Intercultural and Intergenerational Projects

Recording and celebrating minority ethnic elders’ lives

Through a series of projects from 1984 to the present day, Pam Schweitzer has been recording the lives of the generation of migrants who came to Britain from former colonies and other parts of the world in the post-war years. People who would otherwise have left no written record of their life journeys have now had their experience preserved in books such as 'A Place To Stay' (1984), 'Across the Irish Sea' (1989) and 'Mapping Memories' (2003). Their stories have also featured in 3-dimensional exhibitions, in specially commissioned films and in theatre productions performed by professional actors, by ethnic elders themselves and by inter-generational groups. [Image: 'A Place To Stay' bookcover]

Intergenerational sharing

Pam has set up many projects over the years in which old and young work together on creative projects designed to promote mutual understanding and appreciation. Of particular importance have been oral history and reminiscence projects such as 'We Want to Speak of Old Times' and 'The Place Where I Grew Up' in which elders from minority ethnic groups have worked with young people in schools and colleges to develop inter-generational theatre pieces around the older people’s lives. These ‘legacy’ projects have aimed to promote the elders’ sense of their own value in society, to increase the self-esteem of ethnic minority young people and to support a positive approach to multiculturalism in the curriculum. [Image: Ajoda performing with school children]

“Sites and Signs of Remembrance”: a current project

This is a new life-long learning project of the European Reminiscence Network with partners in Berlin, Dresden and Poznan (Poland). It involves mapping and documenting older people’s responses to the changes they have seen, made and lived through in relation to particular people and places which have been important to them in developing their sense of identity and community. Partners in each country will run their own inter-generational projects at a local level and exchange learning through a series of international visits. In year two of the project an on-line version of the project will be produced bringing together the international partners’ findings. [Image: Memory Box in Finland]

Pam is co-ordinating the project in the UK, in partnership with the Humanities Department of the University of Greenwich, the Greenwich Council for Racial Equality and a number of local ethnic minority community groups. Students of history and theatre will work with older people from these groups to record the development of their communities in south-east London and to map the places of importance to them through a series of group and individual interviews and through developing a new joint theatre production.

“Mapping Memories”: Reminiscence with ethnic minority elders

This recent publication features the lives of ethnic minority elders from India, Africa, the Caribbean and China. They retrace their lives in their own words from earliest memories through schooldays, marriage, coming to Britain right up to their present day experience of growing old far from ‘home’. [Image: Mapping Memories book cover]

Alex Kalache, Chief of Ageing at the World Health Organisation, Geneva, said of Mapping Memories:

This book includes two specially commissioned films featuring ethnic elders speaking about and performing their past and present life experience. It also has suggestions attached to each chapter for practical work with groups of older people and with inter-generational groups.

Click here for further information on this project prepared by Age Exchange.

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