Innovation 80's CoGen initiative supports projects that intentionally encourage younger and older participants in underserved Chicago communities to create art together and to mentor each other.
As they collaborate, they form meaningful relationships across generations and recognize talents and skills that each contribute. The mutual respect generated combats the ageism which isolates and disadvantages everyone--younger, older, and in between.
For communities, CoGen connections can be sustaining; for individual participants, they can be transformative.
Background and Benefits
While we live in the most age-diverse society in history, most of us spend our time with others who are around our own age. Daily activities don’t offer many ways to make meaningful connections with people of other generations. A recent survey by Cogenerate (Cogenerate.org), found that people of all ages want to engage with other generations. Not only does this help counteract ageism, but multiple studies have shown that how youth experience elders affects how they themselves will age, both mentally and physically. The challenge is in creating opportunities to connect.
Ageist attitudes add barriers to connecting across generations. Younger people often view elders as “past it” “too slow” and ”know it all’s”; older people often see youngsters as “lazy” “entitled” and “self-absorbed.” These ageist attitudes are reinforced constantly through advertising, social media, and all forms of entertainment. These attitudes become self-fulfilling prophecies, affecting both the mental and physical health of people as they age.
Providing opportunities to share ideas and create together gives each generation a new pair of glasses. Younger people can start to see and appreciate what older people offer: life experience, perspective, access to resources. Older people can start to see and appreciate gifts younger people bring: fresh ideas, a contemporary context, tech savvy.
CoGen grants will use engagement with the arts to offer intentional opportunities for intergenerational interaction. In doing so, CoGen will help to combat ageism.
The arts are a particularly fertile soil for growing intergenerational relationships. As Phylicia Rashad observed, “Before children speak, they sing. Before they write, they paint. As soon as they stand, they dance. Art is the basis of human expression.”
Impact of CoGen
Measuring changes in attitude as a result of CoGen programs is a complicated task. We are making an effort to do that by asking participants to fill out simple questionnaires at the beginning and end of their programs. We have engaged two graduate students from the University of Chicago to analyze the results of the questionnaires from the first five CoGen programs. Below is a brief summary of their findings. For anyone interested in the detailed analysis, they can find it here: Full CoGen Report
Collaboration enjoyment and pride in outcome scores increased markedly in participant responses from the pre-program to the post-program phase. These findings show that, in both generations, participants' expectation of joy and pride in working with another generation were greatly boosted through the program, highlighting the program's effectiveness in fostering meaningful engagement and rewarding collaborative experiences across generations.
Significantly more young participants believed that seniors could understand their perspectives after the program.
Senior participants exhibited a significant reduction in their perception that young participants were uninterested in engaging with them.
Taken together, paragraphs 2 and 3 above indicate that these intergenerational programs helped dismantle some negative stereotypic assumptions.
Young participants' perception of seniors' inflexibility showed a decline after program participation, but this shift was not statistically significant. This suggests that while the programs encouraged more positive attitudes across generations, some pre-existing stereotypes persisted.
A sentiment analysis further revealed that the vast majority of responses conveyed positive emotional tones, supporting the quantitative findings that participants found the programs enjoyable, meaningful, and impactful.
Overall, the analysis suggests that intergenerational arts programs can enhance collaboration, foster intergenerational empathy and mutual appreciation. And the meaningful connections formed across generations reduces negative bias.
While these preliminary conclusions are helpful and encouraging, further analysis with more programs and larger numbers of participants would help confirm or refute these findings.
CoGen Programs
Since Summer 2023, Innovation 80 has funded thirty-five CoGen projects run by twenty-two small arts organizations in Chicago. Innovation 80 now funds only CoGen programs.
American Indian Center - Intergenerational Workshops
In four distinct intergenerational programs, elders and youth collaborate through cross-mentorship. In the Regalia Making Workshops, elders will teach traditional crafting techniques, while youth introduce digital design tools to enhance creativity. The Dance Workshops will combine traditional dance instruction from elders with modern dance elements guided by youth. In both Traditional Medicine Workshops and Singing and Drumming Workshops youth will facilitate in digital recording and preservation of cultural elements the elders will pass down. Each workshop fosters cultural continuity and community resilience.
Architreasures - Our Homes CoGen Program
Architreasures will expand the Our Homes program which launched in 2024 through the support of Innovation 80. Our Homes is an art and oral history project that uplifts past and present stories of the Altgeld Gardens housing community. The project will connect young people ages 16-24 with seniors from Altgeld to capture community stories through oral history collection and photography. The goal is to further pride in community members and to foster meaningful relationships across generations.
