Intergenerational Workshops- Appreciating Windowsills.

Our Eastern Membership & Community Council have been working with Partners Sally Connick, from National Literacy Trust for over two years in Lowestoft to support the campaign "Get Suffolk Reading" In February we delivered three wonderful workshops with Caroline England, from Featherbed Tales.

Our first event was with members in Halesworth & pupils from Wenhaston Primary School, the second was at the Over 60's Centre in Lowestoft with Pakefield Brownies & the third at a Broadlands in Oulton Broads with pupils from Poplars & Somerlyton schools.

The groups had two hours together, engaging in stories, crafts & reading for our appreciating windowsills workshops.

Caroline England said:

One of the ways to enhance our wellbeing is to reduce introspection and focusing inwardly on ourselves. When we look externally at things around us, it helps us not to focus on everything that is wrong with us and how our world is hard, but to be aware of the many positive things we have.  This is a core part of developing and practicing mindfulness. 

Appreciating Windowsills is a way of helping someone to start this journey of appreciation which has been shown to help our wellbeing - both physically and mentally. Introspection and focusing on illness is very common as we get older, but we believe it is also useful for young people who see images of "Perfect" lives constantly in front of them, highlighting their own personal "failures" and less than perfect lives. The idea is that it helps to encourage positive thinking and for people to take notice of the good things in their life - however hard it feels at the time.  People who look outwardly tend to have much better mental health than those who look inwards. 

The sessions went really well and we had great engagement between the different generations. There were lovely stories shared of fishing exploits, water fights, and herring gutting among other things. The children created some beautiful poems and recorded memories in writing for some of the older people about memories around water. It was a lovely sharing atmosphere. 

Photos Credit to Chris Strogen