Celebrating two networks from across the globe, with presentations and insights from Australia and the UK…

• Welcome
• BSG Creative Ageing SIG, Co-Chairs– Dr Emily Bradfield & Dr Robyn Dowlen
• Australian Assocation of Gerontology, SIG Creativity, Arts & Design – Convenor, Prof Evonne Miller
• Professor Helen Manchester – Connecting through Culture as we Age (University of Bristol, UK)
• Professor Helen English – The benefits of participation in music as we age (University of Newcastle, Australia)
• Q&A

Presentation abstracts and presenter bios below:

Connecting Through Culture as we Age: Care-full co-design with minoritised older adults –

Professor Helen Manchester, University of Bristol, UK

This paper will focus on the Connecting through Culture as we Age project. This is a 3-year co-produced project has explored how participation in all forms of arts and culture, particularly those accessed digitally, can influence our wellbeing and feelings of social connection as we age. At the centre of the project is a group of 20 ‘co-researchers’ (aged 60-75) who identify as disabled, and/or socioeconomically and/or racially minoritised. The co-researchers worked in collaboration with community partners, artists, and creative technologists, to design digital cultural experiences that support social connection and wellbeing in later life. Our participatory digital innovation process aimed to centre the co-researcher’s voices, creativity and lived experiences throughout the stages of co-design. In this paper we introduce a praxis of care-full co-design that we have developed during the project’s life cycle.

Helen Manchester is a Professor of Participatory Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol. She is currently running an UKRI Healthy Ageing funded research project ‘Connecting through Culture as we Age’. She is Co-investigator on the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures. The Centre is a five year programme of work bringing together world-leading interdisciplinary expertise to explore sociodigital futures in the making to support fair and sustainable ways of life. Helen is particularly interested in feminist and post human approaches to researching ageing and digital technologies, just futures, and participatory methods.

Helen develops methodologically innovative approaches to researching with minoritized communities, often working in collaboration with artists, technologists, civil society organisations and policy-makers. She has published widely in the field of ageing and technologies, in particular on participatory methods and co-designing technologies with minoritized communities.

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The benefits of participation in music as we age – Associate Professor Helen English, ARC DECRA Fellow, School of Humanities, Creative Industries & Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Australia

In this presentation, Helen reflects on two complementary research projects which she is currently leading. Both focus on the benefits of involvement with group music-making and the factors that enable benefits as positive changes in wellbeing and health. One is a group songwriting intervention delivered to older adults in retirement villages. In this study, older adults work together in small groups to write songs that are important to them. This is an empirical study for which Helen leads a team of creative practitioners and psychologists. The other is a qualitative study which takes a participatory approach, working with older adults in community music groups in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania to gain insights into the benefits of being in music groups and the enabling factors. In this presentation, Helen will share early findings from both and raise the question for discussion of how to widen participation.

Helen English is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Newcastle, Australia and currently an Australian Research Council Early Career Research (ARC) Fellow. She is also a member of Healthy Minds, a research group at the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI). Since her PHD on music in nineteenth-century coalmining communities, her research has moved to the benefits of creative activities broadly and music specifically as we age. As an ARC fellow, she is exploring what makes engagement with music transformative for older adults through conducting a series of case studies in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland with a comparative study in London, UK. She also leads a creative-ageing research team at the University of Newcastle, investigating the effects of engagement with song-writing and art-making courses for older adults.

Helen is passionate about widening participation in creative activities for older adults. To further this she initiated an Australian extension of the UK’s successful Art in Care Homes in 2023 with Dr Michelle Kelly, a clinical psychologist specialising in dementia. She also formed a dementia-inclusive choir in 2023, again with Dr Kelly, which performs regularly and has been featured on local ABC radio. Helen is currently preparing a webinar on creativity and dementia for Dementia Australia and working with a team at HMRI to develop a project that brings together teenagers and adults in residential care for a creative project.