Projects
An All-Age Friendly City Centre
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We worked with a group of students from Newcastle University’s Architecture, Planning and Landscape Department to gather older people’s views and insights into what makes the city centre a good place to be.
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Our report highlights some of the key issues we need to consider when planning public spaces. We shared our findings with Newcastle City Council as a contribution to the discussions on the transformation of Newcastle city centre.
Doorbells
Doorbells is a partnership project with Care and Repair England, Skimstone Arts and Northumbria University, funded by the Rayne Foundation. The project uses performance as a way of encouraging older people and their families to have conversations about how and where we live in later life and to seek advice about their options. A good, comfortable home is very important in later life, but we often end up in homes which are unsuited to our changing needs. In Autumn 2021, performances of ‘Doorbells: Dreaming for the Future’ were held in community venues across the city. The performances were followed by discussion groups. The insights from these conversations have been analysed and the findings will be used to influence policy and practice locally and nationally. More information about this project is also available on Skimstone Arts website.
The Experience of Ageing Amongst Chinese and South Asian Women in Newcastle
Elders Council teamed up with researchers Dr Bethan Harries and Molly Taylor from Newcastle University and local community organisations to explore women’s experiences of ageing. We worked with artist Sharon Bailey to facilitate creative focus groups with Chinese and South Asian women.
The research project was supported by Newcastle University Social Justice Fund
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Managing the Home Care Circus
We undertook a small-scale study into older people’s experiences of home care services. Our report gives an insight into the realities of securing good home care services that enable adults to remain at home, but with some choice and independence.
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We are sharing our findings with politicians, researchers and organisations working towards improving how people receive the support to enable them to live independently. We also produced a short animation of our key findings which you can find below.
Just Us Project
We worked with Unfolding Theatre to organise outreach sessions with a range of community groups to explore initial themes around age friendly communities. During the creativity week we used creative exploratory exercises such as making a map of an age friendly community and writing a manifesto. These were then developed in the performance called Just Us.