KarunaNews Story

The communist-era farmhouse at the Hungarian Open Air Museum is a time capsule of 1950s domesticity that offers elderly people living with dementia a return to their youth. Skanzen Museum began offering reminiscence sessions in 2014 as part of a joint EU-funded project. It leverages the fact that long-term memories remain accessible even as short-term memory declines. Five years ago, it also started offering sessions in a 1980s setting for younger people suffering from secondary dementia due to alcoholism or drug use. In the UK, Stevenage Football Club Foundation partnered with the Red Shed, a local community garden for people with dementia, for a four-week program of walking football, and in 2009, the Scottish Football Museum and Alzheimer Scotland launched Football Memories Scotland, which supports hundreds of groups across Scotland and inspired a baseball reminiscence program in the US.