Art Encounter - Linking Generations CoGen Program
Art Encounter programs bring people together to share ideas, experiences, and viewpoints through discussing and making art. Innovation 80 will support Linking Generations, a program that partners with Family Matters, a social service agency, to join youth and seniors living in an area of Rogers Park where 97% of elementary school youth are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. In the series of eight weekly workshops student / senior pairs will learn art concepts and will interview each other to share life experiences, promoting understanding and respect across the generations. Each pair will create a multi-media shadowbox to reflect some connection they have found—a shared interest, a value, a dream. At the culminating reception with family, friends, and community, participants will reflect on their experience in this program and celebrate their artistic creations.
Art of Giving - Stories of our Lives CoGen Program
The Art of Giving Foundation's “Stories of Our Lives” will bring together a group of 8 eighth - twelfth grade students with 8 seniors for an intensive two-week program using the power of music and creativity through the medium of cabaret. Sessions will build bridges between the generations by sharing and merging the stories and experiences of teens and elders and, using the Great American Song Book, will culminate in a collaborative cabaret performance by the participants. The cabaret format will showcase the comedic and lighthearted aspects of life, as well as experiences that transcend age and time. This project is intended to foster meaningful connections and mutual understanding across the generations.
Art on Sedgwick - Strands of Wisdom CoGen Program
Strands of Wisdom, a multi-generational sewing program, will foster cross-mentorship between teens and adults from the Marshall Field Garden Apartments, bridging racial, economic, and generational divides. Running for 26 weeks in 2025, the program will pair teens with elders in creative collaborations, allowing them to share skills and perspectives while building meaningful connections. Through hands-on projects and discussions on wisdom themes such as confidence, humility, and discipline, participants will strengthen community ties. Each session will culminate in a joint art exhibit at the Art on Sedgwick Gallery, showcasing their collaborative efforts.
Artemple - Art of the DJ CoGen Program
ARTEMPLE Foundation's Art of the DJ CoGen program will pair youth and elder participants who are passionate about media in an 8-10 week journey into sound. Guided by well-established DJ's, they will learn mentoring, hands-on drum rhythms, DJ controllers, live performance, network building, and the use of social media for marketing. The program will foster relationships between younger and older participants that break down age barriers and enhance understanding and enjoyment for both seniors and juniors. The series will culminate in creating a mixtape and performing at a live showcase.
Reimagining R&B- CWCMC/Innovation 80 CoGen Project
Reimagining R&B music – A Sound for All Ages. This10-week program pairs ten young music students and ten older members of their Westside community to explore how the vital art form of R&B music reflects the human experience with raw emotion, addressing love, heartbreak, social issues, and personal growth. Its influence spans generations and cultures, shaping fashion trends, dance, and societal movements. Each pair brings their own individual perspectives and experiences as they reimagine a creative variation of songs by their favorite artists. As each pair develops a concept of the R&B genre and exchanges experiences, they will form meaningful relationships that connect their generations through the music. The program will conclude with a workshop in which the reimagined pieces will be performed for the community.
Erasing the Distance - Room for Light CoGen Project... Entre Generaciones
This program partners with BlueCross BlueDoor Neighborhood Center to raise mental health awareness and reduce stigma within the Latinx community through storytelling and live performances. Latinx seniors and youth will be paired to share personal stories, fostering empathy and understanding across generations. Mental health challenges within Latinx culture will be openly discussed, creating a safe space for dialogue. Select stories will be featured on illuminated lightboxes and debuted at a live theatrical performance during Latin Heritage Month. The event will also include a public discussion on mental health and intergenerational connections, promoting community support and collaboration.
FreshLens/Innovation 80 CoGen Project
FreshLens’ CoGen program is a 7-week project-based class for photography students that pairs retired adults with high school students. Through interviewing each other, pairs discover common interests which lead to their designing and developing a photography project together. Beyond the class itself, this program is meant to foster a co-generational, mutual learning relationship and produce a space for intergenerational collaboration. This represents a mini step to combat the pervasive issue of ageism.
See freshlenschicago.org/cogen-showcase for detailed creative results of these pairings.
