♪♪ ♪♪ Laura: I've been living on the Lower East Side since 2003.

The neighborhood is considered a naturally occurring retirement community.

25% of my neighbors are over the age of 65.

After grad school, I moved to this neighborhood because my family had a history in this neighborhood, and my grandparents had emigrated here like a hundred years ago.

And as an artist and a storyteller, you know, I look for ways to tell stories related to place.

There was a call.

The Department of Cultural Affairs has this program called Public Artists in Residence, where they match artists with city agencies.

And the artists are supposed to be creative problem-solvers and brought in to come up with creative solutions to, you know, civic problems.

And I was able to work with the agency and steer the problem-solving towards social isolation.

And one of my first projects with my neighbors was called Moving Stories, a senior-led walking tour.

I had done some research and had learned that movement triggers memory, and I was interested in getting my neighbors to share stories and thought that if I invited them to be in a walking group, we could trigger their memories.

And there was one story in particular that started the idea for this project.

A neighbor of mine told me this story that his synagogue was now a laundromat, but he thought that that was fitting because his rabbi had told him the story of the laundered soul.

Man: I had a rabbi who said that a lot of the suffering that people have before passing on to the next world, they call it that the soul goes through the laundry.

You sort of pay off your debts here, so that in the world to come, you would have a better position, a better place, because you sort of paid off your debt to anything wrong you might have done.

And so in the end, it's okay that it's a very spiritual laundromat.

And so, I realized that there were a lot of stories like that.

And each week, somebody would lead the walk and take us to a place that was significant to them...

This was my room when I was a science teacher.

I had other rooms when I was a first-grade teacher.

Laura: ...and tell a story that related to that site.

And we collectively told stories of a new development.

They had torn down the only supermarket in one part of the neighborhood, making it a food desert, to make way for this big, tall condo building.

A lot of these stories were told as the neighborhood was changing while we were doing the walking tours.

Now that you go there, you can see there's all these glass buildings along Delancey Street.

The Lower East Side Citizens Parade was one of my next projects, and we were playing with these themes of migration and immigration, and we came up with this idea to perform a parade, and of course, with dance and music and costumes.

And we asked the question, "If you had to move, what would you take with you?"

Or, "If you already did move," because many of them already had immigrated or migrated here.

And so, we built floats out of moving boxes and stacked them like 9, 10 feet tall.

And you know how you move, you, like, write "kitchen," or, you know, "books."

We put the words of what they would take with them on these boxes.

So, there could be language or respect, history.

It could also be, you know, jewelry or photographs.

The parade route was down East Broadway and then into Seward Park, which is the oldest municipal park in the United States.

And then we had these dance performances that really brought out the cultural experiences of my neighbors, who are Puerto Rican and Chinese and Jewish.

And so, we had all of these dances really bringing that cultural background and history together.

It was older dancers and younger dancers, and the last number was actually, like, a dance based on their stories.

And really, we used those boxes as props in the choreography as they danced and moved to tell their stories.

So, I had some older dancers in these workshops saying now they bump into these neighbors that they weren't really -- you know, cultural differences, even language barrier prevented them from saying hello.

But now, there's just that level of getting to know your neighbors and really appreciating everybody's stories and having empathy and gathering together.

Silver Sirens is another project that I had worked, collaborating with my neighbors.

The Educational Alliance has a site at 14th Street, the 14th Street Y, and there was some tension between the folks who were using the basketball courts to play basketball, and the folks who were using it for Zumba class.

Younger athletes were in friction with the older athletes over this space, and so, I was brought in to try to solve this problem.

And so, I said, "Well, let's make a cheerleading squad."

We ended up doing what we call a fitness exchange with the basketball players.

And so, we taught them how to do cheers.

And then, the basketball players taught the older folks how to play basketball.

But then, we left the confines of the basketball court and started cheering at the New York City Marathon, at an ageism rally, talking about ageism as well as healthcare and these issues that these women were facing.

All: [ Chanting ] ...eat your fruit.

Exercise your abs and glute!

I started volunteering while I was at the Department for Aging with Meals on Wheels.

I did some meal delivery work and really realized for the first time -- and this was before the pandemic -- how many people are isolated in their apartments and the only interaction they have is with their meal delivery person.

And how many stories must be in these buildings?

And you just look up because, you know, these people are isolated and they can't leave.

I imagined that what an opportunity it would be for the Department for Aging to highlight, you know, this population as part of their work.

And one visit in particular really stuck in my mind.

I knocked on the door of an apartment.

This woman was coming to the door.

And the soundtrack for this was the piano in one of the other apartments playing, and the slow movement towards the door, and then every single chain that had to be undone.

And then the door opens, and this older woman was there, and I gave her her meal and she said thank you, and then she shut the door.

And the encounter was so brief that that was her only interaction really struck me.

And I knew that there could be a way to use meal delivery services to be able to bring this isolated population into contact with the world.

So, Spiels on Wheels is basically, I made meal replicas.

So, they looked like the exact meal that you would get if you received a meal from Meals on Wheels.

But when you opened it up, it wasn't food.

It was actually a photograph, and it doubled as a postcard, where it allowed you to write your own story to share with someone that was isolated.

And we also included the QR code to a radio play.

Woman: Years ago, when I first moved in, I'd run up these steps.

I didn't even notice them.

I'd bounce up, even late at night, sometimes after the clubs closed.

It was about a couple of different older people that live in a quintessential New York walk-up and what their life is like right now.

We're lucky to live here, aren't we, Sonya?

Woman #2: We all help each other.

The boys next door, they take down my garbage for me, all the way to the basement.

How would I manage?

Laura: Delicious Memories is basically a talking tablecloth.

And this project, we used the prompt of "Tell me a delicious memory" to be able to really get those sensorial memories into story.

And I invited older folks, but I also invited younger folks because I wanted to make an intergenerational assembly.

And once we established these stories, then we went through some demonstrations on how to do embroidery and what types of stitches.

But everybody was, like, you know, coming from different levels.

So, the idea was so that you could move your finger around the path.

If you put your finger on it, it would start to play.

And if you took your finger off, then the story would turn off.

Woman: I am kissing my little girl, and she is holding my face and mushes her face into mine.

She is so cute, and I love her so much.

Laura: Delicious Memories do not have to be food.

They can be anything sensorial.

We had stories that ranged from the time that they visited the beach and were alone and danced there.

Woman #2: But here I am, on this beach, dancing for joy because I just have to let it out.

I was jumping as high as I possibly could, feeling like I could be as powerful as the ocean.

Laura: Another story was about a bird that helped someone through the pandemic.

Woman #3: I do not think I could have gotten through the pandemic without the companionship.

Laura: And you'd be surprised.

Some of the older people were better with the tech than the younger people that participated, and everybody was helping each other out.

Those relationships happen in real life because some of those people would never have met each other and of course, interacted because of their age ranges and where they live.

You know, the big blue-chip galleries are selling and marketing this really commercial artwork.

In some ways, I guess I'm a bad business person.

[ Chuckles ] But I really believe in the art of gathering people together and how these intergenerational relationships are important for us to be able to have a functioning society.

How do we run a government if we're all, you know, the same age?

And how are you able to talk to each other if you don't socialize and work together with intergenerational groups?

If you don't have an initial way to be introduced or share stories together, you can't really gather in the same space.

I think that's probably the biggest impact of my work.