The evening was centred on ‘Sensations’ and on our senses including smell. We were there as guests of the British Society of Perfumers and the SmellTaste table was next to the BSP.

Duncan Boak, SmellTaste CEO and Founder, was interviewed  on BBC Look East last week as part of a piece highlighting the work that SmellTaste and Prof Philpott and his team at University of East Anglia are doing to help people with smell and taste disorders.

The piece also included powerful testimonies from sisters Laura and Kirstie Goodchild, who both experienced anosmia & parosmia following Covid-19 infection.

Read more about our exclusive feature by heading over to:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65557028 

It was fantastic to meet Victoria Prentis, MP for North Oxfordshire, at the Acquired Brain Injury Reception at Parliament last week.

With brain injuries affecting over 300,000 people a year in Britain alone, Victoria confirmed the Government remains committed to publishing a cross-department strategy to help address the issues faced by people living with acquire brain injury.

We spoke with Victoria about the lasting impact that smell loss has, and how it needs greater recognition as a consequence of acquired brain injury.

We’d like to thank Victoria for her support, and look forward to possible collaborations in the future. 

Sometimes, the simplest sounding questions are often the hardest to answer, like ‘How do you smell’?

On 6 April, Karen Timson answered that very question through a workshop delivered to twenty-five retired professional and businesswomen at the Towcester & District Group of Probus Global.

Karen, independent perfumer and SmellTaste Champion, talked about the wonder of our olfactory system and when it goes wrong, particularly following Covid, perfume creation, materials and safe fragrance production. She also shared key messages regarding personal and home safety when experiencing a loss or altered sense of smell or taste.

Karen rounded off with an interactive group activity, the ‘sniff quiz’ in which participants were asked to guess whether the material was synthetic or natural, and what notes could be detected (top, middle or base).  This was huge fun with plenty of laughs and some fabulous guesses from the participants.

Thank you to Karen for her time and expertise and to the Probus Global attendees for making this such a successful event and interesting event.

Keep an eye on our news page, newsletter and social media for more upcoming events near you.

This is an exciting time to join SmellTaste, the charity for people affected by smell and taste disorders and play an important role in leading the delivery of face to face and virtual engagement and educational activities with a national scope.

SmellTaste is delivering a major funded project to highlight the essential role that our senses of smell play in our health, wellbeing and safety and enable people with a poor, altered or no sense of smell to stay safe and well at home.  We are looking for a dynamic, motivated person with a passion for engaging and educating public and professionals alike to deliver vital information to a range of audiences, including the general public, health and social care professionals, community groups and third sector organisations, including those that represent harder to reach communities and older people.

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased awareness of these under-recognised sensory impairments like never before, whilst leaving many more people still struggling with ongoing problems with their senses of smell and taste. You will help us deliver vital information and support to people in communities that may benefit from it the most, whilst helping grow the reach of the charity. 

We are looking for someone with excellent communications skills, confidence and creativity who is passionate about making a difference to people’s lives. Working as part of a small team, you’ll have the opportunity to use the skills and experience you have gained in roles in public engagement and/or the education/training sector as part of an innovative, pioneering programme of work.   

You will have the opportunity and support to grow and develop your skills, and the scope of the role itself, as part of the planned growth of the organisation.

If you would like to be part of a pioneering, collaborative and forward-thinking organisation that values, supports and empowers and people then we would love to hear from you. We are committed to building an organisation that values diversity and welcome applications that will help us achieve this.

Salary: £28,000 pro rata dependant on experience (0.6FTE)

Location: Home working, with an expectation of team meetings once a month in an Oxfordshire location. The ability to regularly travel around the UK to deliver activities is a vital part of the role.

Our sense of smell really is essential to our lives, but what if you can’t appreciate fine fragrances, smell your loved ones, or detect dangers such as gas or smoke?

SmellTaste, the charity for people affected by smell and taste disorders, is proud to be the nominated charity for the inaugural Barnes Fragrance Fair. The SmellTaste team will be running some engaging smell-based activities on the day to highlight the different ways that smell plays a vital role in our lives and sharing information and resources to help those experiencing problems with their senses of smell and taste.

