Since 2020, Innovation 80 has funded small Chicago organizations that work with young people in underserved communities, using art to foster participants' life skills. Through our CoGen initiative we now support projects that intentionally encourage younger (generally under age 25) and older (generally over age 60) participants in these communities to create art together and to mentor each other. (For more about the organizations we supported prior to CoGen, please see our Past Grantees page.)
By establishing meaningful relationships across generations, CoGen program participants recognize talents and skills that different age groups contribute. The mutual respect generated combats ageism that isolates and disadvantages everyone–younger, older and in between.
For communities, CoGen connections can be sustaining; for individual participants, the connections can be transformative.
CoGen Programs
Innovation 80 piloted CoGen programs in 2023 - 24 by funding programs proposed by some of our current grantees plus initiatives by outside organizations committed to doing cogenerational work. Grants ranged up to $25,000, with an average of $15,000. Because the pilot programs were so successful, Innovation 80 is now exclusively funding CoGen programs.
Thus far, the following programs have been accepted as CoGen projects:
American Indian Center - Intergenerational Native Drum Group
The Intergenerational Native Drum Group will teach participants to make small drums. Older and younger people will learn and discuss drumming techniques, songs, and the central roles of drumming in tribal and Intertribal practice. As participants connect around intertribal powwow culture and values, they will share personal reactions and experiences that foster meaningful relationships across generations. The hope is that these relationships will last beyond the length of the program and contribute to community building and healing.
Architreasures - Our Homes
Architreasures will pilot Our Homes, an art and oral history project that will uplift 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 their ideas, experiences, and viewpoints through discussing and making art. Innovation 80 will support a Linking Generations program in which Art Encounter will partner with Family Matters, a social service agency, to join youth and seniors living in an area of Rogers Park where 97% of youth attending the neighborhood elementary school are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
In the series of eight weekly hands-on workshops students and their senior partners will learn artistic concepts and will interview each other to share life experiences, making connections to promote understanding and respect across the generations. Together, each senior and student pair will collaborate on a multi-media shadowbox project that relates to an area of connection—a shared interest, a value, a dream— that the pair has found in common through working together. The program will culminate in a sharing and reception with family, friends, and community where each artist pair will reflect on their experience in this project 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
Strands of Wisdom, a multi-generational sewing program, will connect teens and young adults from Art on Sedgwick’s Art & Impact program with seniors from their Sewing Circle program. Each session will start with a structured discussion on a topic of wisdom, such as freedom and discipline, and will continue with pairs of younger and senior participants, who span racial and economic divides, collaborating to create a textile work. The pairs will then join to display their work in a final project that will be displayed in the Art on Sedgwick Gallery.
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 the Blues - CWCMC/Innovation 80 CoGen Project
Reimagining the Blues–Sounds for All Ages, a 10-week program, pairs ten young music students with ten older members of their Westside community to explore blues music–its deep emotional resonance and rich cultural history. Each pair brings their own individual perspectives and experiences to interpret one piece by a blues artist they select. By combining their interpretations, they will re-imagine and compose a variation of that piece. Pairs will share their creative product during the program’s final session. The hope is to develop cogenerational relationships of appreciation and respect to counteract age stereotypes.
Erasing the Distance - Room for Light CoGen Project
The Room for Light project harnesses the power of true stories to disarm stigma, educate, spark dialogue and promote healing surrounding mental health.
The project will pair ten West side high school students with ten seniors from a nearby neighborhood center to explore issues affecting mental health. Participants will learn interviewing skills, how to tell and edit stories, and, in the process of interviewing one another, will form meaningful relationships across generations. Each story will be recorded and combined with a photographic portrait to create an interactive audio-visual light box. Participants will learn how to create these boxes. The boxes will be shared in community spaces with opportunities for audience discussion.
FreshLens/Innovation 80 CoGen Project
This summer program pairs five youth from the FreshLens photography curriculum with five older volunteers known to Innovation 80, for the purpose of connecting and forging relationships across generations. Participants will meet weekly for 8 weeks and will begin with the partners interviewing each other and with the students sharing some of their work. For subsequent sessions, everyone will be asked to take a single photo on an assigned topic (e.g., plants, children) and come prepared to share it and a story about it with their partner.
