Okay perfect, so to introduce myself so I'm Matt Bray
I'm the communications director
for Hackey CVS
and we age, we host the Connect
Hackney Ageing
Better project and I should be joined by
Margaret hopefully in a moment
The first project that we started for
Connect Hackney about five and a half
years ago was the Connect Hackney media
group.
And in the media group we train older
residents so anybody aged 50 plus, but
actually typically people aged from
their 60s to
80, to their 80s, and our oldest
participant is 94.
So we train people in digital skills so
computer skills, photography, interview
skill, writing for Connect Hackney magazine
sorry, it;s the Hackney Senior magazine
and writing for the Connect Hackney
website and we produce a quarterly
magazine called
Hackney Senior, which is very much about
the older people in in the group using
their skills to produce something real
and tangible we print four thousand
copies of Hackney Senior magazine
and it's distributed each quarter to
other older
people in Hackney around libraries,
hospices, community centers, lunch clubs and so on.
So we've been working in the media group
for about four years
and then Hackney Council invited us to
join them on a Windrush project
and we collected stories over about four
months
from Hackney elders who were from the
Windrush generation and we put the stories
into a commemorative booklet and into a
series
of podcasts. This
is the booklet which you should
hopefully see now
on your screen. So there are a number of
themes which came out from the Windrush
project,
one of them was work and this is the
cover of the booklet and this is a very
good example so the three women
on the front have been in the media
group for about,
well Eugenia on the left on my left
in the blue has been in the media group
from
the start I remember her very much when
she joined because she phoned me up to
join and I asked her what her computer
schools were and she said she could turn
the computer on she'd turn it off but it
was a bit in the middle that troubled her.
But I mean, she's come on
great since then, doing photography she's
writing articles for the magazine
she's been in the media group for four
years and she's like really charming and
fun as are
all of the people in the media group. So
Eugenia was a seamstress, so she told her
story about coming over and working in a
factory in Hackney and that that was
very typical of Hackney and I know other places
that a lot of the Windrush generation
worked in clothing factories and shoe
factories,
and the other two women on the cover
there are Beulah in the centre
and Olive on the right who were both
nurses in the NHS
and they both told their stories about
working as nurses and about their lives in Hackney
and overall, I think that that was one
of the really positive things that came
out of the
Windrush project, it was Connect
Hackney and the media group
gave the platforms where older Hackney
residents from the Windrush generation
could tell their stories
and they could talk about the
contribution they've made
to Hackney and the contribution that
they still make and it's very much about
amplifying the voices of older people,
and then telling their stories in their
words and we were just there really as
the kind of conduit to
produce the magazine and the podcasts.
There was really a big mixture
in terms of the stories it was quite
interesting that
some of the stories were really positive, so
Olive on the cover there and green, she
said "when I was
18 I applied to do nursing. Nursing
is my life and i enjoy every minute of
it. I got the life I wanted in London very
much so.
London is just London and Hackney more than all
is lovely. I love Hackney, so much. It's the people"
So we've got those kind of really great
and positive stories where people
loved Hackney. We also got very much the
opposite so
Janet, who was also a nurse
in the NHS - and one of the other great
things about the project is we got these
old photographs that people had so these
were the passport photos
and we scanned them with the group and
people brought in their own
their old photos from their attics and
from  albums and stuff which is which is
really beautiful, because we then
produced a really
interesting historical document. We got a
great introduction
by the way from Diane Abbott, but Janet
another NHS nurse, you can probably just
see the quote there said the opposite,  "When I first see
London I say, 'oh this is London, the Queen's country, I
find it very dirty'".
