CREATIVE GENERATIONS: Intergenerational Learning at Atlantic Technological University

Description

For the past 8 years, older people from Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon have joined ATU students as learning partners in the classroom. Students are studying degree programmes in Social Care, Creative Design, and Early Education and Care. As part of their studies, students work alongside older volunteers in reciprocal learning experiences, with older person as both teacher and learner. Throughout the years, the generations have gotten to know one another through participation in different projects such as designing age-friendly spaces, traditional craft-making, forming a choir, discovering origami, nature-art and meditation. Since 2022, the group have been involved in the ATU Intergenerational Festival, whereby they showcase their creative work, and work intergenerationally with children from local early years settings. As a result of the older people’s contribution to student learning at ATU Sligo, the university, across its 8 campuses, is in the process of applying for Age-Friendly University Status. This will formally acknowledge the university’s commitment to promote active and positive ageing and enhance educational opportunities across the lifespan. In addition, due to the dedication of our older volunteers and our valued relationships with them the university is now represented on Sligo’s Age-Friendly Alliance, and was involved in developing actions for Sligo’s new Age-Friendly Strategy. We endeavour to share the important work of the Creative Generations Intergenerational Group as often as possible so that we can contribute to nurturing the age-friendly eco-system, and lending our voices to the intergenerational movement. In May this year Creative Design students presented their design work in collaboration with older volunteers to members of Sligo County Council, Sligo Older People’s Council and Sligo’s Age-Friendly Alliance. In July this year, The Irish Times highlighted the Creative Generations Festival as part of a feature piece on intergenerational practice, and in 2022, Kate and Marie’s research on nurturing wellbeing through intergenerational collaborations was presented at the 24th IUHPE World Conference on Health Promotion. At the end of each academic year, older volunteers and students are involved in evaluating their learning and experiences and this contributes to the ongoing successful development of the work. This year older people have commented: “

Aim of Initiative

The intergenerational work at ATU Sligo has the following aims:
To actively combat ageism and challenge the stereotyping of older and younger people through education and intergenerational learning collaborations.
To develop creative learning partnerships based on reciprocity and mutuality.
To promote health and wellbeing across the lifespan.
To enhance community cohesion, and work towards embedding inclusive and participatory intergenerational practice in communities.
To support graduates in working to make their communities healthy and happy places in which to grow older together.

Who is it aimed at

The Creative Generations Programme at ATU Sligo is for older volunteers of all ages, and abilities who would like to learn about, and through intergenerational practice with university students, lecturers, children aged under 6 years old and their early years educators.

3 Steps critical to success

1. Working with older volunteers who are curious about intergenerational work, who meet students with an open-mind, and who see themselves as having both something to offer to the programme, and something to learn from the programme.
2. Finding out from our Creative Generations group of 80+ people, what they view as the achievements, and areas for continued learning from the partnerships between older volunteers, students and children so that we can learn, grow, and celebrate them.
3. The dedication, time and commitment of our Older People’s Co-ordinator, Dr. Marie Hanmore-Cawley who undertakes this role in a voluntary capacity. Marie is a retired secondary school teacher, who on retirement returned to third level education to complete a PhD in Intergenerational Practice. She has been part of the programme since 2017.

3 Challenges in Planning / Delivery

1. Many of our original group from 2016 are getting older and would like to spend their time in different ways. This year before they left the programme, we set-up an informal mentoring programme, whereby those older volunteers who have intergenerational experience, would mentor volunteers new to the programme. In theory we saw this as a handing over of the mantle. In practice, it was a challenge because I had not clearly articulated the purpose of the mentoring, and it required much more time, and preparation than I had allowed for.
2. There is a growing awareness in Ireland of formal, planned intergenerational learning collaborations, and the benefits of the work. However, ATU Sligo to our knowledge is the only university in the country that teaches a dedicated module in intergenerational practice on either an early education or social care degree. This is challenging for the promotion of quality practices with and for older and younger people in these sectors.
3. We know that intergenerational work is fundamental to the health of communities. The WHO’s most recent Global Report on Ageism states that interventions for intergenerational contact is one of the three strategies that have been proven to work in addressing ageism, together with policy, law and education interventions. A challenge is tracking how the work that we do with older people, students and children at ATU Sligo impacts the wider community.

3 Outcomes / Benefits

1. One of the measures of the success of the programme is the enthusiastic uptake of the older volunteers, many of whom return to the programme each year to work alongside different students, and share their experiences of intergenerational practice, thus reducing the separation between the generations, and contributing to achieving the programme’s aims.
2. Findings from our participatory evaluations reveal that older volunteers enjoy feeling useful, they realise they have something to contribute and are of value, they discover they have much in common with the students, they enjoy learning about the students lives and that spending time in the company of ”… lovely, bright, bubbly, grounded young people” brings enjoyment to their own lives. Some particularly love meeting the children, the conversations and the fun they have together.
3. An important outcome is how the older people meet exceptional challenges. For one year during the Pandemic, the programme could not take place in-person on campus, or in community, and so we spent this year online with our older people, a group of young people and ATU graduates carrying out research into intergenerational practice. In the latter stages of the Pandemic, we had a hybrid year, with some older people on-campus social distancing, and some learning how to work with students in the online world. Moving from the real to the virtual learning space was a challenge that they overcame. Their resilience to want to keep going on the programme through the Pandemic was an inspiration. Post-Pandemic our older volunteers returned to campus and we celebrated International Day of Older Persons with gusto!