First Day

Posted on 2nd Jun 2016

The project involves people living in the old home. Laetitia Pflegeheim was the first institution that let us run the project with their residents.

Laetitia is situated near the beautiful lake Ossiach and on the foothill of the famous mountain 'Gerlitzen'.

 

Preparation

We came in contact with the Laetitia Pflegeheim end of the year 2015. After a few visit to the pflegeheim we have worked out the details of our project. It was decided that the caregivers working in the pflegeheim shall collect all the 'wishes' from the residents. After the collection of the wishes, we shall get the list via email and the volunteers shall start collecting old songs, films, operas, shows in their own pace.

We figured out most of the wishes from our senior citizens are ranging from 50's to 70's. The wish list included almost all the hits and genres from those years. We found a lot of these songs, films in youtube, downloaded them using a software called 'keepvid'.

Through this project we also wanted to connect the local archives to the Pfelegeheim. The Alpen Adria Mediathek was generous enough to issue a free media card for the senior citizens residing in the Laetitia Pflegeheim. We found quite a few DVD's containing operas and films in the mediathek already.

The volunteers can use this 'media card' to borrow 25 materials (DVD, books, films, magazines, CDs) at once as requested by the residents of the pflegeheim.

 

The Beginning

Syed Hadiuzzaman from Gulmohor Carnival Association volunteered for the first day. 3 operas and 3 films were collected from the Alpen Adria Mediathek and most of the songs from the wish list had been downloaded from the youtube. The songs consisted of German and Italian hits from the 50's and 60's and the very special 'Kärntner Heimatlied'. These 'Heimatlied' are songs, paying homage to the beautiful Carinthian landscape, folk stories (The wish list can be downloaded here).

'Morgenrunde' , 'das Nähkästchen'

'Morgenrunde' takes place mostly after the breakfast. It is the first group event of the day.During this hour one of the staffs from the Pflegeheim moderates a discussion about the weather, today's lunch and dinner menu and the important activities that would happen during the day. Important posts are delivered, newspapers are discussed, a bit of politics, a bit of culture... This is one of the 'window's through which the residents can have a look at the outside world.      

 

Our project became the  part of Laetitia Pflegeheim's 'Morgenrunde'. The moderator was reading from the list, esp. the song titles and asking everyone if they can remember it any more.

 

Most of the time the residents recognized the songs readily, and also the singers. They were singing, clapping when the songs had been played. It looked like they are going back to their own prime. They were singing the songs together again and it really became a collective event.

 

They were reminiscing about Roy Black, his manly charm... fishing habit of Peter Alexander, the cars the stars used to drive etc. etc.

 

The most emotional bit came when the 'Kärntner Heimatliedern' were being played. The old tune really captured the senior citizens and the environment became quite emotional esp. during the song 'in da mölltalleitn' which describes the beautiful sunrise of the valley Mölltall, the environment became quite emotional.

Here is a short video capturing some parts of the show.

We stopped after playing 'in da Mölltalleitn'.

Fr. Moser invited me to have lunch with the residents.

There was beef steak with baked potato in the menu. After I have finished my lunch, they gave me a very tasty scoop of ice-cream.

This lunch with the senior citizens had been the greatest gift for me on this Bengali New Year.

Next Steps

We still have lots of request coming from Laetitia Pflegeheim. We still need volunteers who shall download and share these films, songs with the senior citizens according to their (volunteers) own availability.

Secondly we are also planning to make day to day videos of the super market, town squares, bakeries (of course with prior permission), so that we can show these to the senior citizens. They really want to have a look at the outside world and very eager to hear about the spaces that once they treaded with full of life.

Thirdly, we are in contact with the Stadtkino Villach so that some of the Heimatfilme could be shown there once in a while for the residents of the Laetitia Pflegeheim. Nothing is finalized yet but we are hoping for a nice outcome.