Liverpool Care Home Brings Mobile Museum to Residents

Care home staff in Liverpool organised for a unique mobile museum to visit their home to help residents take a trip down memory lane.

Staff at Oak Springs Care Home in Wavertree, Liverpool, treated residents to the House of Memories On The Road tour bus experience.

The bus, the first of its kind in the UK, is National Museums Liverpool’s new touring mobile museum that opens up into an immersive cinema and activity space.

It has been specially designed to create memorable experiences for socially isolated people and those living with dementia.

House of Memories On The Road uses digital technology to recreate the past through a virtual front door. Experiences include a trip on Liverpool’s Overhead Railway, a day out at the seaside and a visit to a grocery store as it would have looked in the 1950s.

The trip was arranged by the activities coordinator at Oak Springs Care Home, a 74-bed home which offers a mix of residential, dementia and early onset dementia care across three floors.

Andrea Lyon, Registered Manager of Oak Springs Care Home, said: “The specially constructed bus is a brilliant idea of National Museums Liverpool and makes it so easy for people in a care setting to experience.

“Our residents thoroughly enjoyed the experience with many of them remembering Liverpool’s Overhead Railway which operated along the Liverpool Docks. It was a great opportunity for them to discuss their own stories about it as many used the railway to commute to work.

“Another resident enjoyed looking at the memories from the old corner shops as she used to run a shop. She talked to us about how she remembered carefully weighing out butter, meat and sweets for customers.”