Green Star/Innovation 80 Intergenerational Art Expression Project
Innovation 80 will fund the “Intergenerational Art Expression Project” with Green Star Movement (GSM), an organization with whom I80 has been working for several years. GSM uses mosaic public art to build teamwork, tell stories, and beautify shared space to revitalize diverse urban communities, guided by resident and business needs.
GSM’s CoGen project brings together youth and older adults from Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly (LBFE), an organization providing friendship to older adults who no longer have friends or family to rely on. GSM teaching artists will lead 24 monthly sessions of youth and older adults in a mosaic-making project. GSM will also use virtual methodology (DIY home-kits) to engage homebound elders. The project will create two mosaics--one for the LBFE facade, one in a neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side. Besides creating meaningful and lasting pieces of art, this program will offer a safe space for elders and youth to share stories and connect. Through this co-generational focus, GSM and I80 continue their commitment to engage marginalized, under-represented communities in the arts, enhancing quality of life for both seniors and youth.
Inheritance Theater Project - CoGen Program
Inheritance Theater Project (ITP) creates art in and with communities, building relationships across divides by inviting community members to co-create original theater.
Through Spring 2025, ITP will focus on strengthening relationships between siloed communities on the south and west sides of Chicago. A group of local artists hired by ITP and ITP national team members, will spark conversations based on First Amendment issues (Freedoms of Religion, Assembly, Speech, etc.) to better understand and honor the multiplicity of stories that exist among neighbors. By bringing together local artists, activists, civic and religious leaders, and community members from all over Chicago's south and west sides, ITP will invite everyone's voice into the playmaking process. The resulting play will be performed, free, for audiences at local Chicago venues in the Fall of 2025.
Innovation 80 serves as Catalyst for ITP in developing this Chicago Project.
Jackalope Theatre Company - CoGen Living Newspaper
Jackalope Theater Company will put youth and seniors in the Edgewater community together for a ten-week (20-session) program designed for participants to create theater pieces based on local current events newspaper articles. In the past, as an Arts Partner in Residence with the Chicago Park District, JTC has run separate classes for each age cohort but did not have funding to pilot a CoGen Living Newspaper class. In the CoGen program, teaching artists will lead discussions and exercises to enhance communication and connections across generations and these will culminate in creating a short play that will be performed for the community. The program is offered for free to all.
Lawndale Pop-Up Spot: Reimagining 16th Street CoGen Project
The Reimagining 16th Street initiative brings together youth, seniors, and others in North Lawndale to co-create art that reflects the community’s past, present, and future. Through a series of 16 intergenerational workshops, participants collaborated on posters, design exhibits, storytelling, and a large sculpture, fostering connections between different generations. These art pieces were revealed at the Reimagining 16th Street Festival in October, where both young and old shared their creative visions and stories. They will be installed in November along with three sukkahs from the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival. The program emphasizes a process that breaks down barriers and builds co-generational connections through shared artistic expression and dialogue.
The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project
The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project is designed to promote well-being among LGBTQ+ people by bringing together older and younger LGBTQ+ adults for two semesters of storytelling, dialogue, and art making. Connecting diverse cohorts of LGBTQ+ participants who would otherwise never have a chance to interact, the project provides them space, time, and support to learn to engage with each other across their differences.
The fall semester focuses on storytelling and dialogue; the spring semester is dedicated to The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Art Program, (supported by Innovation 80) in which participants work in small intergenerational groups to connect meaningfully with each other, further develop art skills, and imagine, plan, coordinate, and make a collaborative art piece. The program ends with a public art exhibition showcasing the work. Through this process, participants - both younger and older - come to deeper understandings of themselves and each other as artists, makers, thinkers, and community members.
In the magical space of art making and dialogue, relationships flourish.
Lifting Hearts with the Arts - CoGen Creations
CoGen Creations, a 501(c)(3) organization formed by high school students, is designed to facilitate intergenerational learning through art-making, encouraging open communication to counteract stereotypes and increase understanding between generations. For the 2024-25 school year, the CoGen Creations program will expand to DePaul Prep and Amundsen High Schools, as well as two underserved senior care facilities in Chicago, fostering intergenerational connections and creativity. Based on mutual interests, ten high school students will be paired with ten senior residents. Pairs will meet during an ice cream social, create a first art piece together and later attend 5 art-making workshops. Participants will get to know each other by engaging in dialogue and by expressing themselves through different mediums. Each pair will create a final piece and brief statement for display at the end of the school year, along with photos of the artist pairs, first in an art fair at the high school and then at the senior care facility. The hope is for participants to build long-lasting, intergenerational friendships that will enrich their lives.
