We can’t believe it’s March already! The days are (finally) getting longer and it feels like spring is just around the corner. With the winter months behind us, it seems like the perfect opportunity to reflect on what we’ve been up to so far in 2024.

Intergenerational workshops

We’ve had a great start to the year, with more than 10 Connect workshops taking place across London. In January, we got the year started with a storytelling workshop. Younger and older people created their own stories and brought them to life with finger puppets. There were a lot of characters created, including Robbie the Robot, Ollie the Owl and Sneezy Bumble Bee!

In our February workshops, younger and older people designed dream museums to exhibit their special objects. They worked together to find a common theme and then ‘presented’ their museum, taking on the roles of ticket checkers, tour guides and museum managers.

One of our older volunteers said: “You can tell the children really enjoyed that. They’re full of imagination!”

Social action with the Blackhorse Responders

We had a special guest at our social action group in Bow this February. Lucy from the Blackhorse Responders joined us at Gawthorne Court and led a fruitful discussion on the change younger and older people would like to see in their communities.

Blackhorse Responders are a creative activism youth group in Walthamstow and they are leading three special workshops for our social action group. At the next workshop, younger and older people will visit Blackhorse Workshop to pick up tools and create objects to help inspire change.

One of the older participants said: “I'm grateful for the children coming today and helping us think differently.”

Intergenerational cooking with Made In Hackney

We’ve partnered with Made In Hackney who are running a six-week cooking course for 12 of our Hackney participants. Led by a qualified cooking teacher, younger and older people are learning how to make healthy, affordable food to help boost health, confidence and wellbeing.

They have had two workshops so far, making Asian inspired dishes for Chinese New Year and fresh pasta with roasted vegetables and tomato sauce. Both the children and older volunteers have enjoyed trying out new recipes and we’re excited to see the rest of their dishes!

Including everyone on our programmes

One of our core values at InCommon is including everyone. Over the past few weeks, our Programmes Team have been working with participants, scheme managers and teachers to review the accessibility of our workshops and resources, making sure they meet everyone’s needs.

As part of this, we’ve developed new workshop plans for older people and volunteers to help them feel more confident in supporting children’s learning. Wirth step-by-step instructions and details of what to expect, they’re designed to make workshops easier to follow.

We’ve also been working with translators to ensure more people can take part. We invited a translator to join us at a workshop in Wandsworth in February and they supported two older volunteers. The volunteers told us afterwards that they were glad to take part as their grandchildren lived far away.

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