I am so excited to have our presenters here in the room with me in Seattle. They are local folks I'm going to introduce Wendy Pender comes to us as older adults program coordinator at the King County library system here in the Seattle area. And I'm going to let Wendy introduce our other presenter. >> Thank you so much, Jennifer, hi, everybody. Welcome. I'm so glad you're joining us today. As general ter said I'm within depender the older adults program coordinator at KCLS. It was a newly related position when anything is new you need support and partners. It's my pleasure to introduce to share with the library community a person and a company that has been invaluable to me in that partnership. Dr. Jennifer Kulik and silver kite community arts have anchored me as I've vane toured into intergenerational and older adults programming. Dr. Kulik consults nationally and internationally on intergenerational program. I'm lucky she's here in the eatle area. Thanks so much to WebJunction for hosting us and take it away, Jen. >> Awesome, thank you, Wendy. Thank you Jennifer and thanks to all of you who are participating in the webinar today. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to really be thinking about considering how you can foster intergenerational connections in the library space. So I'm thrilled to be here today and I am excited to get started with our joy and celeb poor. Splendor. I would love to take a few minutes to sort of about who is in the room today and what your experience with intergenerational programs are. This will help me be able to sort of adjust the presentation today so make sure that you're getting your needs met as we're doing the webinar today. >> We're going to have you arm yourself with annotation tools if you look in the top left corner of your view there's a grey marker that you can click on, it will turn blue. Then go half way down that menu to the square. Click on the little tiny arrow to the right of the square and select the checkmark. And once you have that checkmark clicked you can click on the slide, this is a great opportunity for you to practice. Great. You are all savvy with your check marks. >> Excellent. >> Now we'll have you hold your check marks and we will have -- [ laughter ] >> This is fun. >> I love that. That's awesome. We'll take a look at those next slides. Please put your check park on this sort of continuum or line that we have here. Based on your experience with intergenerational programming. The left side is all new to me. Might like to do it but not sure how to start. I think we might be doing it. I'm an expert. Give you another minute to put some check marks there. Awesome. Great. Looks like a lot of folks are indicating their feelings about this. Thanks for your awesome check marks, variety of colors is so fun. I think we're ready to shift on to our next slide. We're going to take those tools away from you so -- excellent, awesome, great. I wanted to take a minute here to just sort of go over what we're planning to do today during the webinar. Here is our agenda for the day. First part of the webinar is going to be talking about some sort of philosophy behind importance of developing intergenerational relationships. Second part will be talking about some of the practical things that you might be interested in learning about. Thinking about what are some different kind of intergenerational program structures then going to do some activities together as part of that section of the webinar. That will give you some tools to walk out of this experience and bring those back to your library. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the intergenerational connection from the library space. Talking about the library itself and looking at and thinking 'how how the space can help foster intergenerational connections both in programming as well as in the physical space. Ways to bring this work back to your library creating a plan or idea about something you might want to try back in your library. Let's talk about intergenerational relationships. First thing to do is sort of talk about defining the word intergenerational. What do we mean by that? Started doing used in the 1907s it appeared in the dictionaries like mid to late 50s it didn't gain a lot of popularity until the 1970s. The way I like to think about it is there's a difference between term multi-generational and intergenerational. So libraries themselves are multi-generational spaces because in those spaces people from variety of different generations are present and there, right? Intergeneral reab signal is moving towards bringing people from different generations to connect and interact with each other in meaningful ways. So, it's an intentional process to get folks from different generations to connect. That's what we mean by intergenerational. Oftentimes in terms of developing intergenerational programs oftentimes folks who are doing generational programs thinking about connecting book-end generations. The folks in the younger generation and folks in the older generations bringing those people together. That will be our working definition of intergenerational for the webinar today. Intergenerational connections have really gained in popularity and thought I guess in the last probably 15-20 years. And a lot of that reason is because there are larger number of people who are turning 65 each day. And folks who are sort of in that retirement age are now having a longer life expectancy and they're physically healthier than in previous generations. The older generations are gaining in numbers, the younger generations are actually declining I'll show aw slide in a second with some