AKS: Bring Me Sunshine

AKS Lytham’s initiative, Bring Me Sunshine, recognises and celebrates the value of inter-generational connections. Students at the school have devised a calendar of social and educational events to combat the social isolation faced by many in the elderly community but also celebrate and value the skills and experience they can share with younger pupils. The initiative was inspired, devised and driven by an enthusiastic student committee and received the award for ‘Greatest Whole School Involvement’ at the 2017 Anniversary Challenge Awards.

Author and position: Paul Crouch, Director of External Relations 

School: AKS is situated in the small coastal town of Lytham St Annes in the North West of England, along the Fylde Coast. It is a co-education school serving 700 students aged 3-18. 

Introduction 

When AKS Lytham joined Round Square, it was important to us that all our activity should be student-driven. The opportunity to consider how we might achieve this was first presented at the 2016 Round Square International Conference at Aiglon. For it was at that Conference that our reps, Molly and Sadie, were inspired to action. Molly has said that it, “changed the way I see our world and made me want to change it.” The Conference was also the setting for the launch of the Anniversary Challenge, which offered seed funding to support student committees’ efforts to make a positive difference in the local or wider community. 

Emboldened and inspired by the Conference, the students created a Working Party to identify the issues affecting our community locally and consider how our school could support them. The students looked at areas such as homelessness and the rise in foodbank usage, but when put to student vote, they concurred that the overriding social issue affecting our community today is how to support our elderly community. Our school is situated in Lytham, an area that attracts elderly citizens as a peaceful and scenic place to live out their retirement.  The attraction is such that for every 1 teenager there are roughly 3 senior citizens, many of whom feel isolated. 

As a school, we thought we could provide a solution to these concerns by connecting the younger and older generations in our school and wider community.  But in doing so, it was important to us that we established meaningful connections that would not only establish relationships but nurture them to share skills, forge deep friendships and help older and younger generations feel appreciated and valued.  

Aims: 

• To build long-term sustainable friendships with our local community, in particular, senior citizens. 
• To develop an ethos of volunteering and recognising this as an important part of service and learning. 
• To enable every AKS student to befriend a member of our senior citizen community and help cultivate these relationships for the future.  
• To share expertise, ideas and traditions across generations. 
• To thank the community in a way that celebrates our work in bridging the gap between the generations. 
• Our biggest goal was to accomplish whole school involvement, which we feel, will personally benefit each individual student for the rest of his or her lives. 

Planning 

With our focus agreed, the students took the lead in researching and evaluating the approaches we could use to achieve our goals whilst expanding the student volunteer team to involve students from Year 6 upwards. 

We dedicated half a term to researching the issue thoroughly using the time available in the students’ enrichment classes and after school. The students visited care homes to speak to the residents about their interests and spoke to experts to learn more about the approaches that might benefit our elderly citizens.  

This process highlighted to us the importance of creating a programme that engaged our elderly community through a variety of different interests and activities and enabled them to build enriching bonds with our students. In practical terms, this meant a calendar of events and initiatives across the year, involving different year groups, that either tied into our elderly citizens’ interests or extended existing school activities to incorporate their valued insight and experience.

It was felt that an overarching theme would pull the programme together so the students came up with the name of ‘Bring Me Sunshine’, a nod to the well-loved local comedian, Eric Morecambe. 

In order to reach those in need, the students established links with other groups and charities in our community who all share a passion to combat loneliness and isolation; Just Good Friends, Parkinson’s UK, Dogs for Therapy, the NHS, Lancashire Memories (a group that aims to recover lost childhood memories) and Fylde Borough Council. We also recognised that students’ own grandparents and AKS school alumni would benefit from our outreach. 

Student committee management 

The student committee held weekly meetings to discuss new ideas and plan events. There was a flat management structure where everyone’s voice was considered equal, which was also true for the voices of teachers and the Headmaster!

There was a good mixture of year groups represented, which gave the Working Party connections across the school and also enhanced the learning value of the exercise: older students would bounce off the enthusiasm of the younger ones, and younger students enjoyed being mentored by the older ones. 

