Page 27 - Storytelling - Storylistening

VII. Reminiscing Ideas for Recovering Golden Memories Activity # 5: Time line
Creating and maintaining a time line is an ongoing activity and requires someone to take responsibility for continuous coordination.
1. Choose a wall in an area where residents and visitors may browse the time line and converse without distraction.
2. A time line listing the major historic events of the 20th Century can be created on poster board, wood, Styrofoam, cork, fabric or other suitable display materials.
At DHMC, they used 11 panels – one for each decade plus an introduction. (Now that we are in the 21st Century, Barnard suggests adding additional panels for every one to five years in the new millennium. Residents can meet in learning circles to determine which current world events should be added to the new panels.)
The DHMC panels are made of foam core board placed in a frame with hinges at the top, enabling the glass cover to be lifted back and the time line contents removed and updated. The size of each panel is 20” x 30”, about the same size as poster board sold in department stores.
Photos, stamps and news articles (copied from microfilm/fiche) are mounted on each panel and colored by volunteers and patients to resemble tinting found in old photographs – a process that often incites spontaneous reminiscing and storytelling among those involved, adds Barnard.
3. A thin horizontal line runs the length of 10 panels (10 decades). The line is intersected with short vertical lines indicating the dates of major historical events. The lines and descriptions may be neatly drawn and written by hand, or typed and printed from a computer.
4. Family members, volunteers and staff help accumulate historic dates, news articles, photographs and artifacts from the period and post them on the panel representing the appropriate decade.
5. Next, residents think back to the dates on the time line to recall important events in their own lives, and talk about those memories in learning circles, or in one-on-one conversations.
p.23 ©Action Pact, Inc.2005-2006 Porch Swing SeriesTM Culture Change Workbooks