documentation from the census, U.S. census bureau that sort of documents this a little bit. In addition to that, the generations themselves are a little bit more disconnected than they have been in the past. Some of the reasons for this are, because of mobility, as people are moving to different parts of the country, to have -- take a position or take a job or would like a different kind of lifestyle, perhaps a family moving away from the older generations and their families. Mobility can create the disengagement, I guess, of older generations and younger generations. R. Technology, lot of articles about how technology has sort of created a generational divide in talking about digital natives versus digital immigrants, for example. Because of that advent and technology of development individualized cultural experiences have also provided a way for generations to sort of be a little more separate than in the past. And then there's also really great book by Robert Putnam called bullying alone, which he wrote in 2000. He documents how social engagement or disengagement happened in the latter part of the last century. That's a really great resource to get us thinking about how generations are becoming disconnected from each other. So, I mentioned a tint ago that I wanted to share with you couple of slides from the census bureau just to show you how the population of older adults in the U.S. is growing, as you can see from this slide also this next one that the percentage of older adults in the U.S. is going to be larger than the number -- percentage of children under the age of 18. Coming up here by 2060. If we think about this perhaps disassociation or disengagement of generations with each other, some of the reasons for reconnecting the generations are some of the things that I'm sharing with you on this slide. Because we have a population that's growing older they will need care and consideration in terms of policy and health situations and all of those sorts of things. So by helping younger generations to be thinking about older generations helps break down a stereotype on both ends of the age spectrum, helps eliminate fear of aging and becoming old. Also helps them to understand younger people as well. It creates seeds of compassion. Eliminate loneliness and isolationism and also allows people to create that sort of grandparent-grandchild relationship that people may not have a chance to do that because of the factors that I was mentioning in the previous slide. Allows children to have an opportunity to feel special and adult to get second chance at perhaps being a parent or grandparent. Allows also the opportunity to connect and strengthen communities. Wait, there's more. What's really cool is there are physical and emotional benefits to participating in intergenerational programs. Where older adults are a regular fixture, children have improved reading scores and fewer behavioral problems at schools. And physical benefits for older adults it has shown has helped them to burn more calories, fewer falls improved L proofed their ability to take a memory test. Then also adult participants have reported feeling happy, interested, younger, loved and needed. >> One of the things, too, is older adults doesn't necessarily mean old-old. I'm 56, I was invited to do an intergenerational program at a local school as one of the older adults, I'm like well, I don't have children, I don't know what to do with these folks, the school set it up so that we had games to play together. And I taught these 8th graders how to shuffle. My gosh, never going to have me back here was Catholic school and I taught them how to play cards. It gave me a feeling of empowerment and acknowledgment like, I do have something to offer. That was really fun. >> Cool, thanks for sharing that, Wendy. I'm sharing with you now this slide from generations united. There was cited GU.org they are wonderful national resource that has on their website some kind of directory of intergenerational programs all over the U.S. as well as some other resources as well. Generation united has put together this resource to sort of show some additional Ben tilts of participating in intergenerational programs and how it benefits the economy as well as the emotional and physical bash -- both sides of the age spectrum in these programs. Before we shift on just wondering if anybody has any questions about this first section of our webinar. >> No specific questions. But someone has new role specifically focused on intergenerational programming. >> That is awesome. >> Hopefully see more folks in those positions and lots of people interested in learning how to bring more intergenerational program to their libraries. Feel free as questions come to mind just be sure to post to all participants. Here is a question real quick. Are there specific age brackets that you target? >> As I was mentioning a lot of times intergenerational programs target book-end generations. Young people in sort of the K-12 space and then older adults sort of age 65 and up I would say in terms of the book-end generation. But intergenerational programs can also happen and can be structured for young people and folks who might be parent ages. And any sort of mix of generations in between there. Let's move on to start talking a little about some program resources that might be of views to you in your library. I put together a list of about five different kinds of intergenerational connection-building structures. We'll go through each of these and sort of talk about them. In addition, after we talk about them a little bit and give some examples of programs that I've created, Wendy is experienced and