Intergenerational Winter Fair
Nov 2017 - Feb 2018
Cohort: Year 12 (16/17 year olds)
Period: 150-minutes per week for 12 weeks Teachers: Mr Hoeben and Mr Billingham Aim This was a social action project aimed at understanding some of the issues affecting elderly people in the local area of Newham and running an intergenerational event in February 2018. The Need Our school has previously worked with the elderly and our Year 9s have been involved in putting on a Christmas party for a local care home for a few of years, so we were aware that there was an interest by the elderly to engage with schools and young people. There is also a general problem with the elderly feeling alienation that has been highlighted by organisations like Age UK. As families live further apart and people visit each other less ,particularly in the city, feelings of loneliness can lead to mental health problems such as depression. It is also a very topical issue with programmes such Channel 4s 'Old People's Home for 4-year olds' demonstrate that intergenerational experiences can benefit both age groups and help to encourage more empathy. Client/Audience The main audience was elderly people aged 65+ who live in the local area. Brief In this project, the challenge was to design an activity that brings together elderly people and young people to discuss and exchange experiences and stories about how life has changed over the years. Partnerships The project involved sixth formers at Six21, the sixth form for School 21, and elderly people from the Age UK Newham OPRG (Older People's Reference Group). We were initially supported by Stratford & West Ham Community Neighbourhood Team to help us make contacts. Research Objectives
Outcome(s) Our project culminated with an intergenerational winter fair at the end of February, which involved sixth formers designing and making games/fun activities to be enjoyed by the elderly visitors. You can watch a video of the event here. Successes This felt like a very worthwhile project after it had finished, which was partly due to the positive feedback we received from the elderly guests. Many said they were keen for this to continue especially as there was not a great deal happening at this time of the year for them. One man was quite emotional about it as he said he rarely leaves his home and found loneliness to be something he hadn't anticipated as he aged. A couple of guests voluntarily brought photo albums documenting their past and proceeded to start conversations with our students. I felt that this had lots of potential as an activity that could have been set up earlier in the project had we had the contacts. It was noticeable how some of the sixth formers who were initially reluctant to do the project and showed little empathy, were actually very engaged during the event. This is one of the reasons a clear goal or outcome involving an audience, can pull everyone together through a common experience that feels collective and not purely an individual achievement. There were other points during the project that felt very meaningful such as hearing testimonies from elderly people, understanding the disparity between what people perceive old age to be versus what we learnt from speaking to the elderly. It would, however be fair to say that our findings were not based on anything other than small sample interviews and there wasn't the kind of research methodology you'd associate with university. I did, however, enjoy watching students learn how to cold approach people in Stratford and ask questions as it demonstrates a certain resilience. I had to demonstrate a fair amount. Challenges The most difficult challenge was trying to make contact with a group of elderly people around the Christmas period as it appeared to be that many of the contacts we approached were already involved in running events and their audience were somewhat sceptical of what we were actually doing. As a result, we spent too much time researching and tuning activities amongst the students when what we really wanted was to test on our client group - the elderly themselves. Our challenge from this point became around finding a group of over 65s that would commit to the process. We eventually managed to send some students to pitch the idea of an intergenerational winter fair to the Newham OPRG group monthly meeting, of which there were around 50 participants. We also publicised in their newsletter with a circulation of around 300. This was late in the day, but it meant that we were able to plan knowing that around 35 guests had committed to come. In the end, there were only 25, but we felt this was still positive. Looking forward The OPRG group has since approached us to request a future partnership so the memory is still strong. It is definitely an event that could be more firmly embedded into our calendar and developed over time. I believe that it is a good age/stage to run such an event as our sixth formers are from many different schools and it helped to bond them as together as well as with the elderly. There could definitely be earlier opportunities for a relationship between a select groups of members from the OPRG and our students to meet and exchange stories and test activities before the final event. Originally, I had envisaged it being a lifelong learning event in which our students ran educational workshops that visitors sign up for. I had this view that sixth formers were at a stage where they were making more decisions about what they want to study and the same applies to the elderly who reach 65 and then ask similar questions about what they want to learn in their retirement. |
Below are some images describing some of the key activities that took place over since the start of the project - see captions for details and click to enlarge picture.
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