Yorkshire's exceptional collection of home movies has found a new use, in the treatment of elderly people whose minds are not what they were.

Working with the Alzheimer's Society, Methodist Homes for the Aged and Age UK, the Yorkshire Film Archive has created a 'memory bank' of clips collated according to subjects which stimulated most enthusiasm in trials.

At 62, you begin to take an increasing interest in such bright ideas, and there is much fun to be had in speculating about my generation's likely choice of films to stave off the worst effects of dementia. The current ones, which feature in the first package from the bank, include knitted bathing costumes, free school milk, 1960s fashion mistakes, favourite fireworks and clocking on at work.

Sue Howard, director of the archive says:

They became the immediate hot topics for conversations after test audiences watched the films. As one Memory Bank user involved in the pilot told us: 'It's like the years peeling back – the memories are all still there; they just need a trigger.'

The bank has been divided into themed sections on Holidays, Schooldays, Sporting Fun, Working Life and Domestic Life after the trials at St Leonard's hospice in York, care homes across the region and lively get-together organisations such as the Dementia Cafe Group in Penistone. Howard says:

Memory Bank is about opening up our collections to a huge range of older people, many of whom face a number of age-related challenges, and who often have very few opportunities to see and enjoy films such as these.

Reminiscence therapy and memory work play an invaluable role in improving a sense of personal identity and wellbeing, and stimulating communication and sociability. We're fortunate to have a fantastic visual record of everyday life over the decades – just the sort of films that trigger all of our collective memories.

The gerontologist Prof Dianne Willcocks calls the bank:

a compelling and fun way for people to reclaim their lived past – and to share it with family, friends and carers alike. It works both for those living with dementia and for those simply living with rich memories.

It may also contain me. We gave our family's home movies to the archive some years ago. They go back to the 1920s and I think that they do indeed contain at least one knitted bathing costume.

And talking of those, check out this film from 1926 in which they feature, kindly provided on YouTube by the British Film Institute.