EAGLE and the 'Beth Johnson Foundation' (BJF) held a joint interactive workshop entitled 'The International and European Future of Intergenerational Activities' at the 2007 UK Intergenerational Conference 'Across the Divide', The Role of Intergenerational Practice in Building Better Cross Generational Understanding from 17th - 19th July 2007 at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

The 3rd UK Conference hosted by the 'Centre for Intergenerational Practice' (CIP) at the 'Beth Johnson Foundation' (BJF) was especially targeted to those interested in intergenerational work in order to meet, network, share experiences and learn from one another.

The workshop was followed by approx. 35 persons and national and international contacts could be established during the workshop and the following days at the Conference.

The workshop abstract and the overview presentations 'Intergenerational Practice: A Global View' by Tabea Schlimbach (Beth Johnson Foundation) and 'European Approaches to Intergenerational Lifelong Learning' (EAGLE) by Thomas Fischer (FIM-NewLearning) are now available online.

The workshop then centred on interactive Learning Cafés, which gave the participants the opportunity to discuss in depth about the current situation on the one hand (i.e. success factors and barriers of intergenerational activities) and about the future on the other hand (i.e. the desired future of Intergenerational Learning and pathways towards the desired future), all stressing on national and international aspects.

The reported results were based on intensive, but necessarily time limited discussions due to the organisational frame of the workshop. Therefore, the collected ideas should not be viewed as an exhaustive and definite list, but as important impulses to enrich the exchange and dialogue about local and international developments of intergenerational activities.

The organisers would explicitly like to thank all participants for attending the workshop and for their invaluable contributions to the Learning Cafés. The organisers would also like to express their gratitude to Matthew Kaplan (The Pennsylvania State University, USA) and to Mariano Sanchez Martinez (University of Granada, Spain) who kindly agreed to facilitate and summarise two Learning Cafés.

The forthcoming Workshop Summary Report and Discussion Paper on 'The International and European Future of Intergenerational Activities' is primarily aiming to initiate a permanent mechanism of exchange and dialogue within the intergenerational professional community and the following summaries of the four Learning Cafés should serve as an initial discussion paper on the future of intergenerational activities, learning and practices. The workshop summary and the discussion paper will be published end of September at the official CIP conference web site as well as on the EAGLE web site.

The EAGLE website will also contain an online discussion forum in order to gather further feedback and to validate the paper with researchers, practitioners, decision makers and other external stakeholders. The online discussion forum will be opened in September 2007 and the delegates of the conference will be notified by e-mail.

For additional information and documentation please consult the official CIP conference web site.