The Conversation Project

From 2005-2009, Rattner was the creative director of Iowa City Senior Center Television (ICSCTV), where a dozen crewmembers, ranging from sixty to eighty-nine-years in age, created six hours of programming each month that aired online and on three public access channels. As the creative director, he trained the older adults in video production and postproduction, helped launch their web channel, and introduced the Linn Street Intergenerational Collective, which focused on producing short- and long-term collaborative video projects with the Senior Center crew and people from the surrounding community.

While in existence, the Linn Street Intergenerational Collective produced over 40 videos with graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Iowa’s cinema department, School of Art and Art History, psychology department, Spanish department, and School of Social Work. In 2009, for his thesis work in the Intermedia Art Program at the University of Iowa, Rattner facilitated a video diary series with four English language learning students from a local high school and four Senior Television crew members. This collaboration resulted in the piece The Conversation Project.

60 minutes, 2009