Many Memories, Many Stories : Participatory Music Project for Elderly People with Dementia – Music Pedagogical Applications for Elderly Care

”Many Stories, Many Memories” was a participatory creative music project carried out in collaboration with three professional musicians, a group of seven senior residents and the occupational therapist of “Suomikoti”-elderly home in Stockholm, February 20th – March 21st 2013 . The aim of the project was to build community feeling, participation and operation for the elderly people with dementia by intervening musically in their everyday lives. During the eight workshop-sessions, improvisation pieces were created by using song, text, fine arts, percussion instruments, body percussion, piano, kantele, and violin.The emphasized qualities of the project’s musical working methods were contextuality, and person-centered and focus group - oriented approaches. The purpose of multi-sensor exercises was to support the participants’ sense of body and reinforce their identity. The project, during which the musicians and the group of seniors met in the field of performing arts, was completed with a collectively composed semi-improvised concert, which was performed to an audience consisting of the residents and staff of Suomikoti, as well as family members.“Many Memories, Many Stories” was my Professional Integration Project (PIP) in the international Joint Music Master for New Audience and Innovative Practice – Master Degree Program (NAIP) at on the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Observational periods at local Stockholm elderly homes as well as a preparatory project were conducted prior to the PIP-project. The goal of the PIP-project and this Master Thesis was to create new empiric data on the potentials of creative participatory music workshops for elderly care. This project’s musical intervention was carried out as practice-based research, and was documented session by session both in written reflections and on video for data- analysis. Semi-structured thematic interviews were also conducted for obtaining data. The interviewees were professional practitioners on the fields of music and health-care.The outcomes of the project reveal that intensive participation in the project had positive effects on the people’s motor skills, creativity, expression, social interaction and self- esteem, which by enriching their everyday lives improve their general quality of life.Attached to this Master Thesis are two videos; a documentary-DVD describing the process of the project, and an edition of the”Many Memories, Many Stories”-concert in full length. The documentary DVD contains mainly video-footage from the workshop sessions.Bilaga: 1 DVD