ABSTRACT
This chapter offers reflections, drawn from conversations with Magic Me staff and associate artists, engaging with this extensive body of work. In the first section, Susan Langford MBE, founder and director of Magic Me, and Kate Hodson, programme director, consider how the very particular social, political and cultural contexts of location inform the organisation’s practices, particularly Cocktails in Care Homes and new models of partnership development that support community-based organisations to grow sustainable collaborations. Magic Me has pioneered innovative and ambitious intergenerational programmes and participatory arts projects with older people. Magic Me projects are not framed as reminiscence projects where young people are asking older people to recount their past experiences. Magic Me, intergenerational practice is not only about people of different generations being in the same place at the same time, it is about how specific arts practices can invite and support an equity of participation for everyone, regardless of age, experience, physical skill and dexterity.
