InCommon has been awarded funding by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the Healthy Ageing Challenge. More than 30 projects run by social enterprises across the UK have been selected to share nearly £3 million to tackle the impacts of ageing.
Rethinking how we build communities and connect across different generations feels more pressing than ever before. According to research by the Economic and Social Research Council, the number of neighbourhoods in England that are highly segregated by age doubled to more than 2,000 between 2001 and 2011. By 2050, the number of people aged over 85 is predicted to double in size. This is not only challenging for our sense of community cohesion, but also chronic loneliness, poor mental health, large skill gaps, and politically divided communities. The trust and understanding that we have for others in our community plays a huge role in how we can all enjoy later life, and how we can work together to tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time.
At InCommon, our mission is to bring young and old together to build more connected, inclusive, age friendly communities. Over the past few years, we’ve been doing this through running our current Connect and Social Action programmes across London. We’ve seen the impact these programmes can have on communities and individuals, and how they have boosted wellbeing, increased a sense of purpose and improved levels of social connection amongst older people. As we look towards the future, we want the next part of our journey to involve sharing our learnings and supporting others to run their own intergenerational projects in communities outside of where we’re currently based.
We know that there is widespread support amongst older people, teachers, parents and young people for intergenerational projects, and a strong body of research demonstrating the benefits for both older and younger people. However, intergenerational projects remain rare and unaccessed by most of the population. This is not due to lack of demand, but largely because setting up, designing and managing local intergenerational projects requires a lot of time and effort.
With funding awarded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the Healthy Ageing Challenge, we’re designing and piloting a new digital solution to make it as simple and easy as possible for other community groups to deliver their own intergenerational activities. We’re building an online platform to act as a one-stop shop for everything you need to set up and deliver a project with a group of younger and older people. Over the next few months, we’ll be running a pilot project with 6 primary schools and 6 retirement homes to test the online platform, evaluate how well it meets their needs and how useful it is, and what we can change to make it better.
We’re really excited about the potential of this new model. We’ve already learned a lot so far, and by the start of 2023 we’ll have a much clearer idea of what the future of this digital solution could be. Our hope is that it can be a useful tool in helping to deliver positive social impact for even more older and younger people across the UK for years to come.