Supported by
Newsletter
Summer 2015
We believe that museums and older people
enrich each other. We aim to develop
innovative and collaborative opportunities
by bringing people together. As well as
museum, galleries and arts professionals,
the Network includes those from health and
social care, voluntary sector, research
professionals and older people themselves.
The Age Friendly Museums Network is
supported by the Baring Foundation and
offers free workshops and training,
explores and shares good practice and
encourages creativity and new initiatives.
Committed to working in partnership, the
Network seeks to support organisations and
individuals to become leaders in their
respective fields and to represent older
voices and a positive experience of age.
Luminate workshops© Andy McGregor National Galleries of Scotland, National Portrait Gallery of
Scotland. The annual Luminate Festival spotlights arts activities with, by and for older people as well as a
programme for audiences and participants across the generations.
Do you have a case study, blog, article
or opportunity that you would like to
share with the Age Friendly Museums
Network?
Sign up to the Age of Creativity
website, upload your item or link, and
send the URL to Jane Turner, Coordinator at the Age Friendly Museums
Network, for the opportunity to have your
item shared in our next e-newsletter.
This Introduction to Age of Creativity is a
great starting point for learning more
about using and contributing to the
website.
Upcoming Training
The Age Friendly Museums Network will be organising
workshops across the UK over the coming 2 years the next training is
Cross-sector workshop
Working with older audiences:
exploring diversity
and sustainable partnerships
Thursday 25th June 9.30am – 4pm
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Meet colleagues from health and social care and the museums sector to
share ideas
Explore how partnership working can benefit your clients through
inspirational case studies
Gain a greater understanding of what museums might have to offer
Find out how museums can improve the lives of older people.
Have all your practical questions answered
At the British Museum
To request a booking form please email Jane Turner, Community Partnerships Co-ordinator at
the Age Friendly Museums Network. Closing date 4th June 2015
Museums reaching out to older audiences
Dementia Friendly Reminiscence
The Winding House museum in New
Tredegar is working with the Alzheimer’s
Society and Caerphilly 50+ Positive Action
to develop the museum’s exhibitions and
create new integrated displays that
encourage reminiscence – with the aim of
becoming a Dementia Friendly
reminiscence centre. To support these
changes, the museum is also hosting a
rolling display of RemPods (which can
usually be seen at local care homes) which
are interactive displays that evoke places
of the past such as the local pub or a 1950's
living room – enhanced with the museum’s
own collections which relate to each
theme.
Award winning Memory Wall update
Stobhill Hospital’s Elderly Mental Health
wards supported by Glasgow museums won
the 2014 NHS Scotland Design Award. The
award was for two state-of-the-art wards,
for older people with dementia and adults
with mental health problems and includes a
‘Memory Wall’ of museum objects. A final
evaluation report is now available and
includes comments from staff, visitors and
patients giving a rounded impression of how
the ‘Memory Wall’ is used and the subtle
but important differences it makes to not
only patients, but patient’s families and
visitors “Reminds you of all the years gone
by and my time living in Duke Street –
happy memories.”
The next stage is to develop content for a
second ‘Memory Wall’ at Stobhill over the
summer. Further details on this project are
available from Crawfor MrGugan, Curator,
Open Museum.
Horniman Museum celebrate
'Action on Stroke' month
The Stroke Association in Lewisham and
Horniman Museum and Gardens is hosting a
Family Day to mark Action on Stroke Month
during May. The free event takes place at
Horniman Museum and Gardens on Saturday
30th May. The day brings together activities
and advice on stroke prevention, blood
pressure checks, a communication trail and
interactive mime workshops. The event will
run from 11am to 3pm, and will celebrate
the stroke survivors work with the
Horniman Museum and Gardens from their
monthly Stroke Association communication
group.
Domenico Sergi from the Horniman Museum
said: “I am very glad that the Stroke
Association in Lewisham has chosen to hold
the celebration at the Horniman. This is a
great opportunity to let all members of the
public know about the fantastic work we
have been doing in the last couple of
years”.
