After a quieter half term we’re back in the swing of things, and delighted to be seeing our programme participants again.
We had two new programmes start this week, so we’re now regularly meeting with 13 groups of children and older residents across London.
In one of our new projects, a fantastic group of year 4 students from Marion Richardson Primary in Tower Hamlets started visiting their older neighbours in Stepney Green. The children asked fantastic questions about the residents' childhoods, and learnt about evacuation to Wales, 1950s school in Bangladesh and games that children used to play in the East End streets.
Meanwhile over in Camden, our newest partner Central and Cecil welcomed us and pupils from St Augustine’s Primary to Vivian Court. The residents and children shared their hobbies and interests with each other. The residents were impressed by many of the children’s second language skills and dancing, while the children were fascinated by songs, photos and stories shared by the residents.
Excitingly, these new groups take the number of people who’ve taken part in our programmes to 1030!
We believe that the quality of the relationships that develop is more important than the numbers of people taking part, but it’s still exciting to hear that since we started over 1000 different people have had the experience of taking part in an InCommon session, many of them many times over.
We’re looking forward to developing the relationships in these two new programmes, and our existing 11 groups, over the next few months.