The Eldership in the Community presentation by participants of their final projects.We were more than pleased to receive this update from the Big Room CIC, funded by us quite recently. Their work explores what it means to be in community and embrace the challenges and with those challenges, the rewards that diversity brings and without which we are the poorer. Here Owen Stevens describes what’s been happening.
In 2022 we were both surprised and not surprised that the Big Room CIC was awarded a grant from the Emergence Foundation to run a series of workshops exploring Eldership in the Community. We were surprised because the Eldership Programme did not lend itself to a series of quantifiable outcomes that could be measured in terms of success or failure. We were not surprised because, from our very first meetings with the Emergence Foundation, we knew that what they were offering us was, above all, born out of their generosity of spirit.
Later this year the Big Room CIC will become the Wellbeing Space under the guardianship of Joanne Stratford-Wittingham, a participant in the Eldership Programme. Another participant, as a direct result of the programme, embarked on a new research venture ‘to learn more about what we humans can learn through our relationships and interactions with wild animals – for their good and for ours.’
What has emerged and continues to emerge from the Eldership Programme, which ended in January 2023, is an unfolding exploration of community. The ongoing work that is being carried out by participants is in no small part due to the grant money awarded by the Emergence Foundation and perhaps even more importantly the generosity of spirit in which it was given.