knows about. Also share some activities that can be used to help develop those particular kinds of structures. First one is a curriculum-based structure, so often this happens in partnership with a school and is often tied to reading, writing or history curricula. These kinds of programs bring together young people from a school with older adults connected with a particular community outside of the school. Or it can also be the grandparents and grand friends of the young people at the particular school. Oftentimes these programs allow older adults to serve as curriculum experts in order to sort of bring history to life or bring particular kinds of experiences and wisdom to life for young people. They often can also involve ongoing mentorships or in-class projects. Wendy, did you want to talk. >> One of our local senior living communities actually had a pen pal program established with a local third grade class. I thought that was brilliant. Because one of the challenges with doing these are getting people together. Whether there is going to be a bus from a senior living community or the kids come to them, have it be writing-based program took out that challenge of the transportation. They did have a party together at the end and got to meet each other, what a great writing activity. Older adults felt loved, kids felt special they didn't have to have the challenge of getting together physically. >> and that writing is often talked about in the education community, learning component, they're writing for a particular audience. Another sort of adaptation of the kind of program that Wendy was talking about is something that my organization is doing, which -- we've done this many times which is bringing together a group of students to first they learn about developing oral history skills and how to conduct interviews, how to talk to somebody who is a stranger and creating safe space for conversation. Then students go and visit a senior living community in the area and they conduct an oral history interview, they're in teams of three people and they do the interviews for an hour. Then they go back to their school and working with their English teacher they do writing based on the interview. They write buy og greafers in honor of the older adults, write poetry, sometimes science fiction. Depending okay the interest of the school and what the students are studying. And then though head back -- sorry, the people who were interviewed are then invited to the school about a month later and they are presented with the writing, is that the students have done. They also have that sort of party at the end. That interaction happens twice. But the amount of learning that occurs and relationship that is built is actually quite remarkable because the young people who interviewed these older adults get to know them, not only in the moment that they're having a conversation but also they are listening to the recording again and again, they are thinking about and writing for this audience which is person that they interviewed. >> with a product. The memory boxes, too? >> I sure will. In addition to that some of the these intergenerational programs can also include the stiewnlts creating memory boxes in honor of the person that they have interviewed. So those memory boxes are designed by the student and they reflect the stories and the person that they have met. For example, one of the students that we have just been working with had interviewed a woman who was a concert Pianist so she is amazing, created this wooden piano as part of her memory box was able to hook up something to play music inside of this memory box. Sort of this Diarama of the life of the older adult. The output from these curriculum-based programs can be a lot of different kinds of things. They can be writing, visual art, it can be performing, all sorts of things. Thank you for sharing that, Wendy. >> Just some ideas about curriculum based intergenerational programs. I wanted to share with you one of the -- an activity that you can do to sort of get an intergenerational program going. One of the keys of building an inter generational program, building relationships is to help people find something in common. That is the thing, sort of starting point to help build these kinds of relationships. So this activity works like this. The facilitator makes this statement, if it is true for you you raise your hand. So that gives an opportunity for everybody in the room to participate and for you to take a look around the room and see what other people have in common with you. For example, I might say something like, raise your hand if you live in Washington state. The three of us in this room right now are all raising our hand. For example. And so, here is some other ideas of statements that you can use as part of this activity. I will say that the ones about the age are particularly interesting, particularly when you say I have been five years old. You are working in intergenerational work where you have young people who are maybe age eight and older adults who are maybe over the age of 70. Everyone in the room races their hand because they have experienced age five. For the young people in the room it's sort of mind blowing they see older adults who are not the same age as them but then that sort of idea of reconceiving age really is sort of starts that shift of like, we've all been five, that's cool. Then other statements here as well. Also, as you are sort of building -- or facilitating this kind of activity, you can use sort of the input that you're gathering from the group to help shape what kind of activities you're going to do with the group as well. That's