BBC Music to launch website for BBC Music Day 2018

BBC Music Memories will be launched in celebration of BBC Music Day 2018

BBC Music is launching a new website to feature music designed to trigger memories in people with dementia to celebrate BBC Music Day 2018.

BBC Music Memories, the new website, is inspired by the increasing amount of research on the positive effects’ music has in helping those with dementia.

Music is increasingly being used in care homes as research shows it can reach damaged parts of the brain in ways other forms of community cannot.

Users will be able to create their own playlist and are invited to share their top tunes to help others and to find the UK’s favourite musical memories.

The website will be working with Playlist for Life, a music and dementia charity as well as being supported by Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Scotland, Dementia UK and Carers UK who will be encouraging their members to visit the site.

Rebecca Sandiford, BBC Music Day commissioner, said: “BBC Music Day is about the power of music.

“BBC Music Memories is designed to tap into that power to help those with dementia reconnect with the music they have loved, share their memories, and help us discover the nation’s favourite music memories.”

Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody is the ambassador for BBC Music Memories and authored a special film on music and dementia for The One Show – in the video, he spoke movingly about his father’s dementia.

He said: “Music changed my life. It’s been my whole life.

“I started the band when I was 18 so my whole adult life music has been both my passion and my job. It is the most powerful international language.

“It can break you and mend you sometimes in the span of a single song.

“My dad has dementia and anything that throws a light on the disease and helps in any way to reconnect people with their lost memories is something I want to be involved in.”

BBC Music Memories contains snippets of around 1800 musical tracks, including the most popular songs from the last 100 years, TV and Radio theme tunes and the most popular pieces from twenty classical composers.

BBC Music Day is an annual celebration of the power music has to change lives.

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