Abstract
“Those who are active do not appreciate those who are inactive” argues Simone de Beauvoir (2019) though those who are active may legally impose inactivity on older people. This case study deals with the social engagement of Slovenian U3A’s students. Namely, Slovenian Third Age University’s socially engaged older people’s education, art and filmmaking were conceptualized as approach and method that enable older people to remain socially included and become social actors. Ever since 1984 Slovenian U3A’s educational programmes have been implicitly or explicitly focusing on: reaffirming older people’s personal and social identity, constructing older people’s quality of life, their active position in society as well as increasing public awareness about social existence, position and value of older people. Thus U3A’s programmes stimulate older people’s collective liberating from social stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination. Moreover, they are a method enabling older people to collectively liberate from the type of policy discourse that supports their casual instead of their serious leisure time (Stebbins, 2015). Older adults’ education-based engagement addresses the issue of social justice on redistributive, socioeconomic and symbolic-cultural level (Fraser, 2011). The EU project RefugeesIN is one of the recent examples of Slovenian U3A older students’ educational social engagement, dealing with refugee problematics and the issue of approaching and making documentary films.
Key words: casual leisure time, serious leisure time, social engagement, film, older adult education, older people, social inclusion, social justice, social stereotypes, CINAGE, RefugeesIN.