Challenging stereotypes through creativity
The participants’ writing has taken many different forms – some have written poetry, others thrillers – and it’s this variety of creative expression that’s breaking down boundaries just as much as the age of its writers.
“I thought I didn’t have any stereotypes about older people, but you become surprised that you do,” admits Martha. “You’re so constantly surprised about the wealth of creativity that is there and perhaps being ignored because it’s not young, new and shiny in the way that art tends to love.”
Costas, who moved to the UK as a teenager hoping to become a morse code interpreter, chose to write about connections. “When I was a kid I saw in a magazine an advert for friend. Within a couple weeks I received my first letter and I was very excited. The memory came back to me and so I wrote a play about pen pals.”
Faye’s play is about her late husband. “We were married 56 years. I miss him like hell.” Speaking of how she comes up with her ideas, Faye says, “It just comes to me. I was with my daughter and all of a sudden I thought of something. I said, ‘Get me paper, I need to write something down!’”
It’s not just the older participants who have gained new insights through their writing. For Martha, running the group has been transformational. “It’s so rare that you have conversations in your life that make incremental change, and I feel like I have 5 of those conversations each session which is really beautiful,” she says. “It has made me consider how I haven’t written a character older than 60. There is a whole part of life that I am not creatively looking at, so that’s going to change.”
