Rural Soundscapes

Creating a Dementia Friendly Sound Map 

of Rural Carmarthenshire

The increase of those living with dementia nationally has led to more innovative ways of working with older people. 

For instance, Pipa Kelly (2015) talks at length about the trend for Care Farms that have been very popular in the Netherlands and how they are adapting to offer what she describes as a heart warming concept that 

'brings  people with dementia close to the smells, 

sights and sounds of the outdoors, 

to the breathing warmth of animals 

and the touch of the land'

                                            Picture by Towy Photo's

Older people living with dementia who have lived rural lives, are being taken away from their rural environment and this takes them away from the sensory memories that may help them to stay connected to their ordinary patterns of living.Care farms have gone a long way to prove the worth of re-uniting those living with dementia to their ordinary pattern of sensory life.

However, for those who do not have the ability to access the physicality of a Care farm, a collection of gentle, real time, soundscapes, mapping  out the areas within which they have lived their lives, brings back rural life to them through sound; the lambing season, milking the cows, sheering sheep, auctioning at the Mart, the horse fair ... the pounding rain, the rushing rivers, the gentle breezes, the wings of the red kite ... all these have been the backdrop of sounds that have defined the lives of those within rural Carmarthenshire.

Sound Memories Radio were kindly funded by Carmarthenshire County Council to create a Dementia Friendly Rural Sound Map.

http://www.soundmemoriesradio.com/sound-maps.html