Jenny shares her experiences leading an intergenerational project in Mallaig and Arisaig.

Last year Ewen’s Room Education and Wellbeing officer Jenny Willens completed intergenerational training with Generations Working Together and was very excited to get her own project up and running! Generations Working Together supports 18 local networks and has a network of 4,000 practitioners engaged in Intergenerational practice. As a charity who cares deeply about community engagement, we knew this was a project that we should be a part of! Jenny met with several local carers, discussed ideas with local teaching staff and interviewed residents at a local care home. The project, titled “Coming together; exploring the benefits of intergenerational relationships on children and older adults”, centres itself around reducing loneliness, combatting stigmas about ageing and increasing happiness for all involved.

With the support of Mallaig (Gaelic and English medium) PS, Lady Lovat PS and Arisaig PS, Jenny invited P3 pupils to take part in the project. They met with Jenny and discussed their thoughts of what it meant to be “old” and shared their ideas of nice activities to do together.
After receiving assistance from the wonderful local teachers and Shanna Eddie at the MacIntosh centre, the seven young participants attended the local NHS care home in March to meet the lovely six residents and play board games together!

These sessions have continued on a monthly basis, being mutually beneficial for both generations and building new relationships.
The monthly activities have involved painting, gardening, gaelic conversations and musical time, during which everyone had a chance to play an instrument and sing songs.

During the musical session some of the pupils sang songs in Gaelic, and one resident even gave us a rendition of a Tom Jones classic! It really lit up the room to see everyone enjoying music together and there was a fantastic chat about favourite songs & musicians, including what age people were when they attended their first ever live concert!

During an art session, the group painted ceramic plant pots to fill with compost and seeds on another visit, and one resident even commented “I can’t remember the last time I painted, it’s so relaxing”. Teamwork really does make dream work, every child and older adult helped one another, sharing stories about their favourite colours, and one lady shared that “forget me nots were my husband’s favourite flower”. There was compost everywhere but I don’t think anyone cared about that, everyone shared stories and chat, with one child even reciting a poem in Gaelic!

The relationships have really blossomed between the children and older adults over the past three sessions, the conversation naturally flows now and the pupils get so excited to see their “buddies”! The group did feel saddened to hear of the passing of a resident, Chris, who was at every other project activity and a very popular lady with the staff, older adults and children alike. One child said “I’ll miss her, she was so much fun”.

This project really means a lot to all involved. As we are now into a new school year we begin involving the next group of student P3 participants, to ensure the presence of the younger generation remains and hopefully brings the community even closer together.