A village school has launched an ambitious new project to help members of the community both young and old learn from each other.

Hallbankgate School held the first event in a series, designed to promote what headteacher Philippa Maleney calls 'intergenerational' learning.

"This is kicking off regular meetings with the WI and other community groups - we've coined the phrase intergenerational learning," Philippa said of the event, held last week.

Last Wednesday's event saw members of the local WI joining staff and pupils at Hallbankgate School for a day of learning about the German language and cuisine.

"We chose Germany as the first topic because we thought it was a nice broad subject to kickstart this project - every term with the children we do a bit of food tasting - it's popular with the pupils.

"But today will be a chance to meet and talk and discover what sort of skills we can learn from each other," Philippa explained.

"We want members of our local community to pass on skills and knowledge that they have.

"I think often in schools we're very good at getting visitors in, and learning from them.

"But our school vision is learning from each other.

"The WI here between have so much to pass on, whether that's skills or local knowledge.

"But the children have lots of knowledge when it comes to new technology, so we want this process to be two-way."

Philippa added that through this project, the school hoped to foster stronger community ties.

WI attendees at last Wednesday's meeting were treated to a range of German cuisine prepared by the Hallbankgate pupils, including frikkadel and apple strudel.

They also had a chance to experience a German lesson led by Philippa, who conducts weekly German lessons with the Hallbankgate pupils.

"We went over things like greetings, counting, parts of the body and so on," Philippa said, who speaks the language fluently and has German family.

For Philippa, last week's meeting was hopefully the start of a successful ongoing exchange of knowledge and skills between Hallbankgate pupils and members of the communinty.

"We see this as a two way process Hopefully it'll be the start of a nice new project," she said.

"Our school vision is 'learning from each other'.

"We want the children to take on board the idea that it's not just adults that can teach - they themselves can teach as well.

"We're all learners, and will continue to be so throughout life.

"As a school we're keen to build that lifelong learning mindset, we want to promote the idea of lifelong learning.

"It's that idea that we can all improve - we can all get better and continue to learn - foster that growth mindset."