How to Support You Community
We want the project to grow and for other schools and town partnerships to get on board and support people living with dementia in their local community.
As a result of our Sway Life Stories project we have had staff and a large number of students across Alsager become Dementia Friends. We are proud to be part of such an amazing movement and our actions include;
- Getting in touch and staying in touch with someone we know living with dementia
- Volunteering for an organisation that helps people with dementia
- Campaigning for change, eg by signing up to Alzheimer’s Society’s campaigns to improve the lives of people with dementia
- Wearing our badges and telling 5 friends about the Dementia Friends initiative
- Carrying out a personal action, E.g. Be more patient when out in my community
If you have been inspired by our Sway Life Stories we strongly encourage you to set up your own community project. The aim is to make our whole UK community dementia friendly and support Alzheimer’s Society and Dementia Friends by working together to support and raise awareness of dementia across our society.
To help you get started with your community project we have created a Step by Step guide;
To get the project up and running it was important that we approached it as a collaborative enterprise and placed the needs of the person living with dementia and their families at the forefront of our thinking. It was important to all involved that the project would only be a success if the person living with dementia would benefit from being involved in the project and feel part of the process.
To help this the Alsager Partnership was key in finding couples who wanted to be part of the project and without the Alsager Partnership the project would not have started.
Top tip approach your local town partnership and or dementia friends representative.
Once the Partnership had contacted the couples who were interested we then arranged workshops during the school day where the couples and the partnership could come into school and meet the students and staff.
We organised the students who wanted to be involved and arranged a safe, ground floor venue for the workshops with refreshments and biscuits. Parents were involved at this stage so we had parental consent and we explained that the project would also count toward the students GCSE Art coursework as an additional portfolio piece.
The students (supported by staff members) met with couples who brought their original photographs and artifacts. We shared stories, photographs and memories about their lives. It is a wonderful meeting and a privilege to have seen different generations coming together to share their stories.
After the meeting the couples leave with us their original photographs and we secured them in a locked storage. Staff then photographed the original photographs, organised the digital images into a secure area and printed the images ready for the next Step – Art collage Workshops.
We returned the couples’ priceless photographs the very next session. These artifacts were kept secure in a locked room and treated with the upmost respect.
We then set up a series of further workshops in school where the students lead art workshops with the couples in which we they collaboratively collaged copies of the original photographs to create mixed media collages in the style of Robert Rauschenberg.
Through this collage making process students were able to ask more questions about the photographs and the stories behind the images, collecting as much information about the person’s history and life as possible to then use in the Sway.
The art work produced once completed is then framed and presented to the couples as a memento and thank you for sharing the stories of their lives.
Following the art collage workshops, students then started to create the actual Sway Life Stories. This was done in the following art lessons where we were able to teach the students how to use the Microsoft Sway software.
A key part of this project was our involvement in the Microsoft Educator Community which led to Lee Whitmarsh becoming selected to be a MIEE (Microsoft Innovate Educator Expert). We highly recommend visiting the MEC (Microsoft Educator Community) to sign up and take advantage of the free Microsoft training on offer to educators. Taking part and contributing through the MEC may inspire you to apply to become part of the fantastic MIEE community.
One of the first steps was teaching the students how to use Sway and we took this opportunity to ask the students to produce a Sway presentation on the artwork of Robert Rauschenberg. This was a great way for the students to explore the many different options for presenting content such as image stacks, comparison sliders and adding video clips.
The aim is to teach an initial group of students how to use Sway and then for them to become ‘Digital Leaders’ and teach other students and staff across the school so the Sway Life Stories project can grow and develop across year groups.
The student then set about creating the Sway Life Stories in lesson in preparation for the next series of workshops.
For the final few workshops staff booked out portable devices, so we could show the couples how their Sway Life Story was progressing and then could refine and tweak any aspect of the presentation with the students making the changes in real time.
The aim was to share stories and experiences but with the added dimension of the couples seeing in real time how their interactive story is progressing in the way and direction that is important to them. At no point do we direct the running order or content as we feel it is vital to the project that the couples have ownership of their own Sway Life Story.
Finally once the Sway Life Story is ready we meet and share the presentation, how to access and use the Sway software and how the couples could add to the Life Story and share with other family members.
The long-term aim is to build a dementia friendly community so the couples we have worked feel part of the school community and the students develop an understanding of the role community plays in society through real life project-based learning. Learning that equips students with empathy, understanding, communication skills and 21stcentury technology skills that will support them on their future journey.