All Together Now

Dementia – that was the inspiration for ‘Songs Of Our Lives’.

Everyone’s always talking about the success of dementia singing sessions. And I’ve seen it myself with Lena. When she’s speaking now, she often struggles to find a word and, frustrated with the challenge, just gives up with the sentence. But start her off on a favourite song and the words all just magically fall into place.  No problem.

So the idea was to put on Songs Of Our Lives, a musical event where every song would stir a memory and trigger an audience response – to get them singing, clapping, maybe even dancing along. To release inhibitions, bring down the barriers, and roll the years back.  

We started with a list of around 60 songs: Hey Jude, Delilah, Summertime, Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Yellow Submarine, No Woman No Cry, Proud Mary, Valerie, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Killing Me Softly, I’m A Believer … The test for inclusion? If we just mentioned the name of the song in a room full of people, would someone spontaneously burst into song?

But I didn’t want it just to be a dementia singing session. What I’ve learnt from Lena is that she doesn’t much enjoy going to events with a ‘dementia’ label. She doesn’t want to be treated as a special case, to be condescended to. She wants to feel ‘normal’ – to experience life just as it was before Alzheimers hitched a ride with us. So if it was going to be billed as an evening of musical entertainment, it had to be genuine entertainment. And that guided our choice of performer, of venue, even of the audience we invited.

I knew I could get the evening going with a few cheesy singalong songs. But I’m no professional. To turn a good evening into a great one, we needed musicians with a wow factor, people who could set an audience on fire. They’d need to be willing to perform for publicity, not money – because this was a launch event, I wanted it to be free. And they’d probably have to change their repertoire to fall in with our aims.

Not easy, but I knew just the people. Edwin and Annelie are two of the strongest performers on Manchester’s thriving pub/club circuit. The fact that they’re also our kids meant they weren’t going to say no.

The venue? Well, a few weeks earlier I’d met Emma Smith of Social adVentures, who operate out of The Angel Centre, in Salford but within touching distance of Manchester’s city centre. Set up to inspire local people to lead happier and healthier lives, Social adVentures partners with organisations that promote physical, mental and social well-being – which was exactly what I had in mind. I told Emma about my plans to set up dementia fitness classes. Do it here, she said. ‘Songs Of Our Lives’? Perfect for our Creation Cafe. How about July 25? It was on!

What I didn’t realise then was what else the Angel Centre would give us. Running the Cafe was Eileen Wilson. A singer, Emma told me … but that didn’t quite prepare me for out meet-up a couple of days before the event. I took a guitar over to see if we could work out a song or two together.

– What do you know?

– Summertime?

– OK. Let’s give it a try. How’s this for a key?

30 seconds later and I realised I was playing with one of the best jazz/blues singers I’ve ever heard. A complete natural, pitch perfect, fluid, a great improviser, thrilling as she got into her stride and belted out the lines. What a find! 

Something else. I’d been worried about audience size. We needed enough people to make a noise, to drive away those inhibitions. Largely thanks to Social adVentures’ great connections in the community, around 30 people turned up. Better still, the audience mix was exactly what I wanted: some with dementia, certainly, but enough who didn’t to capture that normal Saturday-night-out feeling I was aiming for. Everyone was included. We were all in it together – singers and audience – having fun. The pictures tell the story.