The goal of the program is to encourage meaningful interactions between the partners in which each may learn from the other to recognize, examine and counteract stereotypes that abound in our society about people of a different generation than one’s own. This would represent a mini step to combat the pervasive issue of ageism.
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 public art to build teamwork, tell stories, and beautify shared space to revitalize urban neighborhoods, focusing on diverse community areas, and partnering with stakeholders to identify resident and business needs.
GSM’s CoGen project will integrate youth on the south and west sides with participants from Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly, Chicago (LBFE), an organization focused on providing friendship to elders who no longer have friends or family to rely on. GSM teaching artists will lead 24 sessions of youth and elders in a co-generational mosaic-making project, meeting monthly or more frequently at LBFE or GSM’s studio. GSM will also use its new virtual methodology (DIY home-kits) to engage homebound elders. The project will result in a mosaic for the LBFE facade.
The “Intergenerational Art Expression Project” program will not only create a meaningful piece of art that will last decades to come, but also foster a safe space for elders and youth to share stories and connect.
Intergenerational programming continues both GSM’s and Innovation 80’s commitment to engaging marginalized, isolated, under-represented communities in the arts. It aims to enhance the quality of life for seniors while providing transformative experiences for 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.
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 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 work takes place over two semesters. The fall semester focuses on storytelling and dialogue while the spring semester is dedicated to The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Art Program, (supported by Innovation 80’s grant) in which participants work in small intergenerational groups to connect meaningfully with each other, further develop their 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, new understandings and relationships flourish.
Lifting Hearts with the Arts - CoGen Creations
CoGen Creations, a partnership between Lifting Hearts with the Arts and Innovation 80, is designed to facilitate intergenerational learning through art-making, encouraging open communication to counteract stereotypes and increase understanding between generations. Lifting Hearts with the Arts is a 501(c)(3) organization formed by high school students.
This pilot program will have two different groups of participants--one to meet over the first school semester; one over the second. Based on mutual interests and hobbies, ten high school students will be paired with ten senior residents at a nearby care facility, Cloverdale. 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 in a showcase at the care facility. At the end of the school year, these pieces and statements will be displayed 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 that seniors and students might build long-lasting, intergenerational friendships that will enrich their lives.
Lifting Hearts with the Arts - Multigen Modules
Lifting Hearts with the Arts' "Multigen Modules" facilitates connections between youth volunteers and senior residents of Chicago care facilities to communicate and create art together. Volunteers will collaborate with seniors, care facility staff, and other experts in the field of aging to co-create storyboards for 1 or 2 short informational videos to convey best practices of intergenerational work. 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 the information they need to work collaboratively with seniors. The aim is to improve intergenerational understanding and foster meaningful relationships across generations through the use of art.
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.
Red Line Service: A Space of Symbiosis
Red Line Service is the only art organization in Chicago led by people who have a lived experience of homelessness. Red Line Service utilizes the arts to foster a sense of community, inclusivity, and mutual support for people currently experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Innovation 80 is supporting A Space of Symbiosis which will take place in North Lawndale and will transform a vacant lot into a beautiful, landscaped space. Here, 15 older and 10 younger housing insecure or unhoused community members will come together in an intensive 18-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.
Sukkah Design Festival Cogenerational Project
Innovation 80 will support the second annual Chicago Sukkah Design Festival in North Lawndale as it integrates cogenerational goals into two of its five sukkah design teams. Participants will again engage in design literacy skill-building workshops. In addition, the Building Brighter Futures Center for the Arts (BBF) sukkah will engage older BBF alums and current BBF youth participants in interviewing each other about their neighborhood experiences through the decades. And the sukkah at the historic Slumbusters Garden will use the participatory sukkah design process as a vehicle to initiate cogenerational gardening, and ultimately to pass the torch for stewarding community gardens from an older generation to a younger cohort. Partnerships with the Chicago History Museum and North Lawndale residents acting as community history consultants will empower intergenerational learning and creativity as participants co-design these sukkahs.
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.
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.” Art allows people to connect, because everybody can do art. “Art brings people back to their sensibility as human beings.” eL Seed
CoGen Special Coordinator
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.
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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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.