“Barnes Fragrance Fair is free and open to all”

The Barnes Fragrance Fair is free and open to all and takes place on 20^th May in London, and will present some of the best and most celebrated Independent fragrance brands from the UK in an engaging scented experience.

They will have local perfumer and globally successful brand founder Sarah McCartney from 4160 Tuesdays, who will be holding fragrance workshops throughout the day, where visitors can create their own scent. There will be talks with leading fragrance writers, perfumers and industry insiders covering how fragrance can help with mental health and wellness, as well as what fragrance ingredients look and smell like before they turn into perfume. 

For more information please see – https://www.barnesfragrancefair.com/

We’ve had a busy start to the year and it was good to take some time out to reflect and recharge. It’s great to be back and report the progress we’re making across a broad front.  Firstly, a date for your diary; we will be holding our next National Conference on Saturday 4^th November.  We’ll be confirming more details, including the venue, very soon.

We are making great strides forward. In our last newsletter we announced our funded partnership with Cadent, the UK’s largest gas distribution network. This is a significant development for SmellTaste in many ways, providing funding to support core costs for the next three years whilst enabling us to increase the scope and breadth of our activity. At the core of this is the delivery of vital support, information and education to help people affected by smell disorders stay safe and well at home.  

An important example of the developments the Cadent funding is supporting is the educational programme we are delivering for NHS England Post-Covid Services. We are helping them to better understand the impact that smell and taste dysfunction has on so many parts of people’s lives and how they can best support those experiencing this as part of Long Covid symptoms. We’ll look forward to sharing a more detailed report with you in due course.

Our ongoing fight for greater recognition of smell and taste impairment continues apace too. I have just returned from Brussels where I was part of a panel discussion organised by the European Forum for Research and Education in Allergy and Airway Diseases (EUFOREA) to mark the second annual awareness day for Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Nasal Polyps.  This was an opportunity highlight that smell loss is often the most debilitating symptom of this condition for people, yet can go unrecognised by doctors.  In the discussion I shared the findings of our recent survey and I’d like to take the opportunity to thank those of you who shared your experiences in this.  Read my reflections on the event here, and you can watch the recording of the discussion on YouTube. 

A key focus for me and our board is growing the charity to increase our capacity to deliver, and we recently held a positive and productive strategic planning exercise. I’m really proud of what our small team is achieving, but we need to increase our fundraising to help support our growth, and we need your help.  Please consider setting up a monthly donation of whatever you can afford to SmellTaste. If all our members contributed £5 per a month we be able to employ another staff member to help us reach and support more people; increase our awareness-raising and educational activity and grow our research fund.  Thank you for all your ongoing support.

We’ve got a lot happening in the coming weeks; our fundraising event in Exeter next week, public engagement activities and get togethers for SmellTaste member both in-person and virtually, and more besides. We’ll look forward to sharing more updates with you soon, including details of the conference.  We hope to see you there!

We would like to say a huge thanks to everyone who attended our very first wine tasting fundraising event on Thursday 27^th April. We’re delighted to have raised a grand total of £452.88 from the event! Thanks to everyone for your generous support of SmellTaste and our cause. 

It wasn’t just about raising money though, the evening was about raising awareness of how important smell and taste are to our lives, and the need for better support, services, treatment and research for those of us affected by smell and taste disorders. From what our guests told us, it feels like we got the balance of fun, information and highlighting this important issue just about right. We’re looking forward to doing it again!

Somellier and Wine Educator – and SmellTaste Champion – Rebecca Mitchell led the event, taking guests on a journey that started out with wine tasting from the perspective of those of us with anosmia, parosmia and phantosmia.

Huge thanks to Rebecca for her hard work in organising this brilliant inaugural event. Thanks to Tuckers Hall in Exeter for hosting us. Thanks to our sponsors… and to everyone who donated one of the fantastic prizes for the raffle!

We hugely appreciate the support of everyone involved and are pleased to share some photos below. Keep an eye out for more fundraising events coming soon.

Join us at the Natural History Museum for a ‘Lates: Sensations’ free event on 5th May between 18.30-22.00, where SmellTaste are a guest of British Society of Perfumers.

The event explores how our senses shape our relationship with the natural world, including our sense of smell and ‘the smells of space’.

Pre-booking is required but you can sign up for the event for free here – https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/lates.html

What to expect