Sustaining LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogues: Notes From the In-Between Spaces

• In Event: Engaging Education Work in and With LGBTQ+ People and Communities

Abstract

In this paper, four scholars – a philosopher of education, an educational psychologist, social worker, and a cultural anthropologist – offer notes from being the co-facilitators of The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project, a community-engaged research project that brings together younger (18-28) and older (65-82) LGBTQ+ folks for a year long set of dialogues. A partnership between three local universities and a LGBTQ+ community center, this community-engaged project emerged from a call to action to address the lack of intergenerational contact and conversation between LGBTQ+ people. The absence of such intergenerational contact contributes to a continued lack of cultural transmission between and within generations. This reality leaves new generations, in particular, to feel that they are still “the only one,” and older generations to feel like they have been forgotten or made invisible.

Drawing on 4 years of experience, our paper focuses on and unpacks three particular challenges and the possibilities that emerge through them. These include:
1. Creating and finding a place where an intentional intergenerational LGBTQ+ community can form to learn from and with one another.
2. Engaging in and aiding participants as they navigate the emotional work of connecting with and relating to members of different generations.
3. Learning to be comfortable with the fuzzy boundaries that exist when building relationships within a community-engaged project.

Eschewing a focus on “findings,” we focus on these challenges and their possibilities as members of this community that are “in-between” the younger and older generations. We seek to fill out the middle by attending to these nitty gritty details.

Authors

• Adam Joseph Greteman, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

• Nic M. Weststrate, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Lisa Moore, University of Chicago

• Karen Morris, School of the Art Institute of Chicago