: Health, Wellbeing and Amgueddfa Cymru

In May 2017 we launched a new underground tour developed with and designed for people living with dementia and their carers. The Dementia Friendly Underground Tour follows the same principles of our other tours, but with a few adjustments. Before going underground participants meet with their guide for a cup of tea and a chat and the tour is slightly shorter than normal with less figures and numbers and more history. The tours are conducted by our miner guides who have been specifically trained and many have first-hand experience of knowing people who are living with dementia. To date, over 200 people living with dementia and their carers have taken part in the tours. Our plan is to schedule more of these free, bespoke tours once the museum re-opens. Here are some quotes from our miner guides and people living with dementia and their carers, who have taken part in our Dementia Friendly Underground Tours:

“It is fantastic when you see someone with dementia talking and remembering from their past.”

“I didn’t know that he had been a miner for 23 years and his companion said it was the first time they had heard so much from him in ages.”

“The tour brought back all the memories of mining.”

"The conversation I was having with the gentleman was quite detailed...it's great to think that we are able to help someone in this way"

Big Pit Miner Guide

"I was amazed to hear him having a conversation with the miner...he was remembering all the terms"

Staff member from a dementia care setting

"This gentleman has started reminiscing and even started talking about his school days. This has done him the world of good"

Staff member from a dementia care setting

Cardiff and Vale UHB have an established Young Onset Dementia Service that meets regularly, providing different activities and support for anyone who receives a diagnosis of a progressive dementia before the age of 65.

Every month on a Friday, the group meets for a walk in a different location in Cardiff and St Fagans National Museum of History is really pleased to have become one of those locations. Learning staff meet with the group four times a year to take a seasonal walk around the site. We look at nature, animals, how the seasons are changing and of course the historic buildings and collection. After our walk we get together for a cup of tea and a biscuit and have a chat.

The group leader has said that ‘the walks are fantastically popular and very well attended. The walks provide an outlet for people to come together and learn that they are not alone in the challenges they experience and gain mutual support and friendship.’

The session is relaxed and friendly and hopefully a safe space for the group enabling them to feel confident in returning in their own time.

These are unprecedented and challenging times for everyone, and we hope you’re keeping safe and well. Creativity and a sense of community can support us through this difficult time. The Museum therefore has launched the Exhibition of Hope which aims to be a tangible form of Hope for everyone.

People, including Museum Wales staff and volunteers, from across Wales have been taking part in creating squares which will form part of giant rainbow knitted blanket and will be stitched together by our wonderful National Wool Museum volunteers. In addition, we’re also collecting photographs of people’s radiant rainbow creations which have been adorning windows up and down the country. These will then be made into one piece of artwork and displayed alongside the giant rainbow blanket.

Rainbows are often used as a symbol of peace and hope and as we know, they often appear when the sun shines following heavy rainfall. They serve to remind us that following dark times, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Following the Exhibition smaller blankets will be created from the giant blanket and donated to charities.

Everyone can take part in this Exhibition. We’re inviting people to create an 8” or 20cm square in any way they would like, whether that be knitted, woven, felted or crocheted, in any pattern and any rainbow colour. As well as this, participants are invited to send in photographs of their wonderful rainbows. For more information on how to take part please visit our Exhibition of Hope article.

The National Wool Museum has many craft volunteers and gardening volunteers who maintain the Museum’s Natural Dye Garden. They have been busy contributing to the Exhibition. Garden Volunteer, Susan Martin created natural dyed yarn which she spun herself. The rainbow colours are from woad, weld and madder which Susan blended together with white to give a lighter and tweedy effect and all these plants can be found in the National Wool Museum’s Dye Garden.

Here are some wonderful creations by Cristina, a craft volunteer at the Museum:

and by craft volunteer Amanda:

Thanks to everyone who is taking part. For the latest information on the National Wool Museum’s Exhibition of Hope and photographs find us on Facebook or Twitter @amgueddfawlan.

The Coal Shed at Big Pit was launched in May 2019 and was the first Men’s Shed to be launched in Torfaen. Located in the museum’s old fitting shop the group have brought an historic building back to life in the spirits of its original purpose, previously the pick sharpening shop for the mine, where miner’s mandrels were repaired. Each individual shed’s activities depend entirely on the skills and interests of its members.

The Men’s Shed idea originated in Australia 12 years ago and was developed by the health board to tackle growing concerns of social isolation amongst their male population. They identified that high numbers of men had too much time on their hands (due to retirement, unemployment, illness etc.) and these things often manifested themselves in boredom, men suffering in silence with declining mental health and in the worst cases of suicide. The Men’s Sheds movement is based on the understanding that men are more likely to help themselves and attend something they have set up or have some control over.

Men’s Sheds Cymru, a Big Lottery funded project, has been created to help communities across the country set-up their own Men’s Sheds

The Coal Shed has been supported by Blaenavon Town Council and funding has been received from Western Power Distribution and People’s Postcode Lottery. For more information on the Coal Shed, please email Sharon Ford. For more Men’s Shed information visit www.mensshedscymru.co.uk

Last week, we launched an online questionnaire asking for your experiences and feelings of living in Wales during the coronavirus pandemic. From the responses we’ve received so far, it seems that a number of you are finding comfort and peace of mind through making – from quilts to facemasks, scrub bags to small embroideries. The connection between making and improved mental health is of course widely-known, with studies showing that craft and the visual arts can help to alleviate anxiety and stress in some people.

The textile collection at St Fagans includes several pieces which reveal the historic interplay between craft and mental health. These include needlework stitched by sailors on long voyages away from home, to more formal forms of occupational therapy made by convalescing patients. In all cases, we can only assume that the repetitive rhythm of the making process, and the focus required to complete the task, must have benefitted the makers in some way. I say ‘assume’ because the voices of these makers are usually missing from the narrative, which makes documenting current experiences of crafting through the pandemic even more important.

One of the most poignant pieces in the collection is a tablecloth made at Whitchurch Hospital, embroidered with the signatures of a group of soldier-patients and staff in 1917. During the First World War, the Cardiff City Mental Hospital (as Whitchurch was then called) was ceded to the military and became known as the Welsh Metropolitan War Hospital (1915-19). Civilian psychiatric patients were moved to other institutions, while injured soldiers returning from the frontline occupied their beds. From 1917 until 1919, the hospital specialized in both orthopaedic and mental health conditions.   

The signatures embroidered on the tablecloth include two important figures in the history of psychiatric care in Wales – Dr Edwin Goodall and Matron Florence Raynes. Goodall, an eminent psychiatrist who trained at Guy’s Hospital in London, was appointed the first Medical Superintendent of Whitchurch in 1906, two years before the hospital opened. He was awarded a CBE in 1919 for his pioneering treatment of shell-shock. Florence Raynes was also a trailblazer in her own right, being the first woman to have overall responsibility for the hospital's entire nursing staff. 

The exact reasons for creating the tablecloth are unknown. Was it made as a form of occupational or diversional therapy for the soldiers? Could it have been an exhibition piece or a fund-raiser? Or perhaps initiated as a memento for a patient, nurse or doctor? Despite several attempts in recent years to unravel its history, the tablecloth remains a mystery. 

In general, the feelings and intentions of makers are frustratingly absent from our records, and we know very little about the emotions of the people who crafted the historic objects in our care. How did they feel about making in times of crisis, ill-health or confinement? What did the creative process give them? If you're finding solace in your sewing machine or knitting needles during these difficult days, please consider sharing your lockdown crafting experience with us through the questionnaire. We want to hear your story to ensure that the wellbeing benefits of making in the present do not go untold.