Despite the prejudices, in Navas there are very active young people and elderly people who, despite sharing territory, hardly know each other. After working for more than two years with the Prism Project, we also set out to break with this stereotype to promote intergenerational dialogue.
Facilitating the meeting of two generations, apparently opposed, did not seem easy at all, but it was necessary in the neighborhood of Navas. Two years ago, when we arrived to collaborate with the Community Plan and PES Navas in the creation of a Community and participatory space for young people and adolescents, the most frequent comment among the group was that they wanted to change the perception that older people had of young people, because they felt misunderstood.
During the first dynamics of the theater, the group of the Proyecto Prisma dramatized moments of discrepancy with some neighbors of the neighborhood. They staged various situations, representing the elderly, saying that they do nothing or that they waste time sitting in the Plaza Ferran Reyes. They repeated what they heard on the street and thus fed their own stereotypes.
So, after three seasons and many streets traveled with an eye on the camera, getting to know the neighborhood, investigating its people and making small critical reports, the group decided, finally, to meet and interview the elderly people of Navas.
It’s time to break stereotypes
Without a doubt, it was the perfect time: the group of young people had expanded with the incorporation of students from the Joan Fuster Institute and, at the same time, the residents of the Casal de Gent Gran de Navas were enthusiastic about the idea of opening their doors to facilitate meetings.
The group of young people prepared thoroughly, carried out tests with the camera, explored the most significant places in the neighborhood for the elderly, wrote a script with the questions they wanted to ask during the meetings and even made a graphic report of the Intergenerational Literary Day held at the Civic Center of Navas.
Then they started talking, and then came the interviews. They talked about love and poetry, youth and aging, technology and work, the neighborhood and immigration. How everything has changed and how it will do in the future, when these young people are old and want to tell the new generations what they learned from this experience.
Behind cameras of the work process of “The intergenerational dialogues of Navas”.
From elParlante we have developed several intergenerational proposals that we invite you to know. Such as “Compartint Experiències“, a Learning and Service-APS project that in 2019 reaches its third edition, and that we have already carried out in four secondary schools in the District of Les Corts. Or “Visible Touring“, an artistic proposal to work on identity and memory.