Having concluded their market research, they plotted 6-8 key events for the remainder of the calendar year and divided into project groups to deliver them. Although Bring Me Sunshine was planned and managed by the Working Party, many more pupils were involved along the way. For some of the events, the Working Party targeted specific year groups to continue to raise awareness and recruit further volunteers. 

Activity 

The students were ambitious and creative in the events they devised and really tried to do things out of the ordinary which would not only be exciting and enjoyable but mutually valuable and beneficial. 

The ‘Share Your Stories’ event in March was the first event in the Bring Me Sunshine calendar. The students invited elderly members of the community to the school library to talk about their careers, memories, special stories, their education and general life lessons. The students met people who had served in the World Wars, enjoyed distinguished careers, or had life lessons to share about pursuing your goals and achieving your dreams. One elderly volunteer had given up his career in banking to fulfil his life ambition to become an artist. This casual chat over refreshments and live music allowed for easy conversations and for bonds to be made across generations.

Having such an enriching event to launch Bring Me Sunshine was key to the future success of the programme. It gave our elderly citizens a sense of purpose, belonging and empowerment and provided an inspirational launchpad for our pupils.

It was also a helpful learning opportunity from a project management point of view. Our Year 6s used their initiative and wrote a letter to a leading supermarket explaining the launch event and inviting their support. As a result, they received a donation of over 100 sandwiches to add to the donations of refreshments from parents.

Emboldened by the success of this event, the students sought further opportunities for our elderly citizens to share their skills or learn new ones.  Our Sixth Form pupils worked closely with the Lytham St Annes Parkinson’s Group to host an aromatherapy massage workshop in our Pavilion. The event theme took us all out of our comfort zone but within an atmosphere that was warm, welcoming and fun.

Opportunities to share skills also presented themselves as part of our extra-curricular programme. Our Board games and chess club members are now joined by our elderly citizens once a month, providing a relaxing social opportunity for our elderly citizens and opportunity for students to learn new card games and pick up a few games tips along the way.

The school diary also presented platforms to integrate Bring Me Sunshine. Elderly citizens were invited to the unveiling of our new Cricket Pavilion and Café and helped our school community plant strawberry seeds in an afternoon filled with croquet, dancing, ice cream and gardening. Once fully grown, our Year 7 and Reception pupils invited our elderly friends back to harvest the strawberries and enjoy strawberries and cream at our Summer Party.

Our programme also included more informal social events, such as our Movie afternoon: an idea that came from our elderly friends. Our Junior and Senior School students hosted a screening of a classic feel-good film in our drama studio, accompanied with delicious popcorn, and enjoyed a relaxed and happy afternoon.

And much enjoyment was had when we teamed up with ‘Just Group Friends’, a group which aims to combat loneliness and isolation in our local community, to form an inter-generational dance crew with a performance of ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling’ by Justin Timberlake. Performing this dance was a perfect way for all to express their feelings and to celebrate together a shared passion, whilst trying something new and proving it is never too late in life to do something you have always wanted to do. The dance was performed to an audience at Lytham Hall giving all a real sense of achievement and togetherness.

Bring Me Sunshine was also brought into our classes, for example, Year 3 invited the elderly community in for an Art afternoon. They were asked to bring in two or three nostalgic items from home, such as a doll or an ornament, for the students to learn about and be creatively inspired by.  

In all these endeavours, promotion of the Bring Me Sunshine programme was important to encourage maximum volunteer participation and widen the benefits to students. The Anniversary Challenge funds were used to purchase Bring Me Sunshine T-shirts to underline the sense of unity and belonging we hope we are bringing in forging relationships between the younger and older generations. As the t-shirts were sold, the costs of production has been recouped, which has enabled us to fund a plaque/statue in the grounds. This serves to remind those who have taken part to always feel as though they are welcome at AKS Lytham adding to their sense of belonging and will be a reminder in years to come of how the project started and the impact it has made.  

