Treat from St Patrick’s for Golden Memories at SERC

Getting out of school for a morning is always a treat but extra special when you get to show off your talents. Such was the case for pupils from St Patrick’s Primary School, Burrenreagh who visited South Eastern Regional College’s (SERC) Downpatrick Campus to sing and dance for clients of the Golden Memories who meet at the College each Monday morning.

Rosemary Peters, “Golden Memories is a weekly social and activities day centre for older people run by students from the BTEC Level 3 National Foundation Diploma in Health and Social Care with support from lecturing team at SERC. The sessions are planned and organised by the students and are part of their enterprise and project-based learning were they deal with real life work scenarios as part of their studies.  

She added, “We all know that mixing with different generations is good for us. We learn from each other and staying connected means we all continue to learn from different experiences, whether that’s about the latest app, or game or what school was like 50 years ago. The session today brings three generations together at the College, the children, aged 10-11, who will be sharing their talents with song and dance, the young people, aged 17 -19, from the course and our Golden Memories service users who are aged 55 plus.

“The Health and Social Care students will also be sharing their experience of the intergenerational work they are doing and the impact it is having on their learning experience with Sarah McWilliams from Linking Generations. Sarah is going to carry out a research into the educational benefits that intergenerational work has for students, including those in further education. This type of research has not been conducted in NI before and although we cannot predict the outcomes of the research, our experience has been extremely positive.

Rosemary concluded, “We would like to thank the Principal, James Hunt, Frances McAleenan, Classroom Assistant and the pupils from St Patrick’s Burrenreagh for coming to SERC to meet with the Golden Memories services users and our students and hope they have enjoyed the experience as much as we enjoyed their show.”