shankill Road in Belfast. The two groups discovered that although apparently very different in terms of rural and urban, and Catholic and Protestant backgrounds, they had shared the same struggles, contending with poverty, emigration and life’s inevitable joys and sorrows. Many members from each group had never previously visited the other jurisdiction, regarded hitherto as foreign and hostile territory. The spontaneous mutual pleasure in each other’s company, exchange of personal and political views, and the broadening of understanding arising from sharing in reminiscence sessions proved to be a much-valued experience. Last year the Network hosted, funded and organized the fourth annual reminiscence conference of the UK Reminiscence Network, entitled Reminiscence and Community Integration, which attracted some 150 delegates over 3 days. The sun shone; the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum provided an incomparable venue; the speakers and workshops were informative and inspirational, and the craic was ‘mighty’.11 This was an enormous undertaking for the Network, which has grown in stature, solidarity and confidence as a consequence.
Challenges A comprehensive training programme is in place for the current year consisting of both basic and specialized training. The Network will facilitate the introduction to senior managers and trainers in health, housing and social care agencies of Kate Allen’s imaginative training pack Finding Your
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Way12. John Killick13 will lead a series of workshops about the arts in dementia care with attention to the place of reminiscence-based artistic activities. Inhouse projects with health and social care agencies will continue and trainers will do their best to respond to requests as they are received. Members will continue to receive information via the regular newsletter edited by Rosemary Hamill and sharing days that bring members together to exchange their experience of reminiscence work will likely be introduced. All this has been achieved without salaried staff and assured income. The Network has retained trainers, project workers and secretarial assistants on a sessional basis. Many people have committed time as volunteers. Much assistance in kind has been gratefully received. Without the crucial support of the Southeastern Education and Library Board and the indefatigable work of its Special Services librarian, Hilary Glenn, the Network’s honorary secretary, the achievements would be much less impressive. We take this opportunity to pay tribute to Hilary and to other founding members who caught the vision and have worked to give it substance.
Future directions In many ways, the Network has reached a crossroads as it faces a new stage in its growth and development. After protracted discussions, early recognition as a charity at law for tax purposes is expected. The anticipated achievement of charitable status, it is hoped, will bring wider opportunities to access new sources of funding. With the articulation of an organizational structure and the writing of a business plan, it will be time to progress. Without a small dedicated staff and a recognized public base from which to operate, it will be difficult to expand further, and to move on to new developments. The Board is eager, in conjunction with willing partners, to develop its arts and health and social care project work, to offer further and advanced training, and to explore accreditation and recognition with national and regional bodies. Innumerable opportunities in the health and social care fields await further development. Dementia, learning disability and mental health are only three areas in which reminiscence can play
a major part in terms of staff development and improved quality of life for people with these disabilities and those who care for them. So far, much of the Network’s activities have been largely, although not exclusively based in the greater Belfast area; reminiscence work in other parts of the Province requires support and development. Cross-border links already established in the Republic of Ireland require further attention. The need for finance, staff and modest premises is now urgent. The Network faces its next stage of growth with some trepidation but with considerable optimism. While it is good to look back, to value past achievements, and to appraise the present, it is essential to move on. We want no truck with complacency. We welcome new members because members, old and new, are the lifeblood of the Network. We are determined to increase the profile of reminiscence and build an enduring Network that will help encourage, transmit, preserve, and utilize personal memories so they become legacies, which by valuing the past, enrich the present and inform the future for people of all ages.
References 1 Schweitzer, P. Age Exchange. The Story So Far 1982–2002. A Twenty Year Retrospective. London: Age Exchange 2002. 2 Gibson, F. Reminiscence and Recall: a Guide to Good Practice. London: Age Concern ACE Books 1998. 3 Gibson, F. Reminiscence Trainer’s Pack. London: Age Concern ACE Books 2000. 4 Webster, J. D. & Haight, B. K. Critical Advances in Reminiscence Work: from Theory to Application. New York: Springer 2002. 5 Bruce, E., Hodgson, S. & Schweitzer, P. Reminiscing with People with Dementia: a Handbook for Carers. London: Age Exchange 1999. 6 McCartney, K. The experience of the People’s History initiative, technology and reminiscence. Reminiscence Exchange Newsletter, London: UK Reminiscence Network/ Age Exchange 2003, 2, 5 – 6. 7 CommaNET. Comma community archiving software. Available from: www.commanet.org. 8 Ferguson, M. Memory lane: Setting up a reminiscence group. Museum Ireland 2000, 10, 36–8. 9 Gibson, F. Reminiscence and museums. Museum Ireland 2000, 10, 26–35. 10 Gibson, F. The Past in the Present: Reminiscence in Health and Social Care. Baltimore MD: Health Professions Press. 11 MAGNI, the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland. Available from: www.magni.org.uk 2004.
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Brief communication 12 Allan, K. Finding Your Way. Stirling: Dementia Services, Development Centre, Stirling University 2003. 13 Basting, A. & Killick, J. The Arts and Dementia Care: a Resource Guide. New York: Center for Creative Aging 2003.
Further reading Bornat, J. (Ed.), Reminiscence Reviewed: Perspectives, evaluations and achievements (46 – 30). Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994. Bender, M., Baukham, P. & Norris, A. The Therapeutic Purposes of Reminiscence. London: Sage, 2002. Bruce, E. & Gibson, F. Stimulating communication: Project evaluation part 1. Journal of Dementia Care 1999, 7, 18 –19. Bruce, E. & Gibson, F. Remembering yesterday: having fun, making friends: Project evaluation part 2. Journal of Dementia Care 1999, 7, 28 –29.
Gibson, F. What can reminiscence contribute to people with dementia? In J. Bornat (Ed.), Reminiscence Reviewed: Perspectives, Evaluations and Achievements. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994, 46–30. Haight, B. K. & Webster, J. D. (Eds), The Art and Science of Reminiscing: Theory, Research, Methods, and Applications. Washington DC: Taylor and Francis, 1995. Killick, J. & Allan, K. Communication and the Care of People with Dementia. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001. Osborn, C. The Reminiscence Handbook: Ideas for creative activities for older people. London: Age Exchange, 1994. Southeastern Education & Library Board. Reminiscence Resource List, Ballynahinch, NI: SEELB, 2003. Stuart, M. Looking Back, Looking Forward: Reminiscence with People with Learning Disability. Brighton: Pavilion Publishing.
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