Meet me at the museum
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SOCIAL INCLUSION AND REMINISCENCE PROJECTS WITH MUSEUMS
Our Cuimhne Coordinator Zibiah Loakthar writes:
Musty fusty dusty has in the past been a common perception of museums but this perception is changing as museums reinvent themselves and more people venture in and discover the wealth of possibilities and resources museum spaces can offer. These days many of our museums strive to be vibrant, inclusive, accessible, welcoming public spaces, with social justice principles at their core.
Museums in receipt of public funding are especially committed to upholding equal opportunities and many have developed active programmes in order to reach out to and welcome in people from diverse backgrounds and communities. Museums are often receptive to partnership approaches from community organisations and there are many exciting possibilities for Irish in Britain groups to collaborate around projects that harness resources, skills and volunteers in combatting social isolation and actively engaging older people and people living with dementia, for example the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
If you are part of an organisation that may like to discuss support Irish in Britain can offer with approaching a museum about social inclusion or reminiscence work, please get in touch: champions@irishinbritain.org
LEARNING ABOUT MEET ME PROJECTS
Oxford Natural History Museum
Recently, I visited the Natural History Museum in Oxford recently where I met Beth McDougall, Families and Communities Officer, Pitt Rivers and Community Engagement Officer for Older People, Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) to find out more about the “Meet me at the Museum” scheme.
Meet Me at the Museum is a social group for older people that enables behind–the–scenes access to the Museum and collections. It supports older people and those living with dementia to be socially connected, creating opportunities for new conversations and learning together.
Meet Me at the Museum has been inspired by Meet Me at the Albany, an all–day arts club in Deptford, London where people over 60 to meet in the heart of the Albany building to work alongside artists and have the opportunity to uncover the artist within themselves. According to the Albany’s website, the project grew out of a simple question shared by the Albany and Entelechy Arts back in 2013: “What if isolated and lonely older people had the opportunity to go to an arts’ centre instead of a day centre?’.
Today at the Albany, “participants are just as likely to be suspended on silks in a circus workshop, enjoying a performance of jazz, creating sculpture, writing poetry or singing in the weekly choir.”
A new club “Meet Me in the South” at Downham Health and Leisure centre, has been especially designed to support people living with dementia and their carers or companions.
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford began a Meet Me in the Museum pilot in 2016, working with older people and those living with dementia to co–design the groups’ activity programme. Since then over 100 people have become involved. The project has worked with organisations including the Creative Dementia and Arts Network (CDAN), Beat It Percussion, Age UK, Young Dementia UK (YDUK) and City Arts (Nottingham).
A Meet Me at the Museum team of older people has created animations, co–produced displays, composed and performed music in the galleries, taken iPad photographs of favourite objects for an app and gone behind the scenes in the Museum.
A BUZZ OF EXCITEMENT
There is a real buzz of enthusiastic excitement around Meet Me projects. A hallmark of success is the project’s positive spread by word of mouth: friends of friends of friends of participants hear about it and ask to join. Project staff recognise the challenge this presents for managing resources and numbers in a way that avoids people seeking connection and belonging having to be turned away at the door. While an ideal group size for a Meet Me at the Museum session, might be between 12 and 16 people, Beth’s last session drew 30 people together. She explains that fantastic volunteers committed to attending regularly are crucial for project success.
Committed volunteer support allows for some flexibility over group size. People drop–in freely and Beth has found it to be important that people do not feel anxious that they could lose their “place” if they miss sessions because of illness or other engagements. Volunteers are especially helpful support when the group size is large and enable the project team in taking a few minutes to try to chat to everyone individually.
Brilliant word of mouth publicity can present challenges for ensuring a project is promoted fairly across all communities. Beth is keen for Meet Me to reach out to a diverse ethnic mix of participants rather than only into the circles of friends of people already involved. She welcomes help from our Irish in Britain network in making sure people from Irish communities learn about the project’s opportunities.
LEARNING FROM MEET ME AT THE MUSEUM EXPERIENCES
Beth’s Meet me sessions are structured so that the first half hour is socially focused and spent welcoming people in and reconnecting over tea and coffee. This also allows staff and volunteers some time to spend personally welcoming newcomers. Volunteers play an important role listening and chatting to people, allowing participants who can to make cups of tea for each other, rather than jumping in to do everything and killing people’s independence with kindness.
Museum exhibits
The group then goes behind the scenes of the museum to meet members of the museum team with specialist skills, such as conservators and art educators who introduce particular aspects of the museum’s work and enable people to explore museum objects.
The talks take a lead from participants’ interests and everyone is engaged and involved in decision–making about future topics to explore. At the end of the session, there is a short summation and discussion about the nature of the next meeting.
Thinking about lessons learned from the project and the reasons for its success, Beth reflects on the importance of taking a person–centred approach. People come along as individuals, rather than under labels. People living with dementia do not wish to be defined by this condition. Beth feels that had the project targeted only people living with dementia, some people may have felt uncomfortable attending or not found family or carer support to do so.
Rather than making dementia the reason for people to come together, people come simply because of their interest in the museum and in being part of a social gathering. The museum then becomes a space where the dementia label can be shaken off, together with the cloud of stigma that can surround it.
People are not asked about their health status. In a mixed group, no one makes assumptions about who may be living with dementia and who may not.
Museum staff need to take health status possibilities into account in order to manage the group safely, but would do so with any kind of unknown group of visitors anyway.
It is for a similar reason that Beth prefers not to ask people to wear name badges. While name badges can be extremely helpful for people who are embarrassed about forgetting names, in a museum setting wearing a name badge can draw attention in a public space to the group as being a “special group”. Beth has found people prefer to enter the museum incognito like any other group and so has looked for other ways to help people be reminded of names, by introducing everyone at the beginning of each session.
KEEPING PEOPLE INVOLVED
Keeping in touch with people, especially people experiencing memory loss can be difficult. After a summer period, where activities were halted for a while, many group members chose not to return. This was sometimes because carers had had time to see a progression or decline in the person they cared for which made them reassess their ability to take part.
To encourage and remind people to return, Beth has developed a simple e–newsletter to circulate to people and at the end of each Meet Me session talks about what they might do next. Still she is conscious that not everyone accesses email and feels really there is nothing like building in the time and volunteer resources to be able to ring around to people a day before to remind people to come.
These days the museum sector is becoming involved with “social prescribing schemes”. Social prescribing involves nurses and other primary care professionals addressing the social, environmental and economic factors which impact on patients’ overall health and wellbeing in a holistic way by connecting people to a range of local, non–clinical services which may be provided by charities and the museum arts and voluntary sector. Social prescribing aims to support individuals to take greater control of their own health.
When the government launched the Loneliness Strategy last year it was suggested that all GP surgeries would be offering social prescribing by 2023.
Beth reflects that the language of prescribing may create unhelpful confusion, implying that a museum experience prescribed will “sort out need”, with museums being seen as an extension of the health service. Museums can indeed play a brilliant role in promoting wellbeing, see for instance case studies here.
IF YOU CAN’T GET OUT TO A MUSEUM, CAN THE MUSEUM COME TO YOU?
Gone are the days of having to get out to a museum to be able to enjoy its resources. Many museums now offer outreach talks and object handing sessions to community organisations and care homes. Imagine Arts has created a special armchair gallery for people who cannot easily get out and about to museums.
This is an app showcasing artworks and artefacts from the collections of seven of Britain’s leading cultural venues. People can enjoy video tours presented by gallery and museum staff and interact with the artworks and artefacts. The dementia–friendly app comes with a comprehensive set of instructions for creative activities that family members and carers can do through the armchair gallery with people they care for.