Beautiful dancing at the British
Museum
Defining Our Beauty is a project that
invites older people to explore their own
beauty in the context of the special
exhibition Defining Beauty, the body in
ancient Greek art, at the British Museum.
Coming from local Age UK organisations,
the group was formed especially for this
project and has been working together for
three months.
The project culminates in a final
performance on the 28th June at the British
Museum during a special evening for invited
community guests and local partners. The
British Museum would like to thank the
creative team and community partners The
Place, London’s leading centre for
contemporary dance, for their invaluable
input.
Third Sector reaching out to Museums
The University of the Third Age (U3A) movement is an organisation of retired and semiretired people who come together and share their skills and life experiences: the
learners teach and the teachers learn, and there is no distinction between them. Our
members often visit museums and galleries and would welcome a closer relationship
with their local ones. They would be particularly interested in programmes for older
people and maybe they could even assist you with setting up such initiatives. If you
are looking for volunteers or just audiences, why don't you contact your local U3A? Go
to: www.u3a.org.uk and click on Find a U3A.
Shared Learning Projects: U3A welcomes opportunities to get involved with new
projects. If you have some research that we could carry out for you, a group of 10/12
members drawn from local U3As would love to assist you. To find your local U3A or call
National Office: 020 8466 6139 and ask for Jennifer Anning National SLP Co-ordinator
Contact the Elderly
This National charity is ideally placed to work in partnership with local museums, and
have tea parties (combined with object handling) across Wales, Scotland and England.
Contact the Elderly aims to tackle loneliness and social isolation among older people.
They organise monthly Sunday afternoon tea parties for small groups of older people
aged 75+ who live alone, and volunteers within their local community. It is a regular
and vital friendship link every month and a real lifeline of friendship for older
participants who have little or no contact with any family or friends.
Glasgow Museums offer monthly Sunday sessions in their venues as a gathering and
learning place for one of the Contact the Elderly groups. They have since established a
second group, with a third, male only group to start later this year.
The British Museum hold tea parties with a local group from time to time, the
November 2014 tea party included a visit to the exhibition: ‘Ming, 50 years that
changed China’
Take a walk down 'Sensory Street'
BCOP is an innovative and progressive charity in Birmingham providing services for
older people and also manages a number of supported housing and independent living
schemes across the region.
They aim to ‘broaden choices for older people’ by providing a service that puts
vulnerable elderly people at the heart of everything it does.
One of BCOP’s nursing homes, Robert Harvey House, located in the Handsworth Wood
area of North Birmingham, is a registered Nursing Care Home . Within the grounds of,
there was a space of approximately 1800sq feet which were identified to use for a
‘Sensory Street’ project. The street consists of a range of buildings such as a post
office, sweetshop, butchers and garage, in addition to a greenhouse and tea room.
Other street furniture includes postbox, telephone box, bus stop, street lights and
benches positioned close to raised flower beds, hanging baskets and artificial grass
areas.
The Sensory Street has been designed specifically not only to create memories for our
residents, visiting family members and friends or indeed external visiting groups, but to
also stimulate fond memories of days gone by. With the ‘working street’ set in the
1950s & 1960s it will encourage a higher level of interaction and socialisation with
others, in addition to increased exercise both physically and mentally within a safe and
familiar environment and is an excellent extension to the hugely successful and popular
adjoining Pet-Farm. For further information contact Sean O’Donnell:
sean.odonnell@bcop.org.uk
Every word counts with older audiences
Does your museum offer talks, lectures and tours? Have your older
audiences ever experienced difficulty hearing or fully understanding the
talk or tour? Ten million people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing that's 1 in 6 of the population. 40% of people over 50 and 70% over 70's have
an age - related hearing loss. Stagetext provide live subtitling for public
events in museums and galleries to give deaf, deafened and hard of hearing
people access to what speakers are saying and to deepen their
understanding and engagement with a particular topic.
