ABSTRACT
A reminiscence group is a group, usually of older, or elderly people who have come together in order to share recollections of their past experience. […] In my experience of setting up and convening six reminiscence groups since 1980, the people who agree to join them do so because they see an opportunity to reflect aloud, with others, on their life experience. They do not, in the first instance, see their role as writers, nor, for that matter, as listeners: but as tellers; and when I and others invite them to take part, we are inviting them to see themselves primarily as oral historians. The work of facilitating such groups means, certainly, encouraging participants to be attentive listeners, as well as narrators; but, in addition, we also invite them to see themselves as potential or actual writers. […]
Reminiscence work, approached as a process which is about literate as well as oral narrative, entails a series of moves between talking, listening, writing and reading. Ever since, as a literacy educator, I first began doing reminiscence work, I have become increasingly fascinated with the meaning of these moves. Neither writing nor speech are as much about communication as they are about creation: we use language, whether spoken or written, not merely to transmit something ready-made from our experience or thinking, but in order to create new meaning and new worlds.
