SAPERE

P4C and Age Concern

Mixed age Philosophy in Barrow

Age is no barrier – at least that’s the thinking behind Age Concern Barrow’s ‘Building Bridges’ initiative, an intergenerational project that brings young and older people together to share their time and experiences. Set up in 1996 by Age Concern Barrow as part of a crime reduction initiative, Building Bridges provides constructive opportunities for young and older people to address stereotypes of youth and old age and build mutual trust and respect.

As one 82 year old participant puts it; ‘It makes your brain work. I love it because it makes you think!’

Since it started the project has met with enthusiasm from both schools and older people, and there are now over 70 older volunteers aged 55 –90 years involved in 15 local schools and colleges. The programme includes a diverse variety of intergenerational projects linked to the curriculum ranging from older people supporting young people (i.e. local history, WWII reminiscence, cookery, craft, reading, budgeting, life-skills etc) to young people supporting older people (developing IT skills, exploring the internet etc) to joint creative projects (visual arts, music, video, writing etc).

Although there are plenty of forums for older people in Barrow to address topical issues such as pensions, health care etc there seems little opportunity for reflective thinking or exploring new ideas. So it came as a breath of fresh air when Building Bridges volunteers were invited to join some existing P4C enquiries taking place in our partner schools. These early meetings were very well received by everyone and more enquiries in other schools were soon set up.

Meanwhile new Building Bridges volunteers were invited to get on board by attending ‘taster’ enquiries at Age Concern (without young people). Support from our local Education Action Zone, Barrow Community Learning Partnership (BCLP), who facilitated these was instrumental in getting things off the ground, and the Age Concern philosophy group (self named ‘Questioning the Obvious’) unanimously decided to continue with their meetings as well as the mixed age ones.

Meetings were set up with new schools, and over the past year mixed age philosophy enquiries have been held with year 2pupils, years 5 & 6, secondary and A level students. A grant from BCLP also enabled Age Concern Barrow to make a short video on the principles underpinning P4C, which documents the process of mixed age enquiries and shares feedback from participants.

The impact of P4C on young people’s thinking and learning is the subject of ongoing research and is becoming increasingly well documented. But intergenerational philosophy and philosophy for older people (P4OP) is perhaps a newer phenomenon about which less is known. However all the early indications from the work in Barrow suggest that for some older people philosophy enquiries provide great benefits.

Could P4OP perhaps provide stimulation and fulfilment in older life as an activity in day care and residential settings? What might be the effects of P4OP on mental health in older adults? And how much will young and older people benefit from taking part in mixed age enquiries? We can at this stage only guess the answers to these questions but there are plenty of P4OP advocates and practitioners now in Barrow who are keen to continue and find out more.

The 10 minute video mentioned above,”P4C - A Mixed Age Approach” is available for £5 (including postage and packing) from SAPERE (see shop on this site).

Filed under: Projects