Co-construction of new roles and forms of change-making. Bring together people from different backgrounds and age groups to discuss aging and to propose innovative solutions for change-making and well-being of the elderly in the society. Hold an annual national festival on longevity.
Creative expression and community building for the elderly
Transform aging from a time we associate with tragedy and loss towards something we understand as a period of growth and possibility. Put simply, we must “forget memory, try imagination.”
“Can you infuse creativity into an entire care system?”
Revitalize the systems surrounding aging care to ensure that they meet people's community support and engagement needs.
Transform institutions of care into cultural and community centers of creative expression and growth.
Based on the work of two Ashoka Fellows:
Sérgio Serapião is building a national movement to change the paradigm of old age in Brazil. Through networking and a replicable model of meetings, trainings, co-construction of new roles and forms of changemaking, and incubation of initiatives aimed at this public, Sérgio enables the acceleration of social innovation processes that have the elderly in the centre of attention as protagonists as much as beneficiaries.
Anne Basting's breakthrough project, TimeSlips, is an improvisational storytelling method in which older adults with cognitive impairment imagine stories and poems in response to inspiring cues. She has refined and transformed TimeSlips into a formal therapeutic protocol guided by her fundamental insight that the creation of new stories can be an enriching substitute for lost memories.