For the second year running, participants with early stages of dementia will work with music students from Dulwich College and the Royal College of Music to write lyrics and music, each week based on a different painting in the gallery.

Working with a composer and lyricist from English Touring Opera, they will choose the themes and content of the songs, and a name for their song cycle as the project progresses. The group will perform their songs live in the Gallery on Thursday December 12th.

Michelle Weiner, community engagement manager, said: “There is still a real buzz carried over from the performance last year – the excitement is infectious!

“Everyone who has the opportunity to experience this year’s cycle of songs will be swept joyously along and compelled to think differently about memory and the power creativity can have.”

Canterbury Christ Church University are involved with the project this year, building on evidence from Visual to Vocal 2012 which showed that participants were distracted from their illness and were able to recall the songs week to week.

Professor Paul Camic will evaluate the programme, assessing the experience for participants on their health and wellbeing.

Tim Yealland, ETO’s Artistic Associate, and director of the original Visual to Vocal project, said:

‘We are thrilled to be reviving our partnership with Dulwich Picture Gallery in this valuable and important work.

“Pictures and music create a fabulous symbiotic bond in which participants can respond freely, and can access creative energies that have perhaps been dormant for a long while.

“The results can be astonishing, surprising, and moving.’

Visual to Vocal forms part of Dulwich’s award-winning Good Times: Art for Older People programme, which has a reputation for excellence in ground-breaking initiatives that push the boundaries of what galleries and museums can achieve.

In 2011 the Royal Society of Public Health presented Dulwich Picture Gallery with an Arts and Health Award for excellence in this work of enhancing lives through art.