Greetings from Hungary

Dear Colleges,

My name is Judit Farago from Budapest, Hungary. I am very glad to join this international working group.

I work for a non profit organization (Inforum) dealing with closing the digital gap between social groups such as age groups. We have been running an intergenerational project, the Grandparents-Grandchild Competition of Informatics since 2003. The owner of the project idea is my partner (both in work and private life) Gabor Dombi who is also attending to the workshop.

I look forward to meeting all of you soon!
Judit

Introduction to Helena Gillis

Thank you to all the other delegates for providing some information on their work, as background to attending the conference - it has been good to hear from you all. Here is a little introduction to myself: I am Helena Gillis, and I work for Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), which is a membership organisation for more than 340 museums in Scotland. As a Learning and Access Manager at MGS I support members to provide access and learning opportunities for a wide range of audiences, including inter-generational groups.

Museum collections really come to life, and the stories about the objects and associated people are discovered, when intergenerational groups are involved in working with them. I hope to bring to the workshop my knowledge of some of the intergenerational learning work in which MGS members have been involved. This has included the TPYF (their past your future) project which is a national project, through which reminiscences from war veterans are being collected on a dedicated website, for use as a classroom learning resource (http://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/the-programmes-2/tpyf-scotland-phase-2/). Another project is the Borders Textile Towerhouse film project (http://www.scotborders.gov.uk/pdf/25187.pdf) which has included a film project by high school students to film ex-textile mill workers, to enable them to understand more about their textile past, and to encourage students to participate in the local textile industry. The films are now accessible through the Hawick archive, and a sample are on permanent display in the Towerhouse museum.

I hope to bring to the workshop my knowledge of intergenerational work involving museums in Scotland. I am also keen to learn from the experience of other delegates. This is my first ever blog, so I hope it has worked.

Greetings from Scotland

I'm Andrew, from Scotland, and I am very much looking forward to meeting everyone and participating in this excellent workshop. My thanks also to Teresa for all the hard work she has put into the organisation, never an easy task.

My background is in Widening Access for adults through the Scottish Wider Access Programme (SWAPWest), a forerunner of the European Lifelong Learning Programme and I have been involved in Access Programme management for several years.

I hope to learn a lot from our host and all the participants in facilitating engagement strategies and activities for our older learners and will share with everyone our experience through SWAPWest.
I did like the suggestion of individual presentations and I will be happy to give one.

As a footnote I will be on holiday 21-30 August followed immediately with a conference 31 August - 5 September but I hope to be accessing my emails whenever possible.
Best wishes to everyone and will see you all soon.
Andrew

workshop contents

Dear Friends

Thank you very much for using this space (even on vacations :)

I myself I’m on vacations (only 90%) so today I will email you some first guidelines to the workshop.
As far as possible I would like to build a final programme that meet the expectations of the participants … a hard task!

I also would like to request your interest and willing, to share with the other some method/technique/information that you find particularly relevant in the organization/development of Intergenerational Activities.

I wish you a nice vacations of just a nice summer time
Kind regards
Teresa

From Barcelona

Hello, dear friends.
My name is Joan Font. For ten years, I coordinate projects in the association DEMÀ (Departament d'Estudis dels Medis Actuals), in Barcelona.
We work in adult education, especially in young-adults and in elderly people.
We also develop actions in studies and actions on the social insert of sectors in exclusion risk.
During years we work in different European projects.
I hope to be able to share experiences, opinions, ideas and sensations during the workshop in Porto.
I hope also to see you in september.
Best wishes for all.

Hello from Sunny Blackpool! My name is Andrea Howard and I am really looking forward to attending the Intergenerational training in Porto. I currently run a project called Echoes of the Past which is a project involving children from a local school taking part in interviewing the older residents of Blackpool about their own childhood memories.
Blckpool is a seaside resort with a large transient population and lots of social problems. We are hoping to improve peoples perceptions of community and belonging and develop a deeper understanding of the generations.
I also am on holiday until September 2nd but will be checking the blog when I can. I look forward to meeting you soon! Andrea

Hello from Wales!

Hello everyone!

My name is Darren Jones, from Blackwood in the South Wales valleys.

I am very pleased indeed to be a part of this exciting workshop and am looking forward to meeting you all on the 6th!

I work for a community organisation that aims to tackle poverty and deprivation in some of Wales' most deprived communities and am hoping that this workshop will help me to develop new ways of bringing together and engaging with young and old(er) people within the villages where I work.

I've seen the participants list and its great to see the number of different countries represented!

Well, I'm one of those vacantioners Teresa mentioned, so I'll not be posting now until a week on Sunday, apologies Teresa!

Bye for now.
Darren