The UCLA (Un)Common Public Space group hosted Common Ground: A Festival for Intergenerational Public Space on Saturday, February 26, 2022. Hosted at Golden Age Park, a recently opened pocket park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the event brought music, games, and food to the park. The event attracted over 100 attendees, including 45 members of the Heart of Los Angeles’ Intergenerational Orchestra, and five members of a Shakespeare troupe performing an excerpt from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The event also featured facepainting and balloon tying for children and included a lunch with tamales for all attendees. 

Common Ground: A Festival for Intergenerational Public Space, builds on ongoing research by the Lewis Center and cityLAB that shows that few local residents are aware of or have visited Golden Age Park. Golden Age Park was opened by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust in 2019 with the goal to offer park space to meet the needs of older adult residents in Westlake, a high-density urban neighborhood. However, the park’s relative newness and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic have hindered park use. A primary purpose of the event was to build local awareness of the park’s presence, and assess the kinds of activities and amenities that users would find appealing in the park. 

Another goal of the event was to raise awareness of the importance of creating and sustaining intergenerational public spaces. Intergenerational public space moves beyond accommodating the age-based needs of different age groups in urban public environments. By creating opportunities for people of all ages to share time, space, and experiences, intergenerational public spaces support engagement, learning, and understanding across generations. Such engagement can support individual and collective health and wellbeing, social cohesion, and community development. By introducing creative programming, this event activated a public space already designed to meet the needs of youth and older adults, transforming it into a truly intergenerational space.