Features / technology
Connecting music with memories
Chloe Meineck, 28, is founder of Studio Meineck, a Bristol-based company that tackles social issues, designing solutions that are creative, digital and physical. That’s exactly what the Music Memory Box, created by Studio Meineck, is: a creative tool for families and people living with dementia.
The Music Memory Box, created at Pervasive Media Studio in Watershed, connects memories and music, using objects, familiar tunes and pictures within a musical box to help people with dementia connect with their past.
Chloe started research for the project in 2012, looking at the connection between music and memory, deciding that she needed to create something that linked music and dementia, as so many studies highlight the effectiveness of using music to jog memories. She completed design and artist residencies, and even visited Japan to see if her idea could work worldwide, crossing cultural barriers. She had success – instead of using western songs, the boxes were inputted with Japanese children’s rhymes called Shoka, and they had a profound impact on the users.
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“There’s so much research which shows that using multiple senses triggers memories,” she says, “You see it in films all the time.
“There’s a famous clip of an older man called Henry who is sat relatively unresponsive in his wheelchair, when he hears a track he remembers, he’s suddenly lit up, singing and chatting about how the music makes him feel.
“I see the same effect with the people I work with Music Memory Box.”
To create the Music Memory Box, Chloe combined craft and technology, going on a electronics course and refining her creation with hundreds of people living with dementia and their families. “It really was co-designed,” she says. Speaking of the product’s unique look, Chloe says: “It’s designed to look like a jukebox and memory box. There’s no point having something that look alien and scary, or something with too many buttons like a CD player.
“Jukeboxes look familiar and everyone has memories stored away in shoe boxes. The colours are important too. Eyesight changes with dementia, so there’s bright red boxes as well as more traditional colours, because people in the later stages of dementia need more contrasting tones.”
The Music Memory Box looks like a jukebox on the outside and a shoe box full of memories inside
The Music Memory Box has been in design for seven years, being refined and perfected. The project started life in Brighton, however, not Bristol.”But I was really struggling with support,” Chloe says, “the Pervasive Media Studio space was friendly and creative and so welcoming.
“There was strong female role models too, which was new to me.”
Studio Meineck are running a Kickstarter to raise awareness for the project with care homes, families and people with dementia, saying: “We’re ready to launch it in a big way. We want people to know about music and dementia.”
The communities within Bristol have been integral to to getting the Music Memory Box to where it is today. The studio worked with Brunelcare, St. Monica Trust and Bristol Black Carers and Chloe is keen to highlight the importance of working with a range of people living with dementia: “Lots of dementia services are for white, British people. They’re prescriptive.
“We worked with Bristol Black Carers because Bristol has a large Somali community, for example, and we wanted to make sure it was customisable for everyone.”
Chloe Meineck wants the Music Memory Box to be available worldwide
Looking to the future, Chloe wants Music Memory Box to be available across the world, and wants to campaign and raise awareness surrounding music and dementia. Studio Meineck have other projects too, including a music-based product for children in care, and a new project about depression.
Chloe says of her projects: “They’re all around mental health and well-being, there’s key bits of music we all have and we want to use that.”
The Kickstarter is live now at www.kickstarter.com/projects/studiomeineck/music-memory-box-new-tech-for-people-living-with-d
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