Preguntas Hermosas: TimeSlips Virtual Workshops in Spanish!

September 30, 2022

TimeSlips is excited to be working on a second phase of our Milwaukee Beautiful Questions project with Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin and United Community Center (UCC). In the first phase, three Milwaukee-based artists worked to distribute Beautiful Questions through home delivered meals and turned the elder’s responses, collected via a toll-free voicemail line, into a beautiful creative song and video. 

In this phase, we are continuing to send Beautiful Questions via home delivered meals, while also identifying other ways that staff and volunteers can integrate creative conversation techniques into their existing interactions with the elders they serve. TimeSlips along with Milwaukee artists and TimeSlips Certified Trainers Michael Snowden, Robert Knapp, and Jackie Kostichka, are supporting these organizations to build their confidence with our techniques and lead creative conversations in a way that is sustainable for them. 

As a part of these efforts, Jackie Kostichka has created a series of six virtual workshops available in Spanish for seniors involved in UCC programming. These workshops are meant to aid people leading group sessions in-person. Each video includes a movement warm-up led by Jackie, who is also a registered Dance/Movement Therapist, as well as a series of Beautiful Questions that are meant to spark conversation and self expression.

Each video was paired with a PDF that had the questions featured in the workshop printed out, with space for elders to respond. Their responses have been collected and will later be included in the creative output that the artists will make sometime next year. 

United Community Center’s Mission is to transform the lives of Hispanics, families and individuals of all ages by providing the highest quality comprehensive services in education, human services, health, community development and cultural arts. They offer meaningful intergenerational programming, as well as provide opportunities for elders to learn new skills and talents, including how to improve their health to live long, happy lives. 

Ana Castaneda, UCC’s Elderly Programs Manager, has been essential to our efforts in this project and has helped us learn how to best position TimeSlips into new and existing programming. Ana shared, “Our seniors have really enjoyed the workshops. With Beautiful Questions they have been able to connect with others and share life experiences. Recordar es volver a vivir!! To remember is to live again.”

If you are working with a group of Spanish speaking elders, we encourage you to check out the video playlist that Jackie Kostichka made for this project and try them out as a fun, interactive activity!

This project is generously funded by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. For more than a century, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation has helped individuals, families and organizations realize their philanthropic goals and make a difference in the community, during their lifetimes and for future generations. The Foundation consists of more than 1,400 individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the charitable causes of their choice. The Foundation also deploys both human and financial resources to address the most critical needs of the community and ensure the vitality of the region. Established in 1915, the Foundation was one of the first community foundations in the world and is now among the largest.