THE ARORA Dementia Friendly Community Team at An Lanntair in Stornoway 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, writes Mark Entwistle.
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 10-year, £50 million 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.