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From Guardian Unlimited web-site
Quoted from Mark Gould’s article in The Guardian
Wednesday April 26, 2006. See the full article at
http://society.guardian.co.uk/longtermcare/story/0,,1760985,00.html
Sheila's recovered memories are now preserved on an LP called Songs and Stories From the Centre, a limited edition vinyl album featuring people with dementia and mental illness who have been encouraged over a period of many months to recall and record fragments of their autobiographies in collaboration with professional musicians and composers. Only 500 copies have been made, and the album is being promoted in the "serious" music press as a work of art. It's like a startling collision of Samuel Beckett, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Tom Waits - but it is also about raising awareness of degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's.
Fascinating lives
The songs and stories, part of Clegg's Trebus Projects, were recorded in professional studios and nursing homes. They reveal glimpses of fascinating lives, such as a wartime code-breaker at Bletchley Park, and a sailor who helped sink the German battleship Bismarck. Some are distressingly bleak; others are funny. There is no attempt to glamorise or sentimentalise the illness or the contributors, but all are based on genuine memories filtered through the fog of dementia.
The project was not conceived as a form of therapy, but its emphasis on the person and uncovering their story has seen at least temporary improvement in the quality of the lives of some contributors.
The work could also result in positive changes in the way care-home staff relate to residents. The care-home company Care UK is working with the Trebus Projects to develop a more individualised approach to care, with the broader aim of promoting active lives and improving quality of life.
The project was the brainchild of Clegg, a former artist and gallery curator, and the musician Tommaso del Signore. It started in 2003 and has now worked with 250 people in day centres, nursing homes and their own homes.
Most of the works on the album were a result of many months' conversations. The contributor who was a gunner on a ship that helped sink the Bismarck told filthy sailors' anecdotes and sings the sea shanty Maggie May on the album.
Some of the revelations actually led to improvements in care. One man was woken up at 9am by the carers, but Clegg says he was always really cheesed off and didn't want to do anything. It emerged that he spent his working life as a milkman, getting up a 4am, so Clegg suggested that he was woken early and had his breakfast when the night staff were on. "He was a different character," he says.
It was decided to put the album on vinyl because a lot of people were simply too old to recognise a CD. Clegg says: "Vinyl was a way of making a hard drive of these people's memories - backing up something that was gone." He named the works the Trebus Projects in memory of Edmund Trebus, the elderly and highly eccentric hoarder featured in the BBC TV series, A Life of Grime.
"Trebus was a collector of anything and everything, and I saw a lot of myself in him, collecting fragments of other people's forgotten lives. It's a kind of archaeology - like brushing the dirt off a tiny fragment of mosaic and exposing something that tells you a bigger story."
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The Trebus Projects (named as a homage to Edmund Trebus collector and unrecognised artist from the BBC's 'A Life of Grime') began in October 2003 as a spoken word archive of life stories, opinions and experiences of people with dementia and mental illness. Over two years 'Trebus Projects' has grown to work continuously with over 250 individuals in day centres, nursing homes and in the community across a range of media that includes written biographies, songs, drawings, films and plays.
