House of Memories

Evaluating a museum-led dementia awareness programme for carers, communities and nursing students.

• National Museums Liverpool's award-winning programme supporting informal carers of people living with dementia through museum-based activities, community days, and online training.
• LJMU evaluations document significant improvements in carer wellbeing, dementia knowledge, and confidence — with a Social Return on Investment of £18.73:£1.
• Now active across England and Wales, with over 15,000 carers reached and ongoing research into the programme's health and social care impact.

House of Memories is a museum-led dementia awareness programme developed in 2012 by National Museums Liverpool with funding from the UK Department of Health. The programme equips formal and informal caregivers with the knowledge, skills and resources to provide person-centred care for people living with dementia. Beginning as a full-day museum-based training intervention combining forum theatre, interactive facilitation, museum tours, and reminiscence therapy, it has since evolved into a half-day film-based model supplemented by the My House of Memories app. In the decade since its launch, almost 15,000 carers from health and social care sectors and ancillary public services have participated in the programme, which has also been adapted for delivery with national and international partner museums.

LJMU researchers have been central to the evaluation of House of Memories since 2013. A series of mixed-method evaluations — led by Professor Rafaela Neiva Ganga and Dr Kerry Wilson at the Institute of Cultural Capital — have consistently demonstrated positive outcomes for both formal and informal caregivers, including increased dementia awareness, improved subjective wellbeing, enhanced care practice, and greater engagement with museums. The 2017 evaluation of the Family Carers Awareness Day, conducted as part of the wider Crossing Boundaries: The value of museums in dementia care study, extended this evidence base to informal carers specifically, incorporating social return on investment analysis across four partner museums — the Museum of Liverpool, British Museum, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, and New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester. Building on this evidence base, the team has more recently evaluated the programme's expansion into Wales (House of Memories Cymru, 2024) and into higher education through an online dementia awareness training pilot for nursing students at LJMU (2024).

Alongside the evaluative reports, a 2025 systematic literature review published in Arts & Health (Neiva Ganga & Davies) maps the international evidence base on museum-led programmes for informal dementia caregivers, identifying seven studies of medium-high quality from a search of 272 papers across three databases and four countries.

Key findings

Overall programme

Successive evaluations since 2013 have consistently shown positive impacts on formal and informal caregivers: heightened understanding of dementia and its implications; improved subjective wellbeing; increased engagement with museums; and strengthened capacity for critical, reflective, and creative approaches to care. The 2017 evaluation — conducted as part of the Crossing Boundaries: The value of museums in dementia care study — included a social return on investment analysis demonstrating that for every £1 invested in the programme, £18.73 of social value is generated over a five-year period. This figure encompasses benefits for carers, people living with dementia, partner museums, and the wider health and social care system. The 2025 systematic review (Neiva Ganga and Davies) confirms that museum-led programmes represent a valuable component of comprehensive dementia care, underscoring the need to integrate cultural interventions into health and social care policy.

House of Memories Cymru

House of Memories Cymru was launched at the Welsh Senedd in October 2023, funded by Welsh Government to tailor the programme to the specific needs and cultural context of communities in Wales. With 46,800 people aged 65 and over living with dementia in Wales, the programme addressed a clear unmet need. The LJMU evaluation found that healthcare professionals demonstrated improved wellbeing following training, and family carers showed a positive shift in understanding of dementia — including a reduction in the belief that it is simply a natural part of ageing and a stronger recognition of the individual beyond the condition. Museum partners praised the professionalism of the programme team and were optimistic about its potential to deepen community engagement.

Nursing students

In autumn 2023, House of Memories partnered with LJMU to pilot an asynchronous e-learning version of the programme for first-year undergraduate nursing students. The training — delivered during induction week — replaced labour-intensive one-hour dementia awareness sessions and proved scalable for large cohorts. Statistically significant improvements were recorded on both the ONS Personal Wellbeing measure and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS), reflecting gains in students' confidence and commitment to person-centred dementia care. Students completing the course are awarded a certificate from National Museums Liverpool.