ONCE again, it has been a busy year for Kendal Windows on Art with one particular artistic assignment linking Hallgarth community members young and old.

Programme co-ordinator and driving force behind KWoA, Nicki Smith, told me that the arts charity had collaborated on the Hallgarth Community Circle project.

After the planning stages last winter, she explained that KWoA artists were invited to meet the enthusiastic Hallgarth Senior Citizens group, which enabled artist Trevor Avery and his oral history team to record the older resident’s memories of the Hallgarth Estate’s development.

Year five pupils at St Thomas’s School also meet the senior citizens at Hallgarth Community Centre and entertained all with presentations about themselves and their interests.

Inspired by transcripts of the older residents’ fascinating accounts of Hallgarth’s post war history, the children created large scale artworks with community artist Nicki. They also undertook felt making with artist Karen Lloyd.

An ‘intergenerational’ concert was staged too, under the guidance of leading Lakeland performance coach Anne Marie White.

As one excited child exclaimed that they hadn’t realised that the senior citizens “would be this good!”

To mark the end of the successful venture, KWoA unveiled Pam Williamson’s permanent sculpture at St Thomas’s School, which reflects the positive interaction between young and old in the local community.

And the school’s head teacher Paul Brown was pretty chuffed with the outcome: “There is really no value high enough to place upon work which teaches our generations to look upon each other in a positive light and to instil in our youngsters that most precious of attributes, respect for their elders.”

Meanwhile, those who take a trip down to Kendal Library will see the creative results of KWoA’s other project Trapeze - Reaching Out inspired by circus themes and imagery, which is installed in the library foyer and the fruits of KWoA artists Sally Toms and Pam Williamson’s work with a talented bunch of young people from Kirkbie Kendal School.

Additionally, Trapeze’s large scale digital textile print Falling and Flying hovers gracefully above the library’s main staff desk, the product of KWoA artists Priscilla Jones and Nicki and students and families working in Queen Katherine School’s Red Shed.