"The subtitles enable me to catch information I had missed,
particularly name/dates. I found it really useful" (hard of hearing visitor)
"Remote live subtitles with tablets are brilliant. This was the first tour I
could fully follow" (hard of hearing visitor)
If you would like to find out more about the service, Deepa Shastri, our
Talks Programme Manager, would be happy to meet with you and run a
session explaining more about age-related deafness; outlining ways you can
make your pubic events accessible to hard of hearing visitors, and at the
same time increase your audiences. To contact Deepa email
deepa@stagetext.org.
Research and Publications
The Creative Dementia Arts Network (CDAN) is an Oxford based organisation
with a national reach that aims to enable people with dementia and their
carers to remain active and involved in their lives wherever they are living
by educating, informing and supporting artists, arts organisations, arts
venues who provide creative arts.
We are currently producing the state of the arts in dementia – a report that
draws on our recent annual conference in Oxford, when over 150
practitioners, professionals, and care staff from across the arts, health and
social care sectors came together to learn, share and network. Ongoing
work includes developing more arts cafes for older people including those
with dementia, and, following an award from the British Film Institute,
collaborating with the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford to organise once
monthly film showings for people with dementia and their carers. CDAN is
also a member of an Alzheimer's Society Arts and Dementia working group
who are writing new guidance for museums, galleries and theatres about
how to make arts venues dementia friendly. For more
information contact info@creativedementia.org
Introducing the National Alliance, for Museums, Health and Wellbeing.
A consortium to develop a new National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing
has been funded by the ACE Museum Resilience Fund. Led by University College
London’s(UCL) Public and Cultural Engagement department, the consortium includes
National Museums Liverpool, The British Museum, Manchester Museums and Galleries,
Tyne and Wear Museums, Thackeray Medical Museum representing the UK Medical
Collections Group, the National Alliance for Arts, Health and Wellbeing and the London
Arts and Health Forum, the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and
the Museums Association.
The Alliance will support the museum sectors work around health and wellbeing, and
will create opportunities where information can be shared, to improve best practice,
help build resilience and provide resources for those individuals and organisations
working in this area of activity. The Alliance will be launched at this year’s Museums
Association conference and will offer a series of workshops for those working in the
museums sector, as well as those interested in arts, culture and health, including
health and social care workers, third sector workers, artists and art-therapy
practitioners. To find out more watch this space.
‘Museums on Prescription’
This is the first project of its kind internationally to explore the role of social
prescribing in museums and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Social prescribing links patients in primary care with local sources of support within the
community which can improve their health and wellbeing. The project will connect
socially isolated, vulnerable and lonely older adults, referred through the NHS, Local
Authority Adult Social Care services and charities such as Age UK, to partner museums
in Central London and Kent including: The British Museum, Central Saint Martin’s
Collection, Islington Museum, UCL Museums, Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery and
the, Beaney House of Art and Knowledge. We are also working with organisations such
as Arts Council England, the New Economics Foundation and the Royal Society for
Public Health to look at the wider social value and cost-benefit of museums on
prescription referral schemes.
Artful Access
Dr Hannah Zeilig
Dr Hannah Zeilig is a senior research fellow at the University of the Arts, London (UAL)
and also a visiting research fellow at the University of East Anglia. She is a fellow at
the Institute of Gerontology, King’s College London. She was also part of the steering
group for Dementia Friendly arts venues with Alzheimer’s UK.
