Chance to Chat

Fair Shares is a Gloucestershire based community charity which encourages people to help others and in return they get some help themselves. Part of this community support involves being involved in specific projects, one of which was called ‘Chance to Chat’. This project is about: celebrating ordinary people’s lives, stimulating conversation, highlighting the importance of sharing and listening to life stories, bringing family and friends together through chat, providing connections in the community and offering opportunities to sustain and/or rebuild relationships.

Chance to Chat Cards: https://www.fairshares.org.uk/projects/chance-to-chat/

Chance To Chat Project – background:

Fair Shares developed the ‘Chance to Chat’ project by working with people living with memory difficulties, their family members and/or carers and others to design postcards and collate memory boxes to help people get to know each other better by stimulating conversation and helping to recall older memories.

A series of postcards were developed using personal, local and national images between the period from the late 1950’s to 1980’s.

The idea is that the postcard images would help stimulate conversation and memories. Then people can pass on those memories to someone they care about either by writing on the postcard itself or by meeting that person, phoning, writing a letter or sending an email. We believe this may help to keep family stories alive and help people to remember elements of that person that may be less evident now. It could also help to preserve or develop family and other relationships.

Chance to Chat Cards. Source: Forest of Dean District Council

Partnership working between Fair Shares & the Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance:

Andy Morgan-Watts, who is one of the founders of the Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance, had the idea of emulating the Chance to Chat cards in the Forest of Dean area & suggested a meeting between Chris from Fairshares & Lena Maller, representing the Alliance. This was the idea from which the collaborative project then began.

This project is one therefore which we had started some time ago & which we had been progressing just before the Lockdown started. It seemed even more important to see this through to its conclusion following the restrictions that Lockdown imposed on people – with the idea that people may still be able to connect through using these postcards during a potentially lonely & difficult time.

Chris from Fair Shares managed to visit 2 of the local memory cafes in the Forest of Dean prior to the lockdown as part of his research to determine the most effective local images in stimulating discussion & interaction. Following this research we were able to choose a selection of Forest of Dean specific images along with some national generic images to make up sets of 24 postcards in total.

It has been wonderful to conclude this project & have some resources ready to share with the community. Special thanks go to those who have contributed along the way:

Severn Dean Lions Club donated £400 towards the project.
Chris Moore from Fair Shares for all of his work creating & researching the images.
Susie Walker, Community Artist, for her work designing the postcards & making certain changes for us & for doing a fantastic job of liaising with the printers.
Thank you to those memory cafes in Bream, Coleford & other locations who helped with the research & thanks also to Sedbury memory café who had a visit planned which had to be cancelled due to the Lockdown.
Severnprint Ltd for the finished product.

Chance to Chat Cards. Source: Forest of Dean District Council

We have various networks through which we may be able to deliver packs, including our own Dementia Friendly Community Enabler Roger who is out & about in the Community in his Gloucestershire Fire service role, so if you would like a set of these postcards or know someone who would then please contact us: foddc.daa@fdean.gov.uk

We would like these ‘Chance to Chat’ cards to be accessible to everyone so they are free of charge but any voluntary donations to the Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance would be welcome as this will enable us to print more sets in the future.

If you know someone who would benefit from the Chance to Chat Postcards, please contact the Forest of Dean Dementia Action Alliance.

If you would like to book onto a FREE session, or if you would like to attend an online dementia awareness session first then please contact us on: foddc.daa@outlook.com. All you have to do is email us from your email address and we will get back to you.