And we we heard that a lot, I mean Janet,
Janet says she "came with the sunshine in
her
bones so she wasn't feeling cold", but a
lot of the participants spoke to us
about how dirty Hackney was, how smoggy it was,
how they lived in, very cramped conditions
another
woman that I was looking at her story
earlier just thinking about it,
was talking about how they were ten
people to a room in Hackneyand that
and they they came from their
islands where
they had big houses and had beautiful
vegetation, they had a lot of space, and
they came to
Hackney and it was smoggy and dirty and had
lots of factories and all the factories
smoke. Another of the key
themes that came up which was important
to tell, particularly even more so now
thinking about the Black Lives Matter
movement, and that's something we've been
talking about a lot in Hackney,
is that a lot of participants spoke
about the racism that they experienced
at the time, so some of the nurses was
talking
in their stories about how the doctors
preferred the white nurses
to the black nurses, there were also
examples - a woman called
Veronica i'll send the links for all of
these booklets but
woman called Veronica talked
about having to
be very tough, and about her mum
coming home
with a bleeding hand when she was
attacked by some
young boys. And then moving on from that
the other
theme that came out was the hostile
environment, more recently,
and in terms of this project we had
two launches, we had a celebration event
at Hackney town of all with the Council
which was a really great event, with
other projects from Hackney, but then we
had a more intimate event
at Hackney CVS, and a number of
the participants spoke about how hurt
they were by the Windrush scandal that they were
invited to the country
after the second world war to help
rebuild the UK,
they participated they played their part
and then very much later with Windrush
scandal
it was very disingenuous that
it was suggested that they hadn't played
their part and that they didn't have a
right to be in the UK.
In fact, some of the content that was
produced was really quite political
and we couldn't include all of it in
this publication, in terms of the fact
that we're a charity and we had to think
about the funder, but Novlett here
I think sums it up she says, "Windrush
do more, get less. I thought they would
treat us
a bit more kindly, we spent all of our
days here,
we have no other home but Britain, and this
is the only home that we know now
because if I go back to Jamaica, I would be like a stranger there because
all my young days of my life
have been spent here, and I'm saying the
Government is a bit disingenuous to do
this to Windrush people
and it makes me feel sad that the more
you do
is the less you get".
So there's really a rich diversity of
stories here and another common theme we
heard - which Veronica talks about - is that
often
the parents came over first on the
invitation of the Government
to come over from the 1940s, and then the
children tend to stay at home and were
brought up by grandparents or aunts
and uncles,
and quite a few of the participants
spoke to us about how that broke down
the
bond with the parents, that when the
children
came to Hackney the relationship with
the parents have broken down and
Veronica talks about that here she says,  "The thing
is though
with coming to Britain, I didn't really
know my parents because I left
there from a young age, so when they came
I don't think we actually formed a bond.
There was no bond there, they were just
two people really."
So there's really a huge mixture of
stories here, there' stories about marriages
about families, there's stories about going
clubbing in the West End and music
they played and the kind of dancing they
did, so it was a really rich story we
produced 10,000 copies
of this booklet, Ithink it was really
great that amplifying
people's voices. Another interesting
outcome of this
project was in - back to the cover just to
show you Beulah in the cover - when we
were
recording the stories, Beulah said she
thought that
the younger generations in Hackney
didn't understand her and they didn't
understand where she came from
they didn't understand her generation
and the Windrush community.
And one of the really positive outcomes
from this is that we gave quite a lot of
copies of the booklet to
Young Hackney and the coordinator at
Young Hackney, a guy called Zach said
that young people loved
reading the stories so there was a
really great intergenerational aspect
there so the younger people were
learning about the older people and what
they'd experienced.
And in terms of that, we archived this
booklet with Hackney Museum so it's
there for future generations to come.
So that was the Windrush project, I think
it was a really
great project for amplifying the voices
of older people
and recording their experiences.
Also a really beautiful document if we
look at some of the photographs we've,
got more modern photographs but
the old photographs are great, some of
the photographs are from people
in their islands in the Caribbean, but
also these really great kind of
glamorous
shots. I'm just trying to find there we
go so there's Olive now,
our nurse who loved Hackney so much
and, then Olive back in the days just
really beautiful photographs, and so stylish and
also the photographs of her here with
her daughter
with her NHS badge with their NHS
certificate so
it was really beautiful project to work
on.
And the year after the Windrush project
we did the diversity project and
the film you just saw in the
introduction with Antonia talking about
the changing landscape
of Hackney that was part of that project,
because after Windrush we were thinking,
about you know
Hackney is such a diverse borough, you've
got the Vietnamese community, Chinese
community, Turkish, Kurdish,
African, Caribbean - such a rich mixture of
nationalities and culture in one borough,
so we recorded that and we also
recorded the stories of adults with
disabilities, particularly with learning
disabilities
and LGBT community and again we launched
at Hackney town hall, and we had a great
celebration event, just looking at the
diversity and difference
of hackney. So the media group has
been a really great project for
training older people in digital skills
and giving them
the space to tell their stories.
And I'm sorry i don't know if Margaret
has managed to join us,
Yes, I have.
