What an Awesome Day!

Today we began a Legacies Project installation in Detroit, MI!

First things first -- to acknowledge the organizations who are making it happen: The installation is being made possible by a grant from the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, and we are teamed with the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, who have recruited senior participants with amazing stories to tell, and are hosting the interviews and, later, the public screening. We found our young participants by partnering with the folks at Y Arts Detroit at the Downtown YMCA, who are running two consecutive Media Arts Camps, one in July and one in August. The Legacies Project will be part of the programming in both camps.

Today, the students got a lesson in the basics of video (shot composition, lighting, etc.), received IRB training about the ethics of research, learned how to conduct effective interviews, and went through gerontology empathy training.

But before the campers received any training, we kicked the day off with peer-to-peer interviews.

So, what's a peer-to-peer interview (besides the obvious)? It's our way of doing pre- and post-project evaluations of young participants' attitudes about aging and elders.

Many social commentators have observed that America is probably the most ageist society on the planet, and of course the students who come to Legacies are products of the larger culture. Whether they even know it or not, they may have picked up on some really horrible cues, especially from the mass media. Think about how elders are portrayed on the typical sitcom, and the ways in which they're the butt of jokes. It's a far, far cry from societies where intergenerational households are the norm, and where the wisdom of community elders is held in high esteem.

We have the students talk to each other about these feelings without the project administrators around. We get more candid answers that way. (I only poked my head in briefly to take the pics you see here.)

We haven't had a chance to review what the campers had to say yet, but we hope that when we compare their attitudes toward aging and elders today to their attitudes at the end of the project, we'll see meaningful growth. So far, we always have. We're looking forward to the process here in the D.

Tomorrow we put our participating seniors through an orientation, and on Monday our campers and our elders meet for the first time.

We'll keep you posted!

-Jimmy