In July 2014, Hannah completed an AHRC funded national review ‘What is the value of
arts and culture for people living with a dementia?’ The methods used to investigate
this question are qualitative. These comprise a conceptual and critical review of
existing evidence concerning the impact of arts and culture on people living with a
dementia - ‘Mark Making'
Hannah is proposing further research which is still at the planning stages and takes a
deeper look at what it means for people with dementia to have access to arts venues
Brief Summary
The overall aim of the project is to consider the ways that art and culture venues in
the UK can be ‘dementia friendly’ in terms of the access (both online and offline) that
they provide for people with dementia and their carers. We will concentrate on both
the physical and digital journeys that are integral to accessing the offerings of arts and
cultural venues. The research team will work closely with a number of iconic arts
venues examining with them what access means for people with dementia, exploring
their policies on this and determining how to ensure that arts venues can be genuinely
inclusive for people with cognitive impairments.
Interested in getting involved? Contact Dr Hannah Zeilig
Is old age a disability? If not - why do older people feel the need to be heard or be a
part of any decision making process that affects their lives?
In April 2014, a one-day conference took place "Portraying Ageing: Cultural Assumptions
and Practical Implications". The aim was to discuss and give examples of the way in
which ageing is portrayed in modern day Britain along with the practical implications it
has on individuals and society as a whole. The response to the conference from
ordinary members of the public, researchers and service providers from the debates
that followed each talk proved to the organisers this topic should be pursued.
With this in mind, Emerald has published a special issue of Working with Older
People – "Ageing and Representation" which contains revised versions of the talks by
some of the original conference speakers, plus contributions from Sheila Gewold and
the Guest Editors; Simone Bacchini and Gillian Crosby.
Below are the article titles:
• Portraying ageing: its contradictions and paradoxes
What do we mean when we talk about dementia? Exploring cultural
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representations of "dementia"
• Have older generations overplayed their hands?
Working towards successful retirement: older workers and retirees speaking
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about ageing, change and later life
• Stories of creative ageing
• Financing later life: why financial capability agendas may be problematic
• Ageing and representation
Click here for the full table of contents.
Working with Older People is one of the 32 titles in the Health and Social Care
collection published by Emerald Group
Publishing: www.emeraldinsight.com/products/collections/hsc.htm.
Get access to this research
Annual subscriptions to the journal include unlimited online access for all users within
an institution/organization plus print copies. You can also purchase this special issue
individually, without taking out a yearly subscription.
If you require any further information, wish to purchase the special issue or enquire
about an annual subscription please contact me on +44 (0)1274 515616 or click here to
submit your details.
The Institute of Ageing and Health (IAH) was originally founded in 1971 as the West
Midlands Institute of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, to provide a focus for good
multidisciplinary practice and further education in the medical problems of older
people.
The IAH now holds regular conferences and seminars on a wide variety of topics,
attracting eminent speakers from across the British Isles. In recent years the focus of
our educational work has broadened to include and attract many other organisations
with an interest in the social care and health of older people.
Initial publications were in the form of research papers and this progressed to a more
formal journal in which staff in the region was encouraged to provide articles for
publication. Our journal ‘Ageing & Health’ enables us to share research, reflections and
stories to improve ageing and health in the West Midlands.
Since 1981 we have established the Excellent Care Award to identify good practice in
the West Midlands. This continues to attract a large number of high quality entries and
is an example of the Institute’s wish to link its educational roots to the development of
good practice in health and social care.
Membership of the IAH is available to anyone who is working (or has worked) for
older people in a health, social care or related field. As the emphasis of the IAH is
on inter-disciplinary working, our membership is particularly appropriate for people
who wish to share their skills and knowledge with others. Whilst the geographical
focus of the IAH is the West Midlands, our membership is open to anyone who
shares our objective.
For more information please contact Jeanette Lane on 0121 466 4070 or email
Jeanette.lane@bhamcommunity.nhs.uk
If you have been sent this but are not signed up to the Age Friendly
Museum Network then you can sign up here
The Autumn Newsletter is out in September. The deadline for copy is
24th August. The focus will be on diversity and sustainable
partnerships. We particularly welcome case studies, community groups
interested in working with museums or up to date research or
publications.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Jane Turner
Community Partnerships Co-ordinator: Age Friendly Museums Network
Supported by