Moments of Freedom started as a small community group, holding safe space for women to come together and share peer support. But with a few years of experience and confidence, it’s been growing into a wider self-sustaining network. The women have been finding new ways to include New Scots and the wider Clydebank community in sharing and building social connections.

This made a big difference in Covid – helping people access technology and get information in their mother tongue languages. Moments of Freedom have also been using artistic approaches to share their stories and ideas, and connect with people – publishing their collective poetry in the Clydesider, and recently working with a theatre company.

We take part in the Intergenerational National Network, and host its online presence. The network (INN) is a space for sharing innovative ideas and approaches in intergenerational community work. For example, addressing the climate crisis. Taking care of the environment needs people to work together, internationally, intergenerationally, and including everyone. In its climate-focused gatherings, like the meeting at Glasgow Science Centre before COP27, INN has brought together people of all ages to co-operate.

This co-operation defies the idea only younger generations care about the environment, and generates bold ideas (like asking the biggest landowners to change their land use to support the ecosystem) and new opportunities to bring together diverse skills and experiences to make change.

We worked with Dementia Friendly Aberfeldy, helping them develop and host a series of monthly carers sessions in partnership with the Perth and Kinross HSCP and Communities Team. The carers events are providing a much-needed channel for peer support, with many people swapping contact details directly with each other, building their network without an organisation needing to act as intermediary. Some of the attendees made plans to meet for lunch with their husbands, who had also found their social circles decrease after their diagnosis and covid restrictions.

The carers events are also attended by key members of HSCP and communities’ team. This creates a channel for them to hear directly from carers about their experiences and gaps in support, and come up with solutions. The carers events have led to spin-off work taken on by other partners – men’s sheds, befriending, and dementia awareness training. More people in and around Aberfeldy are aware of Dementia Friendly Aberfeldy and increasing awareness of dementia and how to be dementia-friendly.

Rural Wisdom hosted Conversation Starter events to generate conversation around the issues that matter to older people in rural communities. The events were for anyone living in, or working alongside, a rural community. They brought together a range of people to offer different perspectives on the challenges and solutions. Topics included reframing fuel poverty, Men’s Wellbeing, having a say in policy and the work of the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, Dementia Friendly Communities, and community transport networks. People who took part were inspired to take the conversation back to their own communities, and adapt the ideas to their local challenges. The events also helped people build contacts and relationships between different villages and rural places in Scotland and Wales, so they can stay in touch and keep sharing ideas, good practice, and encouragement.