Working with older people

Karen Elmes, the Building Exploratory’s lifelong learning officer, writes about the creation and delivery of a series of workshops with three older peoples groups in Bromley by Bow: the ‘Young @ Art’ group, the ‘Bangladeshi Grandparents Group’ and users of the Poplar Day Centre.

“In developing and delivering the workshops we strived to tailor sessions to the needs, interests and capacities of each individual group. We ran virtual walking tours along Bow Road at the Poplar Day Centre and Young @ Art, where people’s reduced mobility and frailty ruled out the possibility of walking tours. The virtual walking tour involved projecting films taken from a bus along Bow Road, stopping at various points to discuss buildings and places. This, along with a collection of historic maps and photographs of Bow Road served as an excellent introduction to the process of recovering people’s memories.

A creative session for Young @ Art encouraged participants to use their artistic talents to represent their memories and experiences of Bow Road. Two building visits for the Bangladeshi Grandparents group gave this group the opportunity to visit two fascinating buildings to which they had never been to before - the newly refurbished St Mary’s Church and the Police Stables behind Bow Road Police Station. For most of the group it was their first visit to a church and they were captivated by the experience. The visit delivered an unanticipated outcome of promoting interfaith community cohesion. We’d love to develop the links that we have established with both the church and the Bangladeshi Grandparents, to explore this potential further in the future.

We used two means for recording older people’s stories; some have been recorded in writing by volunteers who participated in the sessions and some have been recorded in audio during one-to-one conversations with people who had specific stories relating to Bow Road. This has generated some fascinating insights into people’s lives and their connections to the street and its buildings.”