Lifting Hearts with the Arts - Multigen Modules
Lifting Hearts with the Arts' "Multigen Modules" uses art to facilitate conversations between youth volunteers and senior residents of Chicago care facilities to explore and delineate best practices of intergenerational work. Volunteers will supplement their understanding by interviewing care facility staff, and other experts in the field of aging, then co-create storyboards for 1 or 2 short informational videos to convey their collective findings. Lifting Hearts with the Arts volunteers will then digitally animate the storyboards and test their clarity and effectiveness as teaching modules. The modules will be available to senior care facilities to help them efficiently onboard prospective volunteers, providing information about how to work collaboratively with seniors. The aim is to broaden intergenerational understanding and foster meaningful relationships across generations.
Mandala South Asian Performing Arts - Intergenerational Drumming Circle
Mandala will launch a drumming circle for a mutual exchange between young musicians and the elderly residents in the ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhood of Rogers Park. A group of 30-32 seniors, over the age of 55, will work with eight musicians in their early 20's. The program's weekly 90-minute sessions will meet for 36 weeks. In addition to collective drumming exercises, participants will break into smaller groups for a focussed exchange around cultural and professional experiences. Each quarter will conclude with an open recital.
Once Upon Our Time Capsule - CoGen Program
Once Upon Our Time Capsule's CoGen program reimagines the tradition of a time capsule to engage children (9-17 years old) and seniors (over 60) from the Austin community in sharing their stories and perspectives on this year's capsule topic, “Journeys”. With support from Innovation 80, the stories and artwork they create, reflecting the many journeys in their lives, will be saved in a virtual time capsule to be closed at year end and re-opened in ten years to provide a window on history. In addition to fostering their sense of self-worth, belonging, and empathy, the program will encourage participants to appreciate experiences and perspectives of another generation and to build meaningful cross-generational relationships.
Public Media Institute - CoGen Audio Visual History Project
Public Media Institute's project emphasizes co-mentorship. It pairs 10 elders and 10 youth for ten hours a week in a six-week summer program to share experiences of their neighborhoods on Chicago's Southwest Side. Participant pairs will focus their personal stories on cultural, communal and social justice issues and changes, while building intergenerational relationships that will continue beyond the program. Participants will collect each other's oral histories, explore new and archival media content, learn storytelling and sound bed techniques, and collaborate to craft a series of 5- to 7-minute audio “creative essay” pieces, capturing their neighborhood's unique character and their generational perspectives. Lumpen Radio will broadcast these pieces along with follow-up conversations. The final outcome will be a 2-hour series of 10 high quality radio segments, a lasting legacy.
Red Line Service CoGen Program: A Space of Symbiosis
Red Line Service is the only art organization in Chicago led by people who have a lived experience of houselessness. Red Line Service utilizes the arts to foster a sense of community, inclusivity, and mutual support for people currently experiencing houselessness or housing insecurity. Innovation 80 is supporting A Space of Symbiosis which will take place in North Lawndale and will focus on fiber arts with participants. Here, older and younger housing insecure or unhoused community members will come together in an intensive 12-week summer program to foster mutual connections as they work collaboratively to create art in and for the garden. While younger participants receive nurturing and care, older adults deepen their sense of self agency, sense of purpose and, together, all participants create a deep community of care.
The Simple Good/Bridges: An Intergenerational Arts Program
The Simple Good (TSG) explores the meaning of “good” through art and discussion. Last year, Innovation 80's funding allowed TSG to extend its program to first graders. This year, through CoGen, Innovation 80 will help TSG inaugurate a pilot program to expand the concept of “the simple good” to senior citizens, partnering with Catalyst Circle Rock Elementary School and a nearby senior center to create a cogenerational Simple Good program. The Simple Good will utilize other sources of funding for any further CoGen programs it may run.
South Chicago Dance Theatre - The Josephine CoGen Dance Project
The Josephine CoGen Dance Project encourages older adults (ages 65+) and teens (ages 14-18) to explore and share their own family histories and stories with each other through dance. South Chicago Dance Theatre (SCDT) will partner with RUSH Hospital in Chicago to engage senior citizen participants, and Chicago public high schools to select younger participants. In summer, 2025, over the course of ten weeks, SCDT professional dance artists will lead youngers and olders in free weekly workshops to share life experiences, develop an artistic practice through dance making and collaborate across generations on pieces of choreography. The program will culminate in a sharing at the Dance Center at Columbia College.