an activity idea for you. Another structure I wanted to share with you after-school programs. These kinds of things are great things to do in the library, actually. And host in the library space is having intergenerational after-school tutoring, mentorships, a particular class, it can be arts or other kind of enrichment program together. The first structure curriculum-based second structure are after-school programs that be be hosted in the library or in the community. The other -- another structure are discussion groups. These are particularly interesting and fun and they can also happen as an after-school activity ongoing, once a month, quarterly and basically it's an opportunity for people of different generations to share their life experiences. >> Can I share one? >> Go for it. >> One time, the gates town dikes had a camp with bunch of youngsters, around age 12-14. I was invited in as an older adult to participate and I loved the questions that they asked. Because it was -- ones I remember were, how does the media portray your generation? And so you got to talk about how the media portrays your generation. And what would you like to say in response to that. So these teens who are like, I'm not the way that TV makes me out to. Older people saying, I'm not invisible and -- it was such a powerful discussion. Again it facilitated that they have something in common in the way the media portrays them ooter accurately or in this case inaccurately. That was a wonderful discussion. >> Awesome, thank you. I wanted to share with you oftentimes people ask us how do you get people talking in a discussion group. One of the tools that we have used has been, using photographs. So this is another activity that you can use to help facilitate conversations and so on. I'm going to show you a slide of three different photographs. and these photographs can be really of anything. I chose them because they don't have people in them. But they are more sort of associated perhaps with an object or with perhaps a particular activity. So, in taking a look at these photographs, do any of you have any stories or memories that are associated with these photographs. I'm just going to throw that out to you as participants. As you're thinking about that and typing about that I will say that one of the things for me in looking at this series of pictures, I'm captivated by the spoon and the saucer, I'm thinking about my grandmother had really good friends named Murty always come over when my parents and I were in town and we would have tea together. That was the only time we used these like fancy tea cups. Reminding me of Murty who was the greatest woman. >> I love that. I'm reminded if you get chance to read John Medina's game rules for aging well one is reminisce answer is good for us that nostalgic. I love that piece that this evokes for me, many of your libraries may already have something like this in place with bifocal kits if you're not familiar with that. I'm sure it's in the learner guide. B-I-F-O-L-K-A-L that provide track particular things that you can reminisce about. Also song books, singing together, we know the power of music that works with my mom who is almost 102. We read the story of hymns together and sing together. Such a simple but meaningful way of collaborating. You may also be aware of tales and travel memories that Gale Borde nerks public library in Elgin Illinois received the library of congress' best practices award. Shout out to gale Borden I don't know if anybody is on the line. They're doing great job they have published what they do, that would be in the public libraries. They're on the line, yeah! Great job, folks! >> That's great. This kind of activity just really cool sort of seeing your stories that you're sharing with us, thank you for them. Really can help start getting a conversation going. Each of these pictures can help us not only be nostalgic but to share memories and stories with each other that can get a discussion group sort of going. The picture is one way to do that. Also another way to do that are using objects, common objects, some times they use things like stapler or pen, common objects where we all have interacted with them perhaps in one way or another and so sharing stories that are related to those common on jeblghts really can help connect us. >> Did you that for us with a hat one time. It was so fun. Because some of us have memories of hats where we dressed up, we went to church, other people like, no, it was -- I wore a hat as costume in a play. Really evoked memories, such a fun thing. >> Thank you for bringing up the hat because costumes are actually an amazing -- costume pieces are an amazing way to get people to feel comfortable because if you put on a hat or put on a jacket or some sort of costume piece that is not yours, you can sort of step outside of yourself for a minute and feel able to connect with other people. I found that using sort of costume pieces are really beneficial in lot of ways as well. >> Before you move away from the discussion, there was a question about whether or not there are intergenerational book clubs perhaps between seniors and new adults, how have you seen that play out? >> I have not seen that specifically. I've seen like mother-daughter book clubs maybe some of the teen librarians on the line can address that. Somebody else had a question about if there's raising the hands, if you raise your hands how do you decree ailt future activities from that. >> I usually use the raise your hands to get -- to have the participants in a room better understand each other and find that initial moment of connection. So, if we have something in common like