Our CEO, Hannah Kayi Mason, reflects on this year’s awards ceremony
On Wednesday InCommon marked the end of Global Intergenerational Week 2025* (#GIW25) by hosting our Age-Friendly Awards and Changing Perception Talks in partnership with Clarion Futures. It was a true celebration of everyone making intergenerational social action happen in our communities.
We've been fortunate to partner with Clarion since 2018 and join #iWill since 2020, working with young people and their older neighbours on local social action projects. The #iwill Fund has created a community of organisations committed to embedding meaningful social action in young people's lives through a £66 million investment from The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The #iwill Fund supports the aims of the #iwill movement - to make involvement in social action a part of life for young people, by recognising the benefit for both young people and their communities. Our Social Action programmes across Greater London have engaged 250 young people and over 150 older neighbours in the last three years. By sharing experiences across generations, we've amplified their impact and created lasting change.
As Iris, one of last year's young Social Action participants, perfectly put it: "Often, we're stuck in places where we're with people of similar ages like school and the workplace, but if we see people from different generations and different backgrounds it opens our ideas to what life has been and what it could be."
The Changing Perceptions Talks
The Changing Perceptions Talks gave us the opportunity to recognise those people and organisations who bring generations together day in day out and make a huge difference to the well-being of our young people and their older neighbours. We held the event in the beautiful, architectural alms-house in the heart of Bermondsey: Appleby Blue. They have set a new benchmark for the quality of older people’s social housing and services and “transformed how society considers and builds sheltered housing for older people.”
As soon as our guests entered the space, they could feel the atmosphere, the warmth, the thriving, intergenerational community Appleby Blue have curated. Morgan Tume, her team and their residents instantly made us all feel welcome. Martyn Craddock, CEO of United St Saviours, explained their vision of creating spaces where everyone can participate and be seen as vital parts of the local community.
In the UK we start to form negative perceptions of ageing from 3 years old. We are one of the most age-segregated countries in the world with young people having only a 5% chance of living near someone aged over 65. And the stark reality is that ageism is the most widespread form of discrimination in the UK with at least a third of people hold ageist beliefs. On this fantastic setting our five inspiring speakers shared how they're challenging these age-related perceptions.
Judith Ish-Horowicz MBE, Co-founder and Director Apples and Honey Nightingale CIC and Co-chair of Gen-All opened the talks with her expert insights of why intergenerational contact works. It is not just something nice to have but has concrete research-based evidence that this improves life expectancy, mental health and communities.
David Pugsley, Success Strategist and Storyteller at Salesforce, then urged us to trust our intuition speak up for our mental health.
Next, we had a wonderful film from Dr. Kush Kanodia, Social Entrepreneur and Disability rights campaigner, who pointed out that if we come together young, old, multiracial, disabled we become the majority and we can change the world for the better. You can watch the full talk on YouTube by visiting this link.
The fourth talk was from the dynamic Betty Mayo, Lead Community Organiser at The Advocacy Academy who partner with us to deliver our ‘How to Make Change’ programme. They explained how young people can often feel that they don’t have a voice to change society or have the confidence to demand to be taken seriously. Bringing them together with their older neighbours increases confidence and agency. Betty shared how the simplest connections can lead to systemic change and make a huge difference in a community.
And finally, our Intergeneration Social Action Board Member (ISAB) and the Co-Chair of the #iWill Movement Sami Gichki. His journey as an asylum seeker left him trying to find his place in UK society and as a young person with no access to employment, education or community. He found an older mentor who helped him change his life. He was nervous at first, and had wondered what they would have to talk about, but had discovered that, as he eloquently put it, “Connection doesn’t come with similarity, sometimes it starts with listening.”
InCommon CEO Hannah Kayi Mason and Judith Ish-Horowicz MBE
The Age-Friendly Awards
Sami led us perfectly into the Awards ceremony presented expertly by his fellow ISAB team Alison, Gozan, Jennine. With genuine appreciation, they explained why each winner stood out to the ISAB board, despite the large number of impressive people and projects that had been nominated. Our 12 Awards winners all gave heartfelt and moving acceptance speeches that illustrated the diversity of intergenerational practice across the UK.
Everyone enjoyed connecting over Sharon Gardner's Caribbean plant-based menu, with drinks donated by our sponsors Shandy Shack. The awards themselves came from a co-design by our intergenerational group at Gawthorne Court, made possible by our sponsors Lohmann-Rauscher UK.
ISAB member Ena closed with her warm wisdom, encouraging us to move from "me" and "I" to "we" and "us" - finding strength in togetherness. Thank you to everyone who nominated, attended, and supported the awards. We look forward to seeing what we can all achieve before next year's celebration!
To see photos and videos of the day please look on LinkedIn and Instagram, or you can stay in touch with us by subscribing to our newsletter. For more insight into how we work with people, visit our Partner With Us page.
*Global Intergenerational Week is an annual campaign celebrating all things intergenerational led by Generations Working Together. The campaign inspires individuals, groups, organisations, and local/national governments to fully embrace intergenerational practice, connecting people of different generations in intentional, mutually beneficial activities.
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