On Monday the 23rd July the reminiscence corridor project, Memory Lane was unveiled at the Evington Centre Leicester. The project was made possible by an NHS fund and the work was shared by a team of practicioners.

The occupational therapists at The Evington Centre led the way by holding reminiscence sessions with patients at the Evington Centre. Charnwood Arts Jemma Bagley assited at the sessions and made notes with Dena Mir inpatient occupational therapist.

We also worked with Steph Evans and patients at the Hershel prins Centre at Glenfield hospital on ideas for the pieces of work which included collage workshops with the patients and some photography work.

Thanks also to staff at Snibston Discovery Park for their help with sourcing costumes and items from the county councils collections for us to photograph. We also visited the records office at Wigston and photographed photos and adverts etc. Having these resources were invaluable to us.

The corridor took approximately 9 months to complete. The reminiscence sessions held by in house occupational therapists on the ward identified the five main themes for the boards.

These themes are, local life, working life, homelife, young adulthood and going out, childhood.

We worked to gather information as mentioned above and Dena and Jemma went out photographing and collecting items to include. Dena spent hours photoshopping images and hanging out in odd parts of Leicester City Centre to get the right pictures. We wanted the boards to have a balance of colour as we knew that they would be packed full of images, in order for the eye to be able to pick out individual motifs we really tried to make things distinguishable from one another.

Thanks also to Katie Barker, occupational therapy assitant for her input and work putting together the reminiscence boxes that accompany the boards and live on the trolley that also houses the TV. This trolley is a mobile resource that be taken onto the wards and represents the boards we created as Dena has put together a DVD of stills from the boards and even included more material we collected from patients that we couldnt include on the boards or the wall.

We also had vinyls made to run along the wall over, under and inbetween the boards which represent things that patients said to us during the reminscence sessions.

Its been a joy to work on this project and its wonderfull seeing the corridor used as a resource. watching a person face, still and then light up as a memory comes through from way back, as the person remembers something important to them is priceless.

The corridor will be a permanent fixture at the Evington Centre and we hope to build on this initial work, there is another half of the corridor to fill.