Simon Fanshawe, chairman of the Place to Be campaign, on work being done to make sense of Alzheimer's disease

There is a poem in Alice In Wonderland that goes like this:

You told me you had been to her and mentioned me to him He gave me a good character, but said I could not swim I gave him one, you gave him two We gave him three or more They all returned from him to me Although they were all mine before.

And I mention it not because it reminded me of the tortuous process of trying to get information out of the Home Office about when they will announce the city bid result - mid-autumn, which probably means October - but because an old acquaintance of mine, Dot Voller, told me on Saturday that with it Lewis Carroll managed to capture Alzheimer's.

Each sentence means something perfectly cogent, but the whole thing put together is gibberish. And she should know, having nursed her husband for years before he passed away and then founding ARDIS (Alzheimer's and Related Disorders) in Brighton and Hove, for whom she raises enormous amounts of money by organising sponsored swims.

The subject came up because last week I opened the Sensory Room at Ireland Lodge in Woodingdean, the care home and day centre for elderly people with mental health problems.

This room is a great success story and everybody should know about it. It's a collaboration between the staff, the council and the community, with initial inspiration from a Sussex University research project.

The posh word is "partnership", but it's generous, bright people pooling their brilliance for the good of themselves and others.

And it's not just for the use of the clients of the centre but for anyone who is elderly and has problems with dementia.

So if you're looking after someone who would benefit or you yourself could use it, you can ring and book sessions.

And experiencing it the other day made me realise yet again just how much originality there is here in Brighton and Hove.

The room is full of light and sound and colour. There's a stereo, projections on the wall, coloured light tubes, funny battery-operated plastic balls that wiggle around in an asymmetrical dance in your hands or on the floor, rattles, maracas and lava lamps bubbling with air.

It was paid for by an initial bequest from the daughters of a woman called Phil, who was cared for and died there last year, and the voluntary efforts of the staff. It's a toybox of sensory pleasure with a serious purpose.

Apparently a planned set of sessions can help enormously with an elderly person's memory loss, sense of alertness and can lift feelings of depression.

First of all there was a pilot research project by two experimental psychologists, called Linda Sheppard and Jenny Rusted, from Sussex University. They did a study with elderly people with dementia on the effects of art psychotherapy.

Their initial conclusions were that it could lift depression. If you have dementia it doesn't mean you don't get depressed as well, but your ability to express your feelings is severely impaired.

Art psycho-therapy appears to help considerably. This led the staff of Ireland Lodge to look at other means of non-verbal therapies. Hence The Sensory Room.

Another by product of the Sussex Research was the production of The Pocket Book of Memories, designed by Linda and Jenny.

This is a mini-Filofax in which the person caring for someone with dementia or Alzheimer's can jot down fragments of memories as they come up.

Often long-term memory is far more intact in such elderly people. So you can turn to any page in the Pocket Book and have something with which to try and start a conversation. It's particularly important if, sadly, the carer dies. Official files are for doctors' and nurses' eyes only.

There may be great long assessments. But the pocket book enables anyone to try and awaken the elderly person's memory in a trice and thus reconnect them in some way to the living world.

The Place To Be is about celebrating the talents of the people in the town and within a matter of hours I realised when talking to the staff of Ireland Lodge, the Sussex researchers and my mate, Dot, I had come across some startling originality devoted to the elderly and those suffering from Alzheimer's.

So some numbers and dates: Dot's next sponsored swim is at St Luke's pool on October 1. Ring her on 01273 556185.

The Pocket Book can only be obtained from the publishers, who are Hawker publications, on 020 7720 2108.

And if you're in need of sensory stimulation call Ireland Lodge and book some sessions on 01273 296120.