ARE YOU SITTING AT HOME WITH NOTHING TO DO? THEN NOW IS THE TIME TO WRITE DOWN YOUR MEMORIES!

Funded by Heritage Fund

A project of Age Concern Birmingham

For millions of older people in the UK the current health crisis, caused by the Covid-19 virus, is creating feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and isolation. Keeping safe and well means staying indoors and minimising contact with neighbours, carers and loved ones.

But avoiding close contact with other people doesn’t mean that you have to be bored or feel forgotten. As people get older they often say things like “it’s about time I wrote down my life story” or their children and grandchildren will say “if only Nan, Granny or Granddad would record their precious memories”. But most of us reach older age without finding the time to commit pen to paper or to sit down at the computer keyboard and simply type away.

You may have fascinating recollections of your school days, your armed service, employment, sport, family life or historic events and younger generations are always interested to learn what life was like 60, 70 or 80 years ago and to hear those personal stories, the sad ones alongside the happy ones.     

At Age Concern Birmingham (ACB) we are running a memory based project which is funded by the Heritage Fund. We are collecting memories and stories from older people in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands, many of which will be included in a book to be published later this year or published on our blog.

Because of the Covid-19 crisis we have had to postpone our events and face-to-face interviews with local people. So we’re looking at delivering our project another way. We don’t want to stop our project when we know that there are thousands of older people in the city sitting at home feeling bored and isolated but who could still contribute stories.

Please join in with our memory writing-and-recording project today. Whether you start off with a few bullet-points or dive straight into your memoirs, write it, type it, tape it or dictate it, dig out your old documents and photographs for scanning, we welcome it all for our project!

Please send your memories to the email address below or contact us for more information on how to join in:

Send your memories to Peter Millington at Age Concern Birmingham, 76-78 Boldmere Road, Birmingham B73 5TJ.

Or email me at peter.millington@birminghamcarershub.org.uk