Ageing in Place and Creative Health

Through the Ageing in Place Pathfinder, we want to further explore the role that culture and creativity can play in ageing well and addressing health inequalities, as well as how creative health can contribute to the engagement of residents in each Pathfinder neighbourhood.

Creative Health is defined in the Greater Manchester Creative Health Strategy (external link) as when: “we support our health and wellbeing by exploring creativity, culture or heritage. This may include craft, music or singing, dance, film, literature, visual and digital arts, performance or learning about heritage.”

What have we done to date?

The Ageing Hub partnered with the Culture Team at GMCA and the Creative Health lead at NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care to set objectives for the first year:

1. Ensure culture and creativity embedded in the development of the Pathfinder, in both engagement activities and potential projects arising from the neighbourhood action planning.
2. Map the cultural assets available within the Pathfinder neighbourhoods, or that could be available, and understand the level of knowledge/ experience in co-producing creative age-friendly initiatives.
3. Provide opportunities for creative practitioners and organisations to be part of the resident engagement and action planning processes in the Pathfinder.

To support these objectives, and with funding from the Culture Team, two main strands of work were commissioned and delivered between January and July 2023:

• Visual artist micro-residencies:
  - The Ageing in Place Micro-Residencies were initiated and developed by Castlefield Gallery and the GM Ageing Hub. The residencies set out to support the work of The Greater Manchester Ageing in Place Pathfinder, alongside those of Castlefield Gallery’s bOlder programme, a talent and skills development programme for visual artists aged 50+, living in Greater Manchester.
  
  - The aims of Castlefield Gallery’s bOlder programme are to: promote creativity in later life; support artists aged 50+ years to progress towards being economically active creative professionals; support the creation of high quality contemporary art in Greater Manchester; support vibrant and diverse cultural activity in Greater Manchester by fostering greater cultural participation.
  
  - Seven visual artists, all residents of Greater Manchester and 50+ years, five of seven being bOlder ‘alumni’, undertook short residencies in neighbourhoods within eight of Greater Manchester’s boroughs. Their briefs were to engage older residents to explore the questions, “What’s it like to live here?” and “How can we make it better?”. Artists were paired with Pathfinder Partnership leads at neighbourhood level. The project was initiated in March and completed in August 2023.
  
  - You can access the full Ageing in Place Micro-Residencies Report (external link) online to learn more about the project.
  
  

  “