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All too often, relationships between young people and their parents and grandparents become strained after experiences of migration. The Dulwich Centre Foundation is now involved in developing ways of working that provide opportunities for ‘inter-generational honouring’. As this is a crucial issue in many communities, we’re looking forward to seeing a range of local projects come out of this initiative – in Australia, Canada, and around the world. Some of the projects we are exploring include:

• hosting local community conversations across generations wheresignificant strains are occurring
• making links between social service workers in countries of migration, and their countries of origin
• developing resources for workers to assist in working with immigrant communities
• developing new methodologies for working across generations, including collective timelines and the ‘Kite of Life’.

Scarborough Tamil Community: Intergenerational Alliance project 

In 2010, Dulwich Centre Foundation colleagues at Oolagen Community Services and Turning Point Youth Services received funding to bring the ideas and practices of the ‘Kite of Life’ intergenerational alliance to a new community, specifically the Tamil community in the neighbouring suburb of Scarborough. This new project will combine narrative therapy and art therapy ideas in order to find new ways to address intergenerational conflict. One of the unique aspects of this project is that community members who were involved in the St. James Town project will be trained in some narrative therapy ideas and will help facilitate the group. The idea is that the project wi ll be able to become self-sustaining and similar groups can be run in the future. This project will use the ‘Kite of Life’ methodology, as well as explore new ways of dealing with issues facing immigrant communities – using, art, music, video, photography, and dance.

Kite of Life

To read more about the ‘Kite of Life’ methodology, see the recent publication ‘Kite of Life: From intergenerational conflict to intergenerational alliance’. For information about training in the Kite of Life, click here.

Get in touch

If you are using narrative practices to respond to inter-generational conflict we would be interested to hear from you.