Friendship, curiosity and the city: Dementia friends and memory walks in Liverpool

The city is not just a context for friendships or a problem to be solved through them; it can be a catalyst for these relationships, sparking and strengthening connections between individuals and groups. Shared experiences of and curiosity in cities – expressed through practices that include revisiting familiar places and exploring others for the first time – can draw people together in beneficial ways. These principles underpin a health and wellbeing agenda, pioneered in Liverpool, which encourages people to ‘take notice’ and ‘connect’ – two of five ‘ways to wellbeing’ promoted through the Liverpool Decade of Health and Wellbeing. This paper focusses upon one particular set of schemes and relationships which brings all this into focus: befriending schemes designed to support people with dementia, which engage with objects and places as catalysts for connection. These observations shed a broader light upon the meanings and uses of friendship, with particular reference to cities.