Make Sense
West Hampstead Memory Cafe
West Hampstead Memory Cafe, a collaboration between Darshan Vora and Right At Home Camden, Hampstead & Golders Green, provides a monthly haven for individuals with dementia or memory loss. Held at West Hampstead Community Centre, the cafe offers participants the opportunity to engage in art and movement workshops while enjoying a delicious lunch.
Darshan, who grew up in the area, expressed his desire to give back to the community by establishing a space where those living with dementia and their carers could connect through creativity and shared meals. With the support of the popular local bakery, Roni's, the cafe has hosted five workshops featuring a variety of stimulating activities, including printing with nature, drawing from sound, paper marbling, clay modelling, and silk painting.
Beyond the creative exploration, the workshops foster conversation and even inspire poetic expression. During the marbling session, Karin De Novellis shared readings from her poignant publication, "Closing Time at the Kings Head," a collection of poems born from her husband's journey with dementia. This brave act of sharing personal experiences created a valuable space for connection and understanding among participants facing similar challenges. Those interested in purchasing Karin's book can email her directly at karindenovellis@gmail.com or find it online, with all profits benefiting charities supporting individuals with dementia.
Observing the diverse creative responses in each workshop is consistently fascinating. With no pressure on artistic output, the participants' approaches to visual abstraction vary significantly from session to session. Drawing to sound, in particular, elicits a wide range of responses. After learning to create small sketchbooks, participants translate a series of familiar and unfamiliar sounds into drawings. It's intriguing to learn from carers how dementia may have influenced their loved one's creative inhibitions, sometimes leading to unexpectedly precise or uninhibited expressions.
Clay modelling has proven to be one of the most popular workshops in the series. While the workshop's format varies across our different locations, the cafe's strong emphasis on food inspired us to guide participants in creating clay interpretations of dumplings. This session brought together individuals from seven different nationalities, including Indian, Turkish, and Polish. The dumplings served as a catalyst for conversations about food culture and identity, even prompting a subsequent drawing session focused on other meals. We plan to have participants paint their clay dumplings in an upcoming workshop.
