Involving senior citizens as project partners

We are currently working on a series of small videos with interview partners that come from the same age group as the BeauCoup participants, and who have both a professional and a personal connection to the themes that we are focusing on.

These themes evolved from the collection of cultural artifacts from the BeauCoup partner museums, in Lisbon, Siena, Viena and Kranj: objects such as armories, oil paintings, festive bread, photographs and wooden architecture models. The stories about these objects relate to the fields of interest of senior citizens, as expressed by our participants, such as food & drink, architecture, rural life, protection, motherhood, and music. Our interview partners can tell anecdotes about their experiences, but also give precise information as experts. Take the example of Vasja Doberlet, the president of the photo club in Kranj, who speaks about the aerial shots of Slovenian photographer Janez Marenčič. By treating persons who are in the same age range as the target group as experts in their field, we dignify and empower older citizens, and are able to make knowledge from oral history available to a broader public.