Joining The Dots — Reflections from a gathering of intergenerational practitioners in January 2023

Photo by Alina on Unsplash

On 19th January 2023, 50 people from across the UK got together on zoom united by their share commitment to building bridges between generations. Hosted by The Linking Network and InCommon, the event was an informal opportunity to rekindle connections and build new relationships in our growing field of intergenerational practice; and identify shared opportunities and challenges that people are facing in their different roles.

The group was diverse in scope, experience and perspectives ranging from activity coordinators in care homes, to education advisers, to community organsiers, to funders committed to intergenerational work — this was a diverse group with many different perspectives and experiences. Many people on the call expressed the desire to share and learn together more, and ‘in the open’! So this is a brief summary of what we (InCommon and The Linking Network) heard and a few possible next steps.

If you have reflections, things to add, or you’d like to stay in the loop on all this work, we’d love to hear from you — contact us here.

The most important bit — 3 things we think could be useful next steps:

1. Hold more ‘speed dating’ / general networking opportunities for intergenerational practitioners like the one organised in January 2023.
2. Compile a list of the intergenerational networks, events and opportunities that are open to all. Here’s a starter for 10 list we’ve compiled.
3. Turbo-charge action around the 6 areas identified on the call (listed below!) by ‘convening the conveners’. The leaders of existing networks and coalitions who are keen and interested could gather together to discuss what existing work is taking place across the 1–6 areas listed below. (eg. Generations Working Together, Only Connect, Care Home FANS, Flourishing Lives, Intergenerational Music Making and all others!). (Perhaps this is already happening, if so we’d love to hear from you as we don’t want to duplicate!)

More detail — A few key learnings and reflections*

*This is not an exhaustive list of everything that was discussed, but a few of the key themes combined with the responses to the feedback survey

1. Things we find easy or difficult in our intergenerational practice

• Putting people in the lead — with the right approaches and support in place, it’s easy to put people in the lead of intergenerational practice.
• Witnessing and feeling the impact — it’s very easy to feel and witness the impact of great intergenerational practice when we’re delivering it or seeing it being done.
• Mutually beneficial — when the right design and people are in place, the mutual benefits to all generations of this work are easy to achieve.
• Making it fun — it’s so easy to make it playful and joyful. There is nothing like a room full of people of different ages doing something interesting and engaging together to lift the spirits!

2. Things we find hard or difficult in our intergenerational practice

• Partnership working — intergenerational work by its nature needs us to be great partnership working. Connecting between organisations, communities and sectors. Partnerships are amazing when they are strong and they work well, they are a huge suck on time, morale and resources when they don’t work!
• Intergenerational work is seen as ‘good to have’ not essential — there are many superficial perceptions of intergenerational work including that it is fluffy or sweet.
• Lack of funding — trusts and foundations all too often say they don’t think intergenerational work is impactful; and state provision of education and health sees intergenerational connectivity as the sort of thing to invest in when other ‘more important’ things have been addressed.
• Not having a ‘template’ to work from — because it’s a disconnected and growing field of practice, it can often feel on the frontline that you are having to create projects and initiatives from scratch. This means that we aren’t as efficient or as impactful as we might otherwise be.
• Making the impact last — it can be hard to build sustained and sustainable intergenerational projects because long term funding (ie. Beyond just project delivery) is hard to come by.
• High staff turnover — across teaching, social care and many other parts of the intergenerational ‘ecosystem’, there is high staff turnover so it can be hard to sustain partnerships when a successor in a role might not value intergenerational work like the predecessor did.
• It’s easy to feel lonely or isolated — if you are the only person who is working to promote intergenerational practice when everyone around you thinks it’s not important or impactful it can feel very lonely.
• Inadequate services more broadly can prevent or inhibit engagement in intergenerational work — eg. weak public transport in an area can limit the ability of people to travel even short distances to participate in an activity or event.
• Tracking and articulating the impact in ways that others value — we need better, more compelling statistics and stories that articulate the value of intergenerational work across a range of outcomes (eg. perceptions of other generations, increased health and well-being, bolstered belonging etc). We need to combine evaluations in order to get the data and stories at the scale we need.
• Safeguarding and risk management can get in the way of meaningful or valuable connections between different ages — eg. people with dementia can be excessively prevented from interacting fully with younger people.
• Moving beyond one-off or superficial practice (and can be harmful or traumatic) into deeper intergenerational connectivity. One-off or one-time connectivity between different generations can often miss the opportunity to gain the greatest benefits to people’s wellbeing, confidence and perceptions and understanding of different people.
• Because connection across generations can be a rarity in people’s lives, people of all ages can be anxious or worried about connecting with new people from different age groups. This needs careful consideration and lots of care!

3. The things we’d like to change, influence or create — if we had a magic wand!

1. Network more. We’d like more opportunities to network and build our confidence with other intergenerational practitioners.
2. Collate best practice. We want opportunities to share and learn about best practice in intergenerational work. This will help us all strengthen our work, and grow the knowledge of what works best in different contexts.
3. Build a more robust evidence base. We need to work together to make a strong case, rooted in data and stories, about the social, economic and political impact and value of intergenerational work.
4. Influence wider civil society and businesses to embed intergenerational connectivity in their work, organisations and places.
5. Increase the funding available. We would like to work together to influence funders to grow the overall funding available for or prioritised around intergenerational work.
6. Speak louder and influence better. We would like to work together to influence policy makers and policy shapers to prioritise the policies and funding needed to bridge generations in all aspects of our communities and society.

If you have reflections or things to add, or you’d like to stay in the loop on all this work, we’d love to hear from you — contact us here.