Tangible memories

An increasing percentage of citizens worldwide are aging (Anderson & Hussey, 2000; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003) and moving into retirement communities (United States Senate Special Committee on Aging, 2010), but museum professionals have few museum models in the literature examining programs for older adults. There is, however, research on programs similar to those offered by museums that have been conducted by clinical researchers. Six general types of museum programs for seniors exist. Within these general program types, the most common both in museums and other settings is reminiscence. Reminiscence involves a facilitated discussion of personal memories, often with items such as food or historic objects as prompts. There is a growing body of research about the effects of therapeutic reminiscence, but only two enrichment reminiscence programs have been studied empirically (Museums Libraries & Archives, 2010; Phillips, 2008). These studies found that the multi-session programs showed evidence of fostering a sense of achievement, promoting mental and physical well-being, helping create a more cohesive social environment (Museums Libraries & Archives, 2010), encouraging communication and social interaction, and revealing care needs (Phillips, 2008). Given the positive psychosocial benefits observed in therapeutic experiments and the evidence for beneficial outcomes in multi-visit museum reminiscence, it is important to know if single-session programs have similar benefits for participants.

This research reviews the existing programs and literature and explores targeted museum outreach in the form of reminiscence in retirement communities through the lenses of the participants, retirement community staff, and the researcher to provide insight into the impact of a single-session offering across four related articles. The first article examines existing programs in museums and other settings that are targeted at older adults, analyzing the kinds of programming and research done to date. The remaining three articles focus on one program created for this study and implemented in 12 Boston-area independent-living retirement communities as a partnership with Historic Newton, examining the qualities of the participant experience, reactions of community staff, participant responses to the program, changes in mood scores before and after participation, and lessons learned for practice and research.