playing a musical instrument, it allows for a conversation to start from there. Additionally, you can use that as a way to sort of gauge people's interests and connections as well so that if you are creating an intergenerational program you see that all of the hands are up and when you ask a question about maybe -- or making a statement like, I have been on an airplane. Everybody in the room their hands might go up, for example. Then you can choose maybe for photo reminiscing activity about travel or creating a themed workshop around the idea of travel. It helps you to sort of gauge who is in the room, what is common interests are there then you can structure programs that meet the interests of the group as way to sort of get them talking to each other. >> I had another follow-up question. I'm reading the answers at the same time. What other people have chimed in. Another consideration, I haven't done this but I know there's interest in it is having a senior story hour. I wonder if we can kind of -- familiar with reading with rover and reading to dogs, improving our reading skills that way I wonder if we could read to adults and improve teens' reading scilts that way sort of break down the, those people, quotation marks, don't want to talk to those people. Both ends. That's what is good about this we make assumptions about groups of people and if we can work together in ways that are playful and fun and whole m is the word that comes to my mind. It really helps to see each other as individuals and break down those stereotypes. >> Couple of great ideas. There was a successful book club at a senior center that had six adults two girls, one enfourth grade one in seventh grade. They can bring their grandkids. I was thinking what about picking a book that maybe has been around for awhile and having those adults reread a book along with kids who are reading it for the first time. >> Or something like hidden figures, where people who have lived the history can come talk about the history and it's got a lot of press and you can read the book, you can see the movie, cultural phenomenon that is easy the playoff of in the library. >> Can also be -- that can be tied to curriculum as well. If there's a particular book that a class is reading creates intergenerational discussion groups around that book that the 8th grade are reading as part of their curriculum. Focus that way as well. Up super cool. >> Move along talk about sort of stand alone intergenerational workshops. So these are structured workshops to do a project or have an experience together, usually they are sort of 60-90 minute kind of experiences. Can be focused for families or community oriented, can be intentionally struck toured to be intergenerational by inviting local communities that sort of provide services to those populations to come and participate. These are often offered on the weekends or in the evenings, or in the summer. Then throw out couple of ideas of what those intergenerational workshops could look like, perhaps card making around the holidays. Puppet making, we do puppet making workshop that is extremely popular in the Seattle area, this summer I think we're doing like 15 versions of it. So what that looks like is we collect recycling for many months before, we wash it and bring a bunch of recycled bottles and boxes and then bunch of art-making supplies. Then we invite people to create puppets with those recyclables. Then those puppets you can create characters and stories. The puppets can also be based on a particular book and you can tell the story that have particular book. What we found in doing that is that oftentimes when we brought intentionally older adults and young people together to create these puppets, we have found that the older adults and young people are working together to create the puppets, really quite a magical thing. Often we've seen older adults asking the young people for advice on how to make their puppets, it's a cool collaborative thing. If any of you have any other sort of ideas for some stand-alone intergenerational work would love to share that in chat. Any other intergenerational workshop ideas that you want to share that have been successful in the libraries? >> I'm distracted by the outside noise. I apologize. Looks like they're cleaning the streets or blowing outside of where we are. Somebody says a baking class. >> That's great. >> Intergenerational baking programs are awesome. I will also -- go ahead. >> Seeing knitting or crocheting, we've had after school knitting group that comes together that is one of the best things about having the older crafts, if you will, traditional things come back. Everybody can do that. We're putting in a space in one of our biggest libraries one of the things we're putting in is sewing machines. In addition to virtual reality and 3D pens things like that, we think of it as hi-tech things. But there's lots of low tech technology that can be shared and it's reminiscing, it's getting to pass on skills and craft also create something together. Just lovely. >> Awesome. We found that, for example, during the summer at the local community centers in the Seattle area there's one in particular that has a senior meal program that happens on Mondays and Wednesday S. Then also a p meal program sponsored by the hunger ter vehicles program that's available for families. What we done literally pop up a tent in between these two communities that are already at the community center and provide different kinds of workshops. We've done things like poetry, done dances of the world, we've done storytelling, we've done puppet making, a workshop on nature portraits where we have had