Cooking through the generations

I have been lucky enough to have been involved in an inter-generational community project with my local school. The school, St Williams Primary School in Norwich, has forged links with The Marion Road Centre (Age UK Norwich) which offers local specialist care for frail elderly people. The school children have been working with older residents from the local community and members from the Marion Road Centre engaging through reminiscence, art and cookery projects.

My role has been to organise and run cookery sessions with six older people and six Year 3 pupils. Our ages have ranged from seven to over 90! Each week we bake a World War II recipe (I have found some wonderful cook books concentrating on war time and ration book cookery) and we talk around a theme. The themes have included rationing and food, travel, holidays and playtime.

This has really engaged the children and adults and lots of wonderful stories and memories are being passed on. The children are fascinated by how different things were in days gone by and the adults really enjoy the company of the children.

It has been a real privilege to be involved in this project and it’s something that I would recommend to all schools and early years settings. It could work particularly well in the build up to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.