Music that gives you that flashback feeling can be a lifeline if you get dementia. Our founder, the writer and broadcaster Sally Magnusson, discovered this by accident when caring for her mother, Mamie, who had dementia.
After Mamie’s death Sally wrote her best-selling memoir Where Memories Go: why dementia changes everything. In the course of her research she learned that this power of personal music is a recognised phenomenon backed up by decades of research but was still not widely shared with families in the UK.
Sally founded Playlist for Life in 2013 to change that by sharing the power of personal playlists – all the tunes that are meaningful to an individual gathered together, often on an mp3 player, to create ‘the soundtrack to their life’. Our vision is that every person with dementia should have access to a unique personal playlist and everyone who loves and cares for them should know how to use it to make living with the condition easier and happier.https://www.playlistforlife.org.uk/our-history/