The project is aimed at elderly people, students in training, RCH workers, young social theatre professionals, social workers, and the citizens of the Piedmont region.

With a network approach, already in the intervention planning phase, the various territorial stakeholders were involved in a participatory design process, in order to make local communities, including the involved elderly care facilities, the protagonists of the experience and to enhance the participation of individuals, groups and communities, associations, cooperatives and institutions, or the “social capital” of the territories. Particular importance is given to the on-the-job and in-action training for staff working within the elderly care facilities and students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Turin through an internship-intervention. The training was activated in order to provide the staff daily involved in working with elderly people with skills that can be used in the field even beyond the duration of the project activities, with a view to empowering the structures and lasting change in the reality encountered.

The seven editions of Lo Splendore delle età have given rise, following the workshop work, to numerous theatrical events, proposed both in public theatres or other stage spaces and in the context of places of daily aggregation in the Turin area or in spaces significant for the reference territorial community. This is to foster an active and authentic meeting with the communities involved in the project, in line with the Social and Community Theatre methodology.

Overall, in its seven editions, the project involved:

• 7 elderly care facilities in the Piedmont Region: 6 in the city of Turin (of which 5 Residences and 1 Day Center) and 1 in the city of Cuneo
• between 240 and 250 elderly people hosted in the aforementioned facilities
• approximately 60 students from the Faculty of Educational Sciences
• 12 students from the Master’s in Social and Community Theatre – University of Turin
• approximately 40 workers (HCA, nurses, animators) from the facilities
• approximately 2,500 residents of the territorial communities – Piedmont Region (estimate based on attendance recorded during the final performances)
• a network of 12 associations operating in the relevant territories
• approximately 70 volunteers and territorial bodies

The project was the subject of an evaluation conducted by Dr. Patrizia Massariello in collaboration with the Nursing Degree Course of the former Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Turin. The following tools were used: multidimensional evaluation, administration of semi-structured interviews, and participation of the evaluators in the workshops within the facilities. The collected data were compared with each other and the interviews were analyzed through phenomenological analysis to understand what impact the entire project had had on the lived experience of the elderly residents. The results were compared with the team in charge of conducting the workshops, in order to consider their point of view as participants and experts in theatrical techniques and the aims of Social and Community Theatre. The scientific research, in its conclusions, confirmed the validity of the proposed model and emphasized the importance of having healthcare personnel experienced in social theatre able to design and carry out effective interventions similar in the perspective of the wellbeing of elderly people and community health.