Home Together

Home Together is an episodic video series that focuses on communities of older people who decide to live collectively and look out for one another in their aging years. The film is a docu-fiction drama that looks at the situations of aging people finding ways to fight isolation in a society that marginalizes people who are older and it also looks at other related issues that impact older people. The story begins as we meet Janette Ledwith and learn about the community that she is creating. As the story follows her, we learn about how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted older people as well as its other social impacts. We meet Seong-gee Um, a researcher in health equity who is studying how immigrant seniors receive home care and Catherine Doherty, who works in retirement living and long-term care. The fourth person introduced in the film is Theresa, an actor who deals with long-term illness, who brings a fictional element to the story by playing someone who wants to join a co-housing community for older people. Theresa’s character finds herself confronted with the exclusionary, ableist approach that some co-housing communities display when they avoid dealing with people’s health difficulties during older age. The film returns to Janette in 2022 who is in the process of selling the house where she intended to start the co-housing community and she reflects on the challenges of building a collective community of older people in the present moment.

2020-2022

VIDEO STILLS

Melanie Gilligan, Home Together, 2020-2022, courtesy of Melanie Gilligan and Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf.

EPISODES

Episode 01
Janette Ledwith shows us around the house she has renovated in order to build a co-housing community for older people. That community is inspired by senior co-housing projects happening across North America, especially four women in Ontario known as “the Golden Girls of Port Perry”. Then the episode looks at a situation that has interrupted her plan, the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic devastated care home inhabitants in many countries, taking countless lives. The videos show how this is tied to other people’s stories who are also marginalized and especially vulnerable to becoming ill in the pandemic. As we emerge from this, we meet Seong-gee Um, a researcher in health equity who is studying how immigrant seniors receive home care, and Catherine Doherty who works in retirement and long-term care.

Episode 02
In this episode, Seong-gee Um talks about why immigrant seniors, seniors from racialized communities and those whose mother tongue is not English, who are independent enough to live at home but need home care services, are not getting the care they need. This is because these older people are not able to receive care in their language as well as other issues. Catherine Doherty talks about how health care is underpaid work and that she thinks that low pay is related to care work being undervalued. She describes the relationships that care workers develop with the people they care for, how when you are caring for older people you become part of their “being”. Janette discusses some of the difficulties she has faced while building the co-housing community as she finds that most people do not want to live more collectively.

Episode 03
Theresa is researching co-living communities for older people in North America and she looks up several communities. Theresa is a person who has a chronic health problem. While she is learning about co-living, she comes across a video that shows her that some of these communities do not support their community members that get health problems as they get older. This upsets Theresa and leaves her wishing that people could understand health problems as conditions that everyone will face as they get older. Footage plays about employers eager that their employees will get back to work after the pandemic. We return to Janette, now a year and a half after the start of the pandemic. She has had to give up her idea of a co-housing community and she is selling the house. She talks about what is happening for her now and how people need to think beyond their individual situations.

CREDITS

  • Janette Ledwith
    Seong-gee Um
    Catherine Doherty

    Actor
    Theresa Faelte-Lee

    I met with the participants who were taking part in this topic in different ways, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seong-gee Um is a researcher in Health Equity and Social determinants of health. She could meet on Zoom. Catherine Doherty works in retirement living and long-term care. She could have a socially distanced meeting outside.

  • Janette Ledwith scenes
    Camera: Melanie Gilligan
    Production sound recording: Paolo di Teodoro

    Seong-gee Um scene
    Recorded on Zoom

    Catherine Doherty scene
    Camera: Melanie Gilligan, Lloyd Collison
    Sound recording: Paolo di Teodoro

    Post-production
    Editing: Melanie Gilligan
    Post-production sound: Paolo di Teodoro
    Music by Julie Harting
    Played by Enid Blount Press