Sukkah Design Festival Cogenerational Project
Innovation 80 has supported the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival since its inception two years ago. The 2024 program pairs 5 North Lawndale community organizations with 5 architect / designers, each team to design and build a sukkah (an outdoor room for the Jewish harvest festival Sukkot). Participants gain "design literacy"; each organization will own and repurpose its sukkah for use in its mission. All sukkah design teams stimulate cogenerational creativity, but this year two teams are dedicated as CoGen sukkahs.
One workshop series, held at the Chicago Public Library Douglass Branch (in partnership with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at Homan Square) invited participants of all ages to explore the gifts of the garden 🪴 through art. The project stimulated storytelling, collaboration, and the transmission of knowledge and creativity across generations, ultimately creating a sukkah-driven structure for the library’s teen garden.
The second CoGen project engaged veteran street vendors and local youth to consider the site and how to use the space, plus share their cultural traditions and experiences of sharing food. After the festival, the sukkah will be installed outside of Cocina Compartida de Trabajadores Cooperativistas (the cooperative workers’ shared kitchen) to provide a street vendor’s hub and communal table for shared meals.
CoGen Cohort
A CoGen Cohort, composed of leaders of the CoGen projects, meet quarterly to share ideas and learn from one another.
Kamelia Hristeva, Founder and CEO of Greenstar Movement, is chair.
The Cohort is also actively considering various initiatives for spreading the word about the power of working across generations in the arts. We will update you about this effort as plans progress.
CoGen Advisors
To help guide Innovation 80 in establishing CoGen, we are very fortunate to be able to draw on the expertise and lived experiences of a cogenerational group of advisors.
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Howard Eglit is Emeritus Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law and an expert on age discrimination. His book Age, Old Age, Language, Law addresses the ways in which language both create and perpetuate ageism, negative biases regarding the elderly.
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Born in Chicago, Jodi Eisenstadt earned a degree in oral history from Duke University and a law degree from Stanford. In high school, she organized students to lead sing-alongs in nursing homes. While in college, she created an adopted grandparents program. She returned to Chicago to work for the Governor’s Office of Voluntary Action to support nonprofit and public programs and strengthen communities through voluntary service. Jodi loves to dance, hike, read, and spend time with her family, friends, and furry creatures. She currently serves as Ankin Law Firm’s Human Resources Director and Office Manager.
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Ayden Gray is a junior honors student and member of the Business Club and Vice President of the Financial Literacy Club at Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago. He is an avid travel team hockey player. He also enjoys playing guitar in his free time. He is thrilled to be a part of the development of I80’s new CoGen program.
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Maya Joshi is president of Lifting Hearts with the Arts, an organization which, since 2020, has been creating intergenerational friendships through the arts. She hopes her work will reduce generation gaps. Maya is currently a student at Princeton University where she is exploring the ways anthropology and bioengineering intersect.
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Vernā Myers is vice president of inclusion strategy at Netflix, where she spearheads inclusion and equity initiatives and manages a team of inclusion experts worldwide. An inclusion strategist, cultural change catalyst, influencer and thought leader, Vernā is known for her ability to help people bridge differences and connect more meaningfully.
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Janet Oh is Director of Innovation at CoGenerate.Org. She started her career connecting older adults as mentors and tutors to youth as director of Experience Corps Bay Area. Through this program, she witnessed the magic that happens when generations come together.
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Zayd Patel is a junior at Lane Technical High School in Chicago. He is a member of the Junior Economic Club of Chicago and the Youth Social Entrepreneurs Alliance, and President of the Financial Literacy Club at Lane Tech. He enjoys playing sports, listening to music, and spending time with family and friends. He is excited to be a part of Innovation 80’s CoGen team.
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Phyllis N. Segal is a senior fellow at Cogenerate.org, where she is advancing intergenerational national service as a powerful new way to meet community needs and bridge the generational divide. She co-founded the Eli J. and Phyllis N. Segal Citizen Leadership Program, served in Senate-confirmed positions under Presidents Obama and Clinton, was President of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, and chaired the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
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Phoebe Snell entered the honors program at Loyola University in Chicago in September, 2023. She plays guitar, sings in the youth choir at her church in Atlanta and has acted in multiple plays. Phoebe is well-versed in Innovation 80, having served as the organization's first Fellow. She is excited to have a role in shaping I80's new CoGen program.