Bringing generations together

Swindon Borough Council wanted to see if the arts could be used to help solve a big societal problem – the gap between young and old. So when someone proposed making an attempt on the ‘longest bunting’ world record for the 2010 Big Arts Day, Head of Culture Helen Miah could see the potential for an intergenerational project through which children aged between 10 and 16 would meet with older residents from Lilian Lock sheltered accommodation to make the bunting.

As well as engaging professional artists, the project involved Council departments including children’s services, housing, culture and two schools. Helen Miah said: “The biggest challenge was bringing together all the different Council teams and persuading other heads of service that we needed to employ an artist. Now the project has been such a success they wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. There’s a greater understanding of the role an artist can play in community development.”

The feedback from other stakeholder groups was equally positive. “At Seven Fields Primary School in Penhill there were already a few older residents visiting to help children read but when the intergenerational arts project started, the relationships really took off,” explained headteacher Zita McCormick. “The bunting brought back memories and as the older people talked of their past, the children realised that they had been young too. It was great when a couple of the older men wrote poems about the arts experience and our boys set these poems to raps, which the older men performed in assembly. We had 20 older people involved who are visiting the school to this day.” Lillian Lock resident Bill Gulliver said: “Elderly residents enjoyed working with young people, and the youngsters were happy listening to our stories. This can only go well for the future with all people’s attitudes changing.”

This year, a larger arts project brought together a wider group of younger and older generations. Four schools, including Seven Fields again, took part in ‘Back to Black and White’, a youth arts and heritage initiative run in partnership with Swindon Youth Forum and Culture Swindon. This project, supported by a £25,000 grant awarded through the Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘Young Roots’ programme, saw professional digital artist Dani Landau work with more than 130 youngsters. Inspired by a Swindon photographer’s collection of 40,000 photographs of residents from the 1940s to 1970s, the Youth Forum took photos of people today and used images both past and present to curate their own exhibition. One thousand people attended over five days, including older people who were photograph subjects. Culture Swindon’s digital media team, Create Studios, then rolled out the project to schools, with the Youth Forum on hand to mentor other students and the older people going in to schools to talk about the old days. Dani Landau said: “The photos created a bridge across the generations. There was laughter as we realised they did the same things, in the same places.” Zita McCormick continued: “Children and senior citizens swapped memories, using photos. The children took the older people through the world of computers and taught them how to text. Nowadays the children call ‘hi’ to the older people when they see them in the street, they see them as part of the community, and when the older people see a group of kids hanging around, and recognise one of them, there’s a connection: it takes the fear away.”