A huge thank you to everyone who supported our parliamentary reception at Holyrood yesterday, whether in person or from afar!
We had an entertaining and productive evening hearing from some amazing speakers about how personal music can improve wellbeing and why it is crucial that decision-makers support embedding playlists into dementia care to help people across the U.K. now.
Playlist for Life president Sally Magnusson shared her personal experience with using in dementia care with her mother Mamie that led to her founding the charity in 2013, and we heard some powerful testimony from our lived experience ambassador Carol about how discovering and using playlists has been life-changing for managing symptoms.
We received some wonderful endorsements for our work from MSPs including Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport Tom Arthur, Leader of the Scottish Labour Party @Anas Sarwar and our generous event sponsor Foysol Choudhury. We were also delighted to have Neil Bibby, Kaukab Stewart, Michael Marra and Jackson Carlaw at our event, all of whom have supported our work, including visiting some of our amazing +2600 community partners distributing free playlist resources that make up our Help Point network.
We enjoyed a performance from our new musical ambassadors The Bluebells, plus our wonderful dementia-inclusive choir and charity partner the Westerton Male Voice Choir whose rousing renditions got the whole room singing, including a track that tops the playlist of our ambassador Sir Alex Ferguson of ‘Moon River’.
We want to see everyone singing from the same song sheet when it comes to embedding personal playlists into dementia care in the U.K., where if nothing changes, 1 in 2 people will be affected by dementia by either developing the condition, caring for someone with it, or both.
There’s no cure for dementia but we know that personally meaningful music can help, so we look forward to continuing our discussions with key decision-makers about making personal playlists in dementia care a reality from diagnosis to end-of-life care
