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Current Projects of the Network
This research project is operating in 8 centres across England and Wales and is supported by research teams at 5 universities: Bangor, UCL, Hull, Manchester and Bradford. It takes the “Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today” (RYCT) programme as its starting point and looks at the effect of this on 24 groups of 10 families. A control group of matching size is also involved in the research for this project. This is the biggest single study of reminiscence undertaken to date. The research is still on-going and the results will be available in the last quarter of 2011. This research project builds on the European Reminiscence Network’s reminiscence project, “Remembering Yesterday, caring Today”, for people with dementia and their family carers, piloted in 1997 and developed across Europe ever since. Image above: Working with families.
Pam Schweitzer is the consultant and trainer to the REMCARE project. Please see the short film “Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today”:
The European Reminiscence Network is now operating a new dementia project entitled “Remembering Together: Reminiscence Training for families living with dementia” (RTRT): 2010-12 Remembering Together: Reminiscence Training for Carers of people with dementia 
The current Grundtvig-funded project has 11 partners from 10 EU countries. Partners come from UK (ERN and Northern Ireland Reminiscence Network) France, Germany, Netherlands, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Spain, Poland, Finland and Ireland. The Learning Partnership is co-ordinated by Pam Schweitzer. In each partner country, we are undertaking a series of arts-based reminiscence sessions with families living with dementia and introducing them to the value of sharing life stories and personal memories creatively in a group. Our special focus is on enabling carers to incorporate reminiscence into their home lives as well as enabling them to enjoy participating with their relatives in the reminiscence sessions. Image above/right: European Reminscence Network partners in Belfast.
These meetings are in Northern Ireland, Finland, Spain and Germany. The final meeting in Germany will include an exhibition of all the creative arts work produced during the project. Image above/left: Partners in the RTRT (Remembering Together, Reminiscence Training) project in Kotka, Finland for their second project meeting April 2011. Comments from people with dementia in the Netherlands:
And from their carers:
2009-10 Transitions in Later Life: a week-long Learner Workshop
The workshop used creative reminiscence and life review exercises to reflect on our life journeys to date, and used theatre-based exercises to envision the futures participants hoped for. Image: The Transitions workshop. Working in small groups and as a whole group we tested these creative approaches and considered their effectiveness in enabling us to manage change at a personal, psychological and social level. The learning explored in this workshop is still being developed and will result in an online manual conveying the essentials of the course so that it can be tried in other countries and different contexts.
Responses by participants from different EU countries:
In 2010, the ERN director, Pam Schweitzer, undertook the first reminiscence training visit to India. Working in association with the Alzheimers Society of India (ARDSI) Pam gave training sessions, workshops, lectures and advice sessions in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The visit was to support local initiatives and advise on incorporating reminiscence into group activities in day centres and one-to-one work in the home environment. Of particular interest to participating groups was the idea of linking with the ERN projects, so some will work in parallel with our RTRT project and some will help families to develop memory boxes or life story books. When we develop our RTRT website (which will be linked to this site) we hope to feature some of the work emerging from the Indian groups.
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Partners in this international project are meeting four times over the course of the next two years to prepare and train, to share experience of running the project in their countries and to document the work. 