people go on a little nature walk in the neighborhood and collect things like leaves and sticks and then create portraits of themselves as part of that workshop which is really been fun. Then also we've done sidewalk chalk which is more for families -- with young knees. >> Exactly. These can be focused on things like gardening as a community ser vi thing, first aid, disaster prep all of those kinds of things as well. >> Good point. >> I wanted to share with you this activity as sort of beginning of a intergenerational sort of workshop. That is creating characters. I invite you to participate along in your spaces. I very impressed that I figured out way to do this on a webinar. >> Let's see how it works. >> What you need is a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. You can just use sort of small space on your paper if you're taking notes. Everybody ready? Let's do this. First of all, draw a line on your paper. It can be a straight line, I've given you an example of a line. Next thing, if you were in an intergenerational group of people I would ask you to take your paper and pass it one person to the right. Essentially what we're doing is creating something together, right? If you would have somebody in the room, you want to play this with them right now you can pass your paper one person to the right. If you're doing this on your own what I would like you to do next to draw a curved line that is attached to the straight line. Draw a curved line attached to the straight line. Here is what I mean by that. Then, you would pass your paper one person to the right. And on the new piece of paper or on one that you're using right now, what I would like you to do draw a zigzag line attached to the curved line. Attach a zigzag line to the curved line which might look like this. Then pass the paper one person to the right. On new paper ask the participants to connect the lines together, whatever that might mean for you. So what it meant for me was this. Then you'll pass the paper again. What I'd like you to do on the new paper is to imagine that this is some sort of character and go ahead and add eyes, feet, arms, jaws, teeth, whatever you would like to create a character which for me looked like this. So, from these characters that now you have created collaboratetively you can together as group create a story, you can create songs about your characters, you can create puppets with the characters. So having these characters in in a ter generational group can then sort of help inspire other kinds of activities together. >> One of the things I like it puts everybody on equal footing without having the adults in charge or anything like that. I think art is a great way to do this, by the way. And helps break up the, I'm not an artist. You are just drawing a line, it's okay. Takes off the pressure of, it has to be perfect. >> Then you can ask the person to name the characters and it's really a wonderful way to sort of collaboratively create something together then you can build off of this. I've used that as a source for an intergenerational workshop sort of one-off kind of experience of creating stories together. This is an idea of an activity that you can use as a possible one-off intergenerational workshop in your library. Another one which is a longer project which might actually work better with older-younger people together. Basically how this works is it goes towards that idea of reminiscence that we were talking about before. And so breaking up your participants into small groups and inviting everybody in the small group to tell story about the history of your name. For example, for me, my name is Jennifer, which lot of people are named Jennifer. My parents thought they were being very unique in naming me Jennifer. That's a little story about my name. After everybody in the small group shares a little story about your name -- their names, one of the stories in the group then is chosen by the members of the small group to figure out a way to share it with the larger group. So, the way that you can share it with larger group is by acting it out, by dancing, by having one person sort of share it and other people can sort of be in the background. You can rap it, write the story down, create a graphic novel of the story together. There are lot of ways that you can communicate that. But the idea of telling a story about history of your name is really a great way to get to know people. It's one of the two things that we all have in common. That is we're called something and second is, that we were born on some particular day. It's finding that thing that we have in common which is our name then sort of bringing the name. >> Makes you feel important. >> Exactly. >> That would be fun. >> That's an idea for you for another intergenerational one-off activity. The other structure of intergenerational activities is what we're calling an informal interaction in shared spaces. I saw on the chat somebody mentioned that they had a coloring page and people were participating in the coloring page then they sort of put it up in the library. Just laughing because I saw -- I see lolts of Jennifers in here. These informal interactions are opportunities for people to engage in an intergenerational activity without it being part of formal programming. You want to talk about this, Wendy? >> I love this activity. The slide that you're seeing is something that Jen created for us, we call it a wisdom tree. An arts and tech fest because one of my guiding principles why should kids have all the fun, movement and art and learning is good for our brains and our bodies throughout the life span. We need to than everything we do for