Celebrating “Creating Intergenerational Communities” at Stormont!

On Tuesday 13th May 2025, together with project leads and participants, network members, friends and supporters, The Long Gallery at Stormont buildings provided the perfect setting to come together and showcase what has been achieved over the last two and a half years on the UK wide "Creating Intergenerational Communities" programme.

Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund   this multi-year project led by Generations Working Together in partnership with LGNI and Apples and Honey at Nightingale delivered training and support to individuals from a total of 32 partnerships from across the UK. After completion of this training, these dedicated project leads embarked on trialling the newly developed Toolkit, the first of its kind guidance document, focusing on quality indicators to intergenerational practice. These will be of significant importance in promoting good practice across intergenerational activity in the future.

Also attending on the day were LGNI's esteemed colleagues Louisa Turner and Corrina Bruce from Generations Working Together, Scotland and Marilia Pavlou and Judith Ish-Horowicz from Apples & Honey at Nightingale, England. The LGNI team gave there heartfelt thanks for their attendance and support and their efforts in travelling to share in their NI celebration.

The CIC programme solely focused on training and capacity building with practitioners, to support the development of quality and sustainable intergenerational activities that add value to their existing objectives within their own settings e.g. care, education, youth, early years and so on.

The event included speakers Natalie Sayers and Leah Smyth from Knockbreda PS, from one of NI's CIC project settings, who gave a fantastic presentation on what their school has achieved with their partner setting Annadale Care Home, since enrolling on the programme.

Brenda Kent, one of the CIC project evaluators, showcased the overall findings of the programme and the statistical impact that its outcomes achieved, through her impact report.

Finally, Sanjana Mehta, a Psychology student from Queen’s Universities Insight programme, who came on board with LGNI last year and followed the journey of the Knockbreda PS & Annadale Care Home partnership, presented her findings on the impact that intergenerational activity has within education.

The team shared a short video with the guests, that really captures the value of intergenerational connections and the outcomes that can be achieved, by embedding the practice into an organisation’s regular activities. This can be viewed over the coming weeks at the bottom of this page.

LGNI's small team were completely overwhelmed at the support and number of those who attended and the excitement and enthusiasm in the room was evident! The team give their thanks to Michelle McIlveen MLA, who sponsored the event and of course to all the wonderful CIC project leads and participants who have given so much of their time and dedication to their intergenerational activities and associated project commitments.

Find out more about the the project activities here UK Creating Intergenerational Project - LGNI