GENERATIETAFEL/TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS

Children between 11-14, neighbors and clients of Heliomare of all ages 

In our changing society it is easy to live alongside each other as different generations. Each generation is searching for his or her own answers to the questions of life. What would happen if different generations could share each others insights and wisdom of life?

As a follow-up of TAFELS VOL TROOST, our succesful social-art project in 2015-2016, we organised a smaller project: TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS.
At each TABLE FOR ALL GENERATIONS people of diffent ages between 12-85 meet to have lunch and discuss topics of life together. For example what is happiness, what makes you happy?
Or what is the meaning of Home for you? Who or what makes you feel at home and what is the first thing you do when you come home?
Each TABLE FOR ALL GENERATIONS  has been completed with a simple excercise of writing a little poem about the theme,

Participants of TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS were clients of the daily care centre of Heliomare, neighbours from different generations and children in the age of 11-14 years of the Eloutschool, an elementary school nearby.
The Elout school was also one of our participants of TAFELS VOL TROOST. One of their goals is to learn the children to meet and have contact with all kinds of people of the neighbourhood. The school liked to continue the collaboration with Heliomare.
The moderators of TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS were Marleen Kemink and Niek Scholten, the vicars of a church in the neighbourhood, who do a lot of social work and interventions in the neighbourhood. They were also participants of TAFELS VOL TROOST.
Denise Schreuder, former project manager of TAFELS VOL TROOST, has been the producer of these events in order of Heliomare. She organized the luncheons, prepared the topics to discuss with Marleen Kemink and guided the final poetry excercise.

TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS were held four times and each luncheon session was a great success. The clients of Heliomare loved to meet and discuss with the people of the neigbourhood about these life topics and to be approached as a normal person and not as a client.
The residents also liked to participate, because the discussions were often very special and precious. The children had a large share in the wonderful meetings. They were so open-minded and kind and patient but also sometimes hilarious or heart-breaking wise in their answers and so willing to cooperate with the clients of Heliomare for whom discussing and  writting often is quite a challenge.
TABLES FOR ALL GENERATIONS is a modest but effective and very inspiring project that brings people of different ages together in an approachable way and gives them the opportunity to share their thoughts and insights about life.
Everybody has to lunch and we all love to talk about life, so let’s do this together more often!