kids and children -- can't talk. Everything that children's librarians do for the kids we need to do at the other end of the life span. This wisdom tree was a passive activity that stood in the lobby of these different libraries where we were holding these arts and tech fests which was means of getting people familiar with arts and technology that they may not otherwise get to do just to play. Incredibly difficult to get adults to play, I have discovered. The wisdom tree was place you could take a leave and write your piece of wisdom, whether it's a piece of advice that you have received from a parent, be true to yourself, that came through a lot. Or a piece of advice you would give to your younger self. This was hilarious, we had kids doing this as well as older people. One kid I gave this leave to Jen at the end, this encapsulates the whole activity. It said, don't pick your nose at a red light. That's a good piece of advice, that 7-year-old was going to tell that 4-year-old. >> Did they write their age on it? >> You didn't. You could tell from the handwriting or lot of times I was there and saw it. So then we invited them to respond to the questions that were posted on this piece of acrylic that you see. Then they could tie their leave to the tree and be part of this artwork that we then collected all the wisdom from the trees and gave them back to the community to let them post them, publish in the newsletter, do whatever you wanted to do. You didn't have to keep the tree up. It was -- reminded me of the proj eblght originally it was called "Before I die" before I die I will -- this has been adapted all over the world. We did with Seattle parks and recreation. People could write on the chalkboard whatever they wanted. Before I die I will -- go to Europe. As I age I will -- be kind. All kinds of things. You are participating in something larger than yourself. It makes you feel part of the community and that's so important for kids and for older people. For all of us isn't that what we're all longing for. >> Cool, thak you. There's some other ideas on the slide here of some other activities. In addition here is another one for you as a sort of passive activity. If you use a poster board and cut them into puzzle pieces, make sure that you're marking X on the back of the puzzle piece, I learned that the hard way. If you have stack of these sort of cut up puzzle pieces, available for people who come to the library, as people come in they can draw or write three things about themselves on the puzzle piece. Then you can put the puzzle together and put it up in your library so that people have a chance to get to know each other as well. One of the challenges in developing intergenerational programs might be to find a participant. Wendy and I have put together some ideas of where you might be able to find participants for intergenerational programs if you want to design something that is specifically geared towards a book-ends generation. Here are some ideas on this particular slide. Another thing we don't have listed there is friends of the library. Really make your friends work for you. Invite them to the program, have them come and also promote your program. Moving on, I wanted to share with you my secret intergenerational sauce. Basically, the three sort of main components is number one, finding something in common, helping participants to find something in common. And second is to create opportunities for participants to be both teachers and learners as part of the program. And then after you have had that opportunity, create an opportunity for everybody to do something new together. If you're creating a long-term intergenerational program these are some sort of principles that might help you with that. We've shared some ideas on the chat, this is a nature portrait that I mentioned before, just give you an idea what it might look like. If you have -- continue to have ideas share them in chat but we're sort of running to the end of the hour and I wanted to get you thinking a little bit about the intergenerational space, multi-generational space of the library. The big question is, how can libraries be used to help foster these intergenerational connections. Shared spaces where informal intergenerational interactions happen. What are ways for us to be able to help bring those connections together. We've talked about a lot of these ideas in terms of programming, in terms of passive activities are, in terms of curriculum, developed programming and so on. What I would like to invite you to do as you are considering and thinking about intergenerational programming in your library is to do a space evaluation of the library. To think about how the generations are already mixing, what are the intergenerational things that are already happening. And answering these particular questions. We've put these in the learner guide so you have a chance to sort of take the learner guide away from this program get you thinking about these kinds of things. Anything you want to say? >> When I first took Jen's seminar on this, this was a mind blowing for me, because we're so used to separating the generations in our library space, the children section, the teen section, we're going to have large print over here. It really encouraged me to think differently. I thought as the libraries role evolves in society we're more of a convening space. How can we turn that around. What we ended up doing literally turning chairs around so that you aren't facing a wall but facing other people. Just by the act of sitting together around a magazine table made it more communal. It encouraged those informal interactions. Another thing was