(soft music)
- My name's Jessica
Olivieri, and I am the artistic director
at UTP.
- Hi, my name is Eddie Abd, and I'm a producer at UTP.
In its essence, 15 Cigarettes is a project
that opens up space
for people in our community to come together to address,
and I guess explore or share
the sense of loneliness
that we all experience at some stage in our lives,
and in different ways.
But it's specifically through the lens
of our seniors in our community.
- COVID obviously hasn't invented loneliness,
but it did exacerbate it.
And what we really hope is that this project addresses,
that brings it out into the light, out of any
sense of shame or taboo, and into a space
where we can all talk about it together.
And through that talking, we perhaps can start
to feel a little less lonely.
- Loneliness is something that is experienced
by everyone, right?
And it made me reflect on my own personal life.
And maybe when I have experienced loneliness,
or the people around me have.
And it did make me think about my grandparents
who had immigrated here
in their seventies, and having a long lived
full life in Lebanon, and then immigrating here,
and then finding themselves quite disconnected.
So, this idea of disconnection,
it can be from a physical, real place,
but it can be also disconnected because of what
people are experiencing in their personal lives.
It could be the pandemic
that had made it such a democratic thing.
Like everyone experienced it, but everyone of us
has experienced loneliness in some sort of form.
So, I feel it's a project that touches everyone.
- I'm really passionate about the way that art
can act as a connector.
The way that creative projects and creative thinking
can be a form of problem solving.
And 15 Cigarettes is a really good example of that.
I really believe that through the experience
of coming together in a creative context,
that people can have transformative experiences.
(airy music)