A Newcastle dementia choir is seeing great success and welcoming more members.
Sandra Coulter set up dementia charity Silverline Memories nine years ago in Kenton and in June she created Silverline Memories Geordie Dementia Choir. It was created at the request of Tony Dodds, a member of Silverline Memories who is living with young-onset dementia.
The choir had its first performance on Tuesday night at St Aidan's church in Brunton Park, Gosforth and it was a great success.
Sandra said the reaction to the performance has been great. She added: "We have been asked about the possibility of singing in care homes, which came as a surprise to us, so we are trying to see if that would be viable".
This comes after actress Vicky McClure's BBC documentary that highlighted the impact singing could have on dementia patients and led to a push to get more people involved in Singing for the Brain, the initiative set up by Alzheimer's Society. There has been a huge rise in people signing up to these types of singing groups in the months that have followed.
The choir meets every Tuesday from 10:30am-12:30pm, and Sandra is encouraging as many people to join as she can.
She said: "Dementia is such an isolating condition which causes people to lose access to their local community. It also comes with a lot of unnecessary stigma that is just awful."
Silverline Memories runs a Dementia Activity Centre which is funded by a charity shop next door, in order to move towards making the charity self sustainable with funding having dried up. The plan, Sandra says, is to hold future performances in the afternoon and evenings in order to get more funding and help more people living with dementia in the North East.
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