Anna Formosa speaks to Veronica Stivala about her new project that will see elderly people pass on their stories and experiences to a younger generation by means of drama, music and art

Darba Waħda... is an inter-generational project involving young and older people.

Starting this month, a group of young people aged over 10, together with a group of elderly people, will come together to exchange stories, create new ones and to participate in creative activities such as drama exercises, arts and crafts, music workshops, puppetry and mime.

The project is the brainchild of applied theatre practitioner Anna Formosa. Following her Masters Degree in Applied Drama at the University of Exeter in 2004, Formosa has devised and been involved in creative arts projects in schools and in the community in England where she resided for seven years, and now in Malta, where she has been based for the past three years.

Formosa is a trained actress, has been working on creative projects with the elderly in Malta since January 2014.

She meets up with groups of elderly people in different localities on a weekly basis. The meetings are varied and take the form of storytelling sessions, drama classes or arts and crafts sessions.

“Wonderful stories about the war and getting on with post-war life, childhood games, how things were in the past, trades, traditions, dressmaking and so on, emerge during the sessions.

“Although this is the recent past, it is so different to the life we know today,” says Formosa. It was the elderly themselves who encouraged Formosa to set up a project where these stories could be shared and properly documented.

And this is the story of Darba Waħda.... Young and elderly people from Fgura, Paola, Santa Luċija, Naxxar, Mosta, Għargħur, Dingli, Rabat and Mdina are being invited to sign up to take part in a series of workshops spread over eight weeks.

While this will be the first such workshop for Formosa in Malta, it is not her first ever. She has wored on similar projects in the UK.

Older people have a lot of fantastic stories to tell and everyone can benefit from learning from the older generation

Indeed, she came up with a similar project while she was working as an education manager for a theatre company in Oxford.

Walking through a park one day, an elderly woman called out to Formosa.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it,” she said, in order to start off conversation. The lady had no one to talk to and was keen to find someone with whom she could chat.

It was then that it hit Formosa that it would be a great idea to start a project where older and younger people could work creatively together.

Soon after, Formosa created her first inter-generational project through the Oxford Arts Council. She was working with the Ark-T Centre, a community arts centre linked to a church through which she issued a call for participants.

Formosa met the older people first and listened to their stories. She then told the younger people these stories which they dramatised and performed in front of the original storytellers.

“The idea was to show younger people that the older generation has a wealth of interesting information to pass on,” says Formosa. The outcome was far better than she could ever have expected. Some incredibly strong relationships were formed and the Ark-T Centre asked her to run another project.

One story that Formosa holds close to her heart is about twin boys who didn’t have any grandparents and one of the elderly ladies who had no family because she had never got married.

“It was really beautiful to see the relationship develop between her and the boys,” says Formosa. “Although the lady was quiet and didn’t speak much, by the end of the project she felt empowered to give a presentation about her creative work which included beautiful paintings and tapestries.”

This is drama therapy at its best. Formosa says that “drama therapy means exploring a given theme, such as peer pressure or local identity through a project in a school”.

What Formosa loves about these kinds of projects is that through the creative, participants not only learn about a given theme or discover new skills, depending on what kind of project it is, but also learn about themselves and the others.

“Drama therapy enables participants to improve their self-esteem, develop communication skills, express them-selves, work their imagination and build connections with others, something not normally possible through other forms of interaction. “

Projects like these provide a learning experience in a fun and safe environment.”

For Darba Waħda... both generations will be working together. They will be telling each other stories, participating in drama workshops and working together in other creative ways. “The most important aspect is that they learn from each other. Older people have a lot of fantastic stories to tell and everyone can benefit from learning from the older generation. And of course, it’s great fun for all involved.”

Darba Waħda... is a Valletta 2018 Project. If you would like to participate and for more information you can visit http://valletta2018.org/cultural-programme/darba-wahda/ .

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