As the autumn term comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to reflect on everything that’s happened between September and December. It’s been a busy, energising few months. Facilitating 13 intergenerational workshops across London, we worked with 65 older people and 195 children. Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to!
New Brent Social Action Project
At the start of this term, Year 13 students from Alperton Community School shared ideas on how they wanted to improve their local area, working closely with older people from Grand Union Community Hub’s seniors' group to explore ideas rooted in lived experience. These conversations opened up personal stories, including reflections on the history of migration in the UK, and encouraged young people to think critically about how communities are shaped and how they can be supported. These ideas included writing letters to care homes and making hygiene kits for older, vulnerable people. The group ended the year by creating Christmas cards to be handed out at a community Christmas dinner run by local charity Sufra. An incredible 84 cards were made in total!
Making christmas cards for a community dinner
Intergenerational Cooking Workshops
Following the success of our intergenerational cooking course with Made in Hackney last year, we teamed up with Appleby Blue (run by United St Saviours) and Southwark Youth Justice System for a cooking programme, Fabulous Feast. Running from September to December, the workshops were led by a qualified cook teaching young people to cook a variety of sweet and savoury recipes including Jamaican patties and biscoff cheesecake. To celebrate the end of the workshops, they put on a special dinner: a Fabulous Feast. Younger participants helped to prepare and serve food for the older guests and they also received certificates and a printed recipe book, capturing both the dishes and memories from the workshops. One young participant enjoyed the course so much that they are thinking about cooking as a possible future career.
Where our Fabulous Feast took place!
“The growth and confidence I have witnessed and the complete change in behaviours has shown me just how important it is to expose our children to experiences like this.
I hope that now when these children are faced with elders and the elders are faced with children like this group, they remember just how wonderful an experience they had and look at them in a positive light.”
Festive Workshops and Celebrations
We wrapped up the term in December with a series of festive workshops and celebrations. Primary school children and older people made Christmas crackers (with their own jokes included!) and young people wrote Christmas cards to send to older people in their communities.
We brought generations together through winter quizzes and performances, including children singing to older groups, creating moments of joy and togetherness. At Rupert House, in partnership with the Guinness Partnership, we ran another festive quiz where an older resident gifted each child a daffodil bulb to care for until spring, a gift they can look forward to bringing back next term.
Thank you for reading and we look forward to returning in the New Year!