Memory Cafe

On Saturday 24^th March, we held our first Memory Café at Holly Bank. The aim of the Café was for residents to reminisce with their family/friends utilising Memory Suitcases we loaned from House of Memories at the Museum of Liverpool.

The Memory Suitcases were different themed. There is a huge selection to choose from, and the ones we opted for were Sports, Putting on a Spread and General. When I picked them up, I was really surprised at how big they were and the amount of items in each one.  They are such an excellent resource to utilise.

The residents that wanted to take part really enjoyed going through all the items. The suitcases encouraged lots of conversation and got quite a few laughs out of people. It was great to hear such lively and animated conversation.

We will be holding another Memory Café in June, in which we hope to create Memory Trees with our residents, using the templates we have from House of Memories.

We hope the Memory Café will grow in popularity and that next time the weather will be warm enough for us to sit outside and hold it.

Spring at Holly Bank

We are looking forward to more sunshine and warmer weather at Holly Bank. The garden is starting to get prepared with some beautiful flowers.

We have purchased herbs to start our own herb garden. These will then be used as part of the sensory garden we are creating, to fill the air with nice smells. We will also then utilise the herbs in our delicious home cooked food.

We have been completing resident questionnaires this week, and there is a general consensus that people are looking forward to being able to sit in the garden once the weather gets warmer.

This week we will be launching our Memory Cafe. Residents and families will be able to take part in a reminiscing session, utilising Memory Suitcases we have on loan from the Museum of Liverpool whilst tucking into some homemade cake and a cup of tea or coffee. We hope the cafe will be successful and we will be able to make it a quarterly event.

We will also be listening to some good old classics on vinyl and hope to make this a happy and cheerful event that people look forward to.

Also going on, we have the lounge stocked with Easter Bonnet making supplies and templates to design your own Easter egg. Please feel free to get stuck into these activities if you come for a visit. You can write an Easter message on one of the templates and stick it on our Easter screen in the lounge.

You can check on the blog for regular updates about what we have been getting up to. You can also follow us here on Twitter.