Memories, Meaning, and Identity

It is March 2022. In the Netherlands, the COVID-19 safety regulations have finally been lifted and Elena (first author) takes the opportunity to call for a meeting with the initiators and volunteers of the free-of-charge reminiscence newspaper in the Southern Dutch province of Zeeland. She wants to know how the women with whom she worked so intensively for 16 months—and who stood at the cradle of the newspaper—are doing, and how the newspaper is received by older people. The newspaper, which is called ‘Zeeuws Weerzien’, prints materials from archives and reminiscences of people who live or used to live in Zeeland. The aim of this initiative is to bring people together for a lively conversation about their past and present everyday life experiences. The idea for the newspaper came up in 2018, during a project, which was based on participatory action research (PAR) [1, 2] and aimed at active involvement of community-dwelling older adults in reminiscence sessions [3].