2010: A Norwich Christian youth project has been working on a new community scheme which brings together people from different generations to find out how they can relate to and learn from each other.

 

Olly Turner has worked for East Norwich Youth Project (ENYP) in his role as Community Support Mentor for the past 15 months. The role has developed to work across the community with numerous agencies and groups, and a particular project working across generations of young and old has been established.

 

Olly says, “Shortly after beginning working for ENYP I contacted Claire Kerrison from Age Concern Norwich, to explore ways of improving community cohesion by bringing older and younger people together.  Claire explained to me about reminiscence which basically involves people using things they can listen to, see, smell, taste and touch to trigger their memories. I visited an intergenerational reminiscence project she was running in Thorpe Hamlet, where older people shared memories about and compared mealtime etiquette with pupils from Lionwood Infant School. This then led into the two generations participating in art and craft activities together.”

 

Several months of discussions followed about the opportunity of starting something similar on the Heartsease Estate. In February and March, Olly and Ellie Payne (ENYP Youth Worker) attended a six session introductory training course in using reminiscence led by Sarah Housden (Norfolk County Council). Through this they learnt about the purpose of reminiscence, listening skills, choosing appropriate triggers and themes for reminiscence and record keeping and evaluation.

 

A pilot project ran in March at Heartsease Primary School involving Year 6 pupils sharing their own memories and designing their own memory boxes.  Pupils showed maturity and sensitivity in sharing and listening to both joyful and painful memories and creativity and enthusiasm in designing their memory boxes.

 

Olly continues; “Confident that these young people would communicate and relate well with older people, we invited them to join an intergenerational group.  The pupils and older people work in pairs, initially talking together around the theme of hobbies using relevant triggers and then designing memory books based on each other’s life stories.  At the first session pupils and older people struck up an instant rapport with each other, showing a keen interest in each other’s hobbies and life stories.”

 

“In short, this project encapsulates what I believe to be a key component of God’s purposes for Norwich, namely to break down barriers and suspicion between people of different backgrounds, denominations and generations and gather them together to understand and relate to each other.”  

 

Danny Doran-Smith, ENYP Project Director says “Reminiscence is essentially about equipping people (young and old alike) with the skills and knowledge to use multisensory triggers to provoke people to reflect on and talk with others about their memories and the significance of those memories. Through this process reminiscence helps challenge the negative perceptions between generations, in order to promote greater integration between young people and adults”.

 

For further information about or to get involved in intergenerational Reminiscence projects please contact Olly Turner on 07508 755024 or oturner@enyp.org.uk. For further information about Reminiscence training courses please e-mail Sarah Housden at sarah.housden@norfolk.gov.uk