InterGeneration: Seeking elders to participate

InterGeneration is a project in collaboration with the Teen Bridge Program at the Eliot School in Jamaica Plain that asks the following question:

What makes a community healthy?

As COVID-19 demands social distancing, InterGeneration will explore this monumental cultural moment through illuminating conversations between teens and elders that will culminate in a collaborative animation. Through letter writing and online interviews, the teens and elders will look at what makes our neighborhoods thrive. Rooted in memory, personal experience, and storytelling, we will examine Boston’s use of land and its displacement of vulnerable people and longtime residents. We will imagine the possibility of healthier, more equitable communities once our social isolation passes.

The teens and elders will have an opportunity to envision a new future by mining the past. Additionally, the current crisis increases the need for cross generation communication. The elders will have a place to share their memories, insights, joys, and losses with a teen whose future is wide open to them. The teens will have an opportunity to express their anxieties, fears, dreams, and hopes with an elder who can provide wisdom and historical perspective. The two groups will gain resilience and insight from the human connections formed across generations.