having passive display -- book displays and allowing not just the staff to write their reviews but the people. I love this book. I hated this book. Letting people talk to each other that way. Fun way to create community again. >> I think along those lines that you're using a book that the students in the community are studying part of school, might actually be beneficial for folks to reflect on the reading of the book, to reread fit they have read it at other times. To give some information for the kids who are studying the book to help them digest it maybe in new and different kind of ways. Last part of our discussion today is about getting you thinking about creating intergenerational connection idea. Hopefully our web that are today has gotten you thinking about some new ideas to bring to your library. Just couple of things to get you thinking, the first, keep in mind the program should be mutually beneficial. I love the term or the phrase, nothing for us without us. Being able to be inclusive of generations. Then aim of the program or project create opportunity for interaction and engagement. It can be in person, a passive kind of engagement it should be feasible in your space with the resources that are available to you. Second sort of things to keep in mind, are just some ideas about ways to brainstorm, ways to accomplish your idea. Here are just some things that are also included on the learner guide to help you do some planning towards your intergenerational program idea. We're happy to answer any additional questions for you, this is our contact info as we move forward. Would love to take a couple of questions, got couple of minutes left of our session together. >> Excellent. One of the questions earlier was around timing. You've given lots of examples so some of them are after school, some in the evening or weekend. >> We always get asked in the programming world. Here is my answer to it. The best time to do this is when you can do it. When I was branch manager at one of my libraries I could staff the program on Tuesday nights or Friday afternoons, that's when we had adult programs, Tuesday nights and Friday afternoons, I don't think there's any magic time. Of course you want to be responsive to your community and be aware of like, do you have early school release some day. Are you in a very church-going community and Wednesday nights are out. But beyond that, do it when you can do it. Start somewhere. I'm also fan of consistency. Give it a chance to grow, have it the same day, month after month or week after week. I think that is one of the reasons our story times are so successful in libraries our branding so strong with children and teens because we do it consistently. Not so much with adults. We tend to do random adult programming. Bring that consistency in I think you'll see attendance numbers grow. >> In addition to that I wanted to say that it seems that we've had the largest attendance in the following three time periods. 3:00 in the afternoon. Actually two time periods. 10:30 in the morning. Saturdays seem to be more well attended than during the week. Those seem to be key times if that's helpful to be thinking about. >> How about quick bit on marketing. >> Marketing. >> Your programming partners are helpful with that considering how to reach different ethnic populations. >> This is really a tricky question, sometimes when you sort of advertise to say this is an intergenerational program. Sometimes that word freaks people out. It sort of depends on the kind of program that you want to do. My suggestion would be to market to organizations that cater to the particular age groups that you're interested in participating in the program. Oftentimes I will go to the communities and talk about the program myself, with a power point, give an example of what it's like. It helps people to sort of see you and understand sort of what the program is going to look like because it's something new. They don't know who the participants are. I would say sort of that in-person meeting. If you are targeting an intergenerational relationship between parent and young people, call it a family program. That seems to be sort of the way that has gotten the most participants. Wendy, do you have a question? >> I agree. Don't be shy about asking for help and the community partners -- if they're going to do outreach program, you want to contact cultural group that deals with that cultural group. It's not new coming in saying, I'm going to do this for you as Jen said, something about us without us. Ask nor their help and their buy in ask for their advice on how else would we get the word out to your community. >> Not only that but also advice in structure, in timing, in locations, in the kinds of activities that you might be doing as part of it. Getting input about content as well as participants. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. We are definitely at the top of the hour. I have to apologize that I just noticed that the e-mail telling you that the recording is available has come. That is a lie. Check back later on today and we'll get all of this great chat as well there, thank you for those of you who shared your other ideas. I know lots of inspiration, thank you so much to both of you for being here and bringing your great work. >> Thank you. >> As I said, I will be sending you all a certificate for attending today and I'll ask that as you leave you take a moment to complete the short survey that we provide, we'll give that feedback to our presenting, also helps us guide our ongoing framg. Thank you all very much. Thank you to our captioner for today. Everyone, have a fantastic rest of your day.