DREAMLIKE NEIGHBOURHOOD- INSPIRING CO-OPERATION OF THE PROJECT PARTNERS
Dreamlike Neighbourhood facilitates neighbourhood groups, where older people meet regularly and support each other in (re-)detecting and bringing in their talents, fulfilling their dreams, facing challenges of everyday life and finding ways to actively contribute to their communities.
This Erasmus+ project is uniting five committed partners:
Queraum. Cultural and social research (Austria)
Letokruh.z.u. (Prague, Czech Republic)
Slovenian Third Age University, Ljubljana, Slovenia
AFEdemy, Academy on age friendly environments in Europe BV (Gouda, The Netherlands)
Age Platform Europe (Brussels, Belgium)
The project targets older adults interested in connecting with other people in their neighborhood, in building supportive networks and finding creative ways of expressing their perspectives and ideas. Furthermore, the project addresses citizens initiatives or seniors’ organisations that are interested in an innovative approach. People interested are also invited to contribute as co-group coordinators.
Dreamlike neighbourhood is one of the Erasmus+ projects with partners meeting regularly on line to exchange information on the developments in their project and their countries in the field of older people and their education. The essential idea/goal underpinning the project is to enable older people to meet and build a network, to get to know each other in an educational process that will be facilitated, of course, but older people themselves will be discussing their issues in relation to their life and neighbourhood.
Listening to each other’s ideas and findings alone inspires the partners to search for unconventional solutions. There is as little as possible administrative and reporting pressure put on partners and partners are entrusted with the tasks they can best carry out given their different competencies.
In Slovenia at Slovenian U3A, for instance, we have been, searching for innovative solutions for decades. Innovation for us has become a kind of routine which is not necessarily an advantage! In this project we are focusing on older people building a community of practice, gaining knowledge in the field of architecture and urbanism (exploratory and expanded learning) of their town area but it I a combination of approached we have already explored so many times before. Therefore, we are glad to get fresh ideas from partners who I. different cultural contexts have access to different groups of older learners,
In Czech Republic, everything will be new. Older people are not used to volunteering so they keep asking: “What’s in there for me,” since the project is focused on neighbourhood and community. In ex socialist countries volunteering was organized top down and not vice versa. At this stage older people in Prague seem to have difficulties understanding that they are the project and the educational process itself is the target of the project, a process in which people change, through commitment. They learn who they are...and who they want to become and can become…But our colleagues from Letokruh are patient and are preparing an additional programme for them that will be performed in different parts of Prague, indoors and outdoors. They will be visiting building sites, they will be attending cultural performances, there will be discussions, their life will get a wider and deeper cultural dimension. The Handbook the partnership has prepared will help.
Meaningful contacts lead to older people’s doing meaningful things in neighbourhoods
In the Netherlands the Dreamlike partner is focusing on two town areas where live older people with low income, The animating methods we use in education of functionaly low literate people will be used here. The partner will be offering older people something they understand and appreciate before getting them involved in education for bettering neighbourhood and life of older people.
In Vienna our Austrian colleagues (Queraum) are in touch with older people's clubs run by the Vienna Pensioner Residences Fund who are seeking new contents for their clubs. They are addressing local Community of the 8th Vienna District where intergenerational groups are already active.
The meeting in Gouda will be different
The project partners will soon be meeting face-to-face in Gouda in the Netherlands (where the Gouda cheese comes from). The meeting will differ from what has been traditional in Erasmus projects over the last years but was quite appreciated in the preceding Grundtwig projects. We will be visiting institutions, groups of people in town areas, cultural sites. This is always precious. I do remember our visit to Dublin and organisations for low educated and functionally low literate people. There was a kindergarten next to the lecture rooms. Ever since at Slovenian Third Age we have been thinking of such a solution for our older students who often drop their studies when they become grandparents. And we discovered coloured transparencies and scotopic syndrome in a small organisation for people with dyslexia and started ,years later, Dyslexia Institute at Slovenian U3A. I also remember my early study visit to the National Voluntary Centre in UK which gave us an idea to start the very first educational programmes in volunteering….and to set up new social practices in the field of volunteering in culture and in public institutions. Another breakthrough due to Erasmus+, etc…
More:
https://www.dreamlike-neighbourhood.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/210122_DLNH_Leaflet_en.pdf
URL. https://www.dreamlike-neighbourhood.eu/
Dušana Findeisen, currently head of the Institute for research and development of education at the Slovenian University of the Third Age, has worked in the field of education for older people and intergenerational learning and education for local development in former Yugoslavia, Slovenia and in many European countries since 1984. In 1986 she co-established the Slovenian University of the Third Age, where she has been president now for 15 years. She has been managing European projects for the last 25 years.
