‘Britain has been described as one of the most age segregated countries in the world. This can cause loneliness and exclusion, lack of trust, ageism and division between the generations”1
( 1United for All Ages, January 2020 https://www.unitedforallages.com/)

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Across the country imaginative projects have been established in a variety of settings enabling different generations to meet and share activities and experiences with well recognised and wide-ranging benefits for all. One example is the original Burnham Intergenerational Project which, since 2002 has been bringing together children aged 9 to 11 with older people aged between 60 and 95. It is one of the longest running initiatives of local charity Burnham Health Promotion Trust (BHPT).”

To date nearly 700 children from St Peter’s C of E Primary School and about 100 residents and friends of Perry House sheltered housing scheme in Burnham, Buckinghamshire have benefitted from the opportunity to enjoy learning together through a range of shared activities and experiences. In July 2022 a second intergenerational project began in Burnham when Lent Rise School developed a link with Burnham Community Association’s Monday Club. This was followed in March 2023 when Lent Rise School also formed a partnership with Nicholas House (Abbeyfield) Care Home. Both these projects continue to flourish.

The LaST Toolkit

We are passionate about the many benefits that come from building intergenerational connections and would love to see projects like ours in every community. We have created the LaST Toolkit in order to share our ideas, experience and material developed over many years in Burnham. We hope that it will encourage and enable others to set up projects of their own and so discover the lasting benefits, and the joy, that comes from building intergenerational connections.

In 2022 we were delighted when the Guinness Partnership developed intergenerational projects in some of its housing schemes in Swindon and Devon using resources from the LaST Toolkit. Read what some of the participants said about the projects Endorsements – Learning and Sharing Together

The information in the LaST Toolkit is divided into a number of sections:

  • Getting Started – Information and guidance about setting up and running an Intergenerational Programme including aims, planning and preparation, suggested topics, risk assessment, safeguarding checklist, evaluation and role descriptions.
  • Delivering a virtual Intergenerational Project – We have created a separate guide based on our experience of delivering our project using Zoom.
  • Icebreakers, anytime activities and longer projects - Suggestions for games and additional activities and topics that we have found to work well.
  • The Modules – Everything you need to run 30 different 1½ hour sessions. Topics fall into two main categories “Through the Year” and “Sharing Memories”.
  • Themed Projects - with enough material for several sessions. Currently these include “The 1970’s”, “Food” and “The Platinum Jubilee Resource Pack”

Whilst we have developed the LaST resources based on our work with primary school aged children and older people in the community some of the material could also be used in other settings, for example reminiscence sessions with older people in residential care or in hospital. Some parts could also be used to initiate intergenerational conversations within families or as a first stage in developing a memory book with older relatives.

Acknowledgements

All the resources in the The LaST Toolkit have been developed and trialled in Burnham.  From the outset we have been very fortunate to have had the commitment and full support of:

  • the head teachers, staff and children of St Peter’s C of E Primary School
  • the management, residents and friends of Perry House sheltered housing scheme
  • the Trustees and staff of Burnham Health Promotion Trust

We are also very grateful to Buckinghamshire Adult Learning with whom we first set up the Burnham Intergenerational Project in 2002. They provided tutors and resources in the early years and helped to shape the initial development of the Project. Over the years  the range of topics we have studied has increased and here we are indebted to Mandy Barrow, originally from Woodlands Junior School, Kent. Her excellent internet-based resources have been invaluable as the basis for many of our sessions and could certainly form the basis of many more in the future. http://projectbritain.com/

Other websites that have been very useful for developing resources for LaST are
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for information and photographs
https://wordmint.com/  for creating puzzles and games
https://printablefreecoloring.com/  for drawings and pictures

We are also very grateful to Burnham Historians whose publications have provided us with so much excellent information about our local area. We would also like to thank everyone who has provided guidance on the development of LaST, in particular Aaron Mansfield at the Royal Society for Public Health and Denise and Stephen Burke at United for All Ages.

A note from the author

I developed the idea for the Burnham Intergenerational Project in partnership with Yasmin Ali from Buckinghamshire Adult Learning in 2002. With the help of my colleagues from Burnham Health Promotion Trust (BHPT), I continued to run the Project for 16 years until my retirement from BHPT in January 2019. For the next 18 months I concentrated on developing the LaST Toolkit.

In 2020 I resumed my involvement with the Burnham Project when I helped BHPT’s Community Project Worker, Marisa Di Bartolomeo, to deliver the Project on Zoom. We were delighted to discover that with just a few modifications, the LaST Toolkit works very well online and we found it was still possible to capture the magic that comes from bringing different generations together. Marisa was passionate about the Burnham Intergenerational Project and about LaST. She had so many ideas which she was keen to try out. Very sadly this was not to be. Marisa became seriously ill in 2021 and died in February 2022. This website is dedicated to her memory.

About Burnham Health Promotion Trust

Burnham Health Promotion Trust (BHPT) is a registered charity that was established in 1997. It owes its existence entirely to the great generosity and vision of the late Louis and Valerie Freedman who were local residents and patients of Burnham Health Centre in Buckinghamshire, where the charity had its office base for many years. The charity’s aim is to promote, sustain and enhance health and wellbeing in the community of Burnham. To this end it works in many different ways and at many different levels to positively influence the modifiable determinants of health and to create an environment where it is easier for people to make healthier choices.
BHPT has a tradition of partnership working and the Burnham Intergenerational Project is an enduring example of the positive benefits that can be achieved in a community when different groups work together. Other examples of BHPT’s work have been presented at public health and health promotion conferences and described in various publications, including a dedicated chapter in a Health Promotion textbook for medical students. 2

2 Health Promotion in Medical Education – from Rhetoric to Action
Edited by Ann Wylie and Tangerine Holt ISBN 978-1 – 84619-292-0 Pages 130 – 138