JOURNALIST, writer and broadcaster Sally Magnusson will tell the “biggest story of my life” at a special event in Dunfermline’s Glen Pavilion on Wednesday 30th April.

Sally will launch a pilot training programme and donation drive which her charity, Playlist for Life, hopes to roll out as a national model.

Driven by her own poignant experience of her late mother’s dementia, Sally founded the charity to bring the beneficial power of personally meaningful music to people living with dementia, in home or residential-care settings, by encouraging families and care-givers to create a playlist of uniquely meaningful music on an iPod or similar device.

She will also read from her best-seller, Where Memories Go, a moving memoir of her late mother’s long struggle with dementia, at the launch event.

In tandem with the charity’s wider research to test the playlist approach as a post-diagnostic tool in the treatment of all kinds of dementia, the Rotary Club of Dunfermline is now preparing to collect disused iPods as part of a training pilot funded by the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust.

The Dunfermline pilot, run by Playlist for Life trustee and trainer Andy Lowndes, will work with staff from care homes, voluntary groups working with people with dementia in the community and family carers, who will be provided with specialist training and IT equipment to allow them to construct and load personal playlists, enabling people with dementia to have access to their playlist whenever needed.

Dunfermline has been picked for this pilot as the size of the community provides a balanced cross-section of those affected by dementia, both within family homes and residential care.

Of those diagnosed with dementia in Fife, approximately 63.5 per cent live in their own home in the community, while the remaining 36.5 per cent live in long-term care.

Rotary club president Alan Mutter said, “Many local families have been touched by dementia, which Sally describes as one of the greatest social, medical, economic and moral challenges of our times.

"Our donation drive – led by past-president David Steele – is appealing to members of the public to support the pilot by dropping surplus iPods and related equipment into special bins which will be located at Waterstone’s bookstore in Dunfermline and other central locations.” Past president Angus Hogg – whose accountant daughter, Fiona Haro, is a trustee and treasurer of the charity – told fellow Rotarians that Dunfermline Abbey Youth Group had also assembled a team of 15 volunteers to serve as ‘youth ambassadors’ and assist in loading iPods with personalised playlists.

He said that while in the Dunfermline and Rosyth area alone there were more than 1300 women and more than 600 men living with dementia, the devastating impacts of the disease were felt throughout whole families.

He added, “If this pilot works in Dunfermline, it is a community project that can work anywhere.

"The programme is designed to create a model that can be rolled out to other towns and communities. The club’s donation drive, as a Rotary project, also has the potential to go national.” Robin Watson, chairman of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, said, “Trustees have committed a grant of over £10,000 towards the local Playlist pilot project which will involve the acquisition of equipment, work with care-home staff and families, specialist training, creation of playlists and testing and evaluation.

“We believe that supporting this pilot will go some way towards helping the growing numbers of families in Dunfermline affected by this cruel disease.” There is a growing body of international research that if people with dementia are offered frequent access to the music in which their past experience and memories are embedded, it can improve their mood and awareness, their ability to think and interact and their sense of identity and independence.

Tickets for ‘An Evening with Sally Magnusson’ are available, priced £4 (inclusive of a glass of wine), from Waterstone’s Bookshop in Dunfermline or at the Dunfermline Abbey shop. The launch event begins at 7pm and includes a post-talk glass of wine.