Brilliant good, that's enough for me.
Margaret, so Margaret is a participant in the
media group for quite a few years and you
told your story in
Windrush and in Diversity, so can I hand over to you
Yes hi, my name's...
Hi my name is Margaret Smith and I've
worked as a volunteer for the
connect acne media group for two years
now
I'm an assistant IT teacher there,
I've also had several articles published
in Hackney Senior,
Connect Hackney's magazine and I help
students get their articles ready for
submission for publication.
And to tell you a bit more about myself and my background,
my mum's Chinese from Singapore, my dad
was from Jamaica - he's passed away now he
died a few years ago
of prostate cancer, I wrote an article
for the Windrush booklet,
called 'my lovely parents', about my
parents
my dad actually pre-dated windrush
he joined the royal air force and left
Jamaica in the early 1940s
to come to Britain to fight in the
second world war
however many of the Windrush generation
would have been his contemporaries and
friends, who came to make a new life in England
from the late 1940s onwards
and the Windrush project is important
and it keeps the memories of this
important
time alive through oral history,
and publication of people's memories and
stories. Many of this generation are no longer
with us or they're reaching an elderly age
therefore it's so important to remember
and record and
preserve what happened. Also it's important
as a historical record, it promotes the teaching
of an explanation of Black people's
contribution to this country,
promotes a wider view of the Black
presence in Britain.
In addition the Windrush project can
help
fight racism, as it opens our eyes to the
real lives behind Windrush,
the stories of love, friendship, sacrifice,
endeavour etc, human stories which
transcend race and colour. By educating everyone on
Windrush this can help others to realise
the Windrush generation and their
descendants are not so different from
those who are born in the UK,
with all of life's challenges, hopes, and
aspirations
we're all one human race.
Wo just to say again that the media
group has been a wonderful place
for me to meet many friends.
We help students who are over 50 years
old learn
IT, it's so rewarding to see
students learning new IT skills and
they're all so keen to learn. If you don't have digital
skills in today's world, it's so
easy to become socially isolated
digital inclusion is so important today,
especially for older people who are a
greater risk of becoming socially
isolated in the first
first place. And it's also been wonderful
to develop my journalistic skills
and to help my students develop theirs,
writing articles for
Hackney Senior and producing articles
their articles for booklets like
Windrush and the diversity booklet. I
really enjoy helping older people over
50 improve their lives
as finding solutions to ageism was a
cause, I've been very interested in over the
years since i was at University.
For those older people who had articles
published in the Windrush booklet and for those
older people who participated in the
Windrush project,
I'm certain that they would be happy to
see themselves as role models
for the younger generation who they
certainly inspire.
And the Windrush project was also an
opportunity for people to come together
and celebrate their achievements and meet
people as there were two launch parties
for the booklet.
I attended both parties with my mum and
thoroughly enjoyed both events.
Also and finally, just to say with the
Windrush project the fact of reliving
those memories for those that were a part of it may
stimulate good memories, and encourage mental
well-being, helps older people's self-esteem, and helps people to believe in themselves
Margaret, it's Carol Anne, the host.
Hello
We've got two minutes, I'm just
giving you a time check.
Oh yes I've just finished speaking thank
you.
Brilliant, that was brilliant can I
can i hand over to Matt please?
Yes yes.
Were there any... I think that was it really, I mean we...
We'll share the links - there's a lot of
great podcasts as well. If we had
time we would have played, 'I'm a Poem' by
Ngoma which is really beautiful poem but
we can share the link. Were there any questions
for the last minute or two?
Can you remind us, Matt where we can
access the brochure?
Yeah I can send the link but
it's connecthackney.org.uk and then if you go
through from the home page,
it's I think it's Films and Stories on the home page.
Because I'm recording this...
Oh, it's Prints and Media on the home page and
then you've got Voices, Windrush you've
got the Hackney Senior magazine
I mean following up with Hackney Senior
magazine, we were just looking yesterday
in the Zoom
at Black Lives Matters, because we're
conscious that a lot of younger people
have been on those
demos which was great and we haven't
seen
the presence of older people so much so,
we really came to make sure that that's
still included.
I am, I'm counting down 36
seconds.
thank you hugely, Matt and Margaret thank you so much and
thank you to the
to the members of this workshop, thank
you so much we're going to be going back
into into the main room.
Thank you
Thank you
