Funding Success for Award Winning Dementia Friendly Community Project at An Lanntair

  • Published on: 23rd February 2018
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Media release 

Funding Success for Award Winning Dementia Friendly Community Project at An Lanntair

The Arora Dementia Friendly Community Team at An Lanntair has been successful in its bid for a National Lottery award for £103,536 from the Big Lottery Fund to continue and develop its award winning Dementia Friendly Community work for a further two years.

The project will have a new name ‘Cianalas’ (meaning belonging in Gaelic) and will move towards academic research to work with Universities and communities, while retaining the core support events of the current Arora project.

This Big Lottery fund has been match funded by £51,470 from Life Changes Trust, which has been the project’s core funder for the past three years. The Life Changes Trust was set up in April 2013 with a ten year £50m endowment from the Big Lottery Fund.

Since April 2015, the Arora project team has been building on An Lanntair’s existing education and outreach work by supporting people living with dementia and those in their circle of care with cultural, arts and heritage work. The project has been led by the people in the community, shaping the project work according to their interests and strengths, which has led to intergenerational working with nurseries and primary schools, care centres, day centres, hospitals and community groups.

The project will also be hosting a symposium at An Lanntair on the 23rd and 24th of April. The Cuimhne (Memory) Symposium is an exhibition, academic symposium and workshop series to celebrate the past three years work, while looking ahead to the next two years.

For more information please visit – http://lanntair.com/events/event/cuimhnememory/

Big Lottery Fund Scotland Chair, Maureen McGinn, said: “I am delighted that An Lanntair has been successful in securing a Big Lottery Fund grant. The funding will make a big difference where it is needed most and I wish An Lanntair every success as it goes on to develop and expand its project for the benefit of their local community.”

Anna Buchanan, Director of the Life Changes Trust dementia programme said, “The solution to getting it right for people with dementia lies with communities like Arora, and the relationships they build.  They have achieved extraordinary things with and for their community and the Trust is delighted to continue supporting them.  We need many more communities like this across Scotland that take an approach which focuses more on what people with dementia can do rather than what they can’t. Arora has taken this basic principle and put it into action, with good results.”

Paula Brown, Arora Project Co-ordinator said: ’The team is thrilled with the opportunity to continue and develop our work with our community through culture, arts and heritage projects and to inform the development of our work with academic partners. We are particularly moved to be continuing our work with Life Changes Trust as we have enjoyed the benefits of networking with and learning from other awardees and the support of the inspirational team. We are equally excited to be working with Big Lottery as a new funder and look forward to developing our working relationship with the new team. Both of these awards are worth more than the essential funds and represent valuable acknowledgement of the value of our work together as a community.’

-ENDS-

For more information please contact: paula@lanntair.com or on 07493716665

Twitter – @anlanntair & www.facebook.com/anlanntair

Twitter @dfclanntair & www.facebook.com/aroraanlanntair

ENDS

Notes to Editor

 

*Dementia Words – Our work with people with dementia has shown that the phrase “Dementia sufferers”, or using the word suffering to describe dementia has a strongly negative view from people with the condition.  We would request that you avoid using the phrase in headlines or in any article you publish to combat the negative way that people with dementia feel the condition is described.