Kogarah Community Services (KCS) offers the Intergenerational Program to people from across generations in an effort to support and nurture new social connections and build relationships. The program is open to people from 0-100 years, with special effort taken to match younger and older participants based on their interests - for example, our preschoolers and aged care residents often enjoy playing light hearted games while some of our high school participants enjoy sharing their digital skills.

Our Stories through Theatre will engage local seniors to take part in sharing their stories through theatrical form. In this project Kogarah Community Services (KCS) will partner with Shopfront Arts Co-Op, where local young people will facilitate this project.

KCS chose to partner with Shopfront for this project as we both share a positive relationship with the local community, seek to empower local residents and to make them feel included in their local community through various initiatives.

Through regular feedback of people accessing KCS, storytelling was identified as an interest and there is literature to suggest that storytelling creates a meaningful connection between participants and can also give each generation a different perspective of the of the world.

KCS has been initiating Intergenerational activities since 2019, and are part of the Australian Institution for Intergenerational Practice (IGP) and have a dedicated IGP worker to coordinate intergenerational activities.

Research conducted by Bolton Clarke on Intergenerational Storytelling enabled participants to be creative whilst sharing their personal journey and to reflect on their life experiences.

KCS will invite seniors in the community to take part in a storytelling workshop incorporating theatrical techniques at Shopfront (Carlton), led by youth art practitioners.

Collaboration between generations promotes understanding, tolerance, building on knowledge, not losing history from older people and most importantly having fun whilst sharing life experiences.