Challenges 

• Managing a student-led project – As a new school to Round Square, this was one of the first fully student-led projects run by the school. It took us all a little while to harness the students’ energy and find the right balance between adult mentorship and student management. Establishing some ground rules helped create order – meetings would always have an agenda and minutes resulting from them. We accepted that by allowing students to manage the meetings, they may well run differently from how we might envisage them ourselves, but the ground rules ensured that progress was made and clear actions resulted.   

• Liaising with the elderly community – We felt it was important to prepare our students for the possible situations they might encounter when working with elderly citizens. We had workshops on areas such as memory loss to equip the students with the knowledge they need to create open and honest relationships. A local spiritual leader with expertise in this area gave the students guidance on the importance of being confident, polite, and showing interest, and that they may need to be the ones to ‘make’ conversation. He also addressed some practical realities when visiting elderly residents in care home settings: that they may need to adapt to different smells and behaviour.  

• Fitting into school life – Having a member of the senior management team on board helped ensure our programme had status within the school. Talking about our plans at staff inset also enabled colleagues to ask questions and understand more about the value of the initiative in terms of student development, skills, our social responsibility but also the business value in creating a positive engagement initiative with our community. To minimise concerns around student time, we held our activity in parts of the school day where student involvement would be manageable, for example, during Games sessions, students’ Enrichment Time or at the end of term.   

Impact 

This programme has helped people of all ages build meaningful friendships and grow and exchange skills. 

For our students, it has provided an enriching educational experience and developed their interpersonal skills.  

As our chairperson, Molly, has found: “Through this project, AKS has realised that there is so much we can learn from one another, how important it is to actively listen and to be more emotionally aware. It is important that young people realise that we need to step away from the reliance of technology and appreciate this generation and all they can offer.” 

The committee members have learned project management skills, how to adapt to different communication needs and styles, and how to rally support and motivate others to achieve their goals.  It has fired their imaginations by empowering them to develop new events and activities to bring the generations together, and prepared them to honour, contribute to and support a society that embraces its elderly population.  

The project has developed an ethos of volunteering across the whole school and underlined the message about the power of a smile and the value of conversation. Over half of our students have been directly involved with events, but the programme’s visibility to the entire school has helped inspire a new perspective on how a community should work and encouraged students to consider how they can make a difference. Success has been shared through frequent assemblies, noticeboard updates, and presentations to the governing body. An RS blog on the homepage of our website and social media presence has also communicated our progress to the wider community. 

As a school, we have also benefitted from the growth in connectivity with the community and created positive advocates, which has helped our communication strategy to grow and improve our local standing and reputation.  

We have been touched by the numerous positive comments shared with us from our elderly citizens in person, through emails, and even reviews on Facebook! They comment on how much they have enjoyed the activities and give us many more ideas of activities we can consider.  

 “What a lovely afternoon we had, made very special by all the students who danced with the community. You are all amazing and I thank you from the bottom of my heart” 

“Bringing sunshine to our community… you are amazing!” 

The Future 

Our ambition is to grow the project each year, replicating our most successful events and adding new ones, to explore all the different ways that we can mutually gain from intergenerational connections. In the spring, we will be opening a community garden, providing a beautiful environment for the exchange of knowledge and expertise (from the use of tools to gardening techniques) whilst providing produce for the benefit of the local community. 

Over time, we hope that the loneliest, vulnerable people who may not be confident enough to come on their own, may be found through existing project participants through word of mouth. Reaching those most in need will also be pursued through a pen-pal system helping us reach those who may find it difficult to leave their house. We hope the idea of eventually meeting their pen pal (one day) at a future event might be the catalyst to give them a little more purpose. 

And as our connections grow, we envisage the programme extending beyond the elderly community to look at initiatives that enhance the well-being of our whole community. This might involve greater collaboration with organisations such as doctors’ surgeries or engagement with experts across a whole spectrum of well-being issues. AKS may well become the hub of well-being in our community, and reposition us from being a participant to a leader in our community today. 

Advice 

• Lead through the students – It will make it more authentic and ensure people buy into it.
• Draw on your resources – The staff, governing body, parents and alumni, for example, we have an Archive Volunteer Group who passionately support the activities.
• Promote your work – Get on Twitter and Facebook and other social media outlets, have a presence around the school and get everyone interested.