Every Life is a Story

Building Heritage Around Intergenerational Dialogue and Intercultural Befriending

 

At The No.1 Befriending Agency we were very excited to share our Heritage Project “Every Life is a Story – Building Heritage Around Intergenerational Dialogue and Intercultural Befriending” funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund!

Click here to view our STQRY ‘Every Life is a Story’ Exhibition Tour App!

 
 

The main aim of the project was to incorporate an exploration of heritage into our already established befriending services. We wanted to reach people to whom heritage is not normally accessible and give them the opportunity to explore heritage and at the same time, build connections and confidence, reduce isolation and increase wellbeing. Although we were looking at heritage from all angles, the main themes we were exploring are:

  • Food and Drink

  • Gardens

  • Living Spaces and Sleeping Areas

  • Music

These topics were explored through group befriending sessions.

Our Services

 

  • We currently offer these over Zoom three times a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). We have a wide variety of activities at these events including reminiscing and art sessions.

  • Digital exclusion is a big barrier for many of those who we will support through this project. We have trained volunteer ‘Digital Champions’ who can help people set-up their devices/access on Zoom to join sessions.

  • We will be holding weekly events all over Glasgow. From museum visits and coffee mornings to heritage walks and reminiscing sessions.

    If you would like more information about these, please contact connie@befriend.org.uk

If you know someone who may benefit from our services, please fill out the referral form found here.

Our Partners

 
 
 
 
 

We were delighted to work with The Village Storytelling Centre to explore heritage using storytelling. We had monthly group sessions with them, and the information collected during these events were turned into a book at the end of the project which can be viewed here.

The Heritage Project was also supported by the Moving Images Archive at the National Library of Scotland. The Moving Images Archive kindly let us use their footage to help us explore our key themes.

 

This is an example of the kind of resources that were provided to us by the Moving Image Archive to support the project.

 

The year culminated in a final project celebration where we launched a range of recordings, a book produced with the Village Storytelling Centre and a photo exhibition, all of which can be found here.

Volunteers

 Our organisation can only be successful with the help of our wonderful volunteers and we were delighted to have started some new roles for the project. We provided additional training for volunteers for this project which gave volunteers the opportunity to explore their own heritage.

Community Engagement

 Community engagement is a key component of this project, we wanted to provide the activities that our service users want. The project also documented how people’s perceptions of “heritage” change throughout the year.

If you have any other questions about the project, please email Connie@befriend.org.uk.

 

And finally we would like to say a big THANK YOU to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the National Lottery players who have made this project a reality!

Launch Event

We officially launched the project with an immersive event at our office on July 14th which allowed attendees to explore the main themes of the project. You can read more about the launch over on our blog. Below you can see a couple of clips of one of our wonderful volunteers Tom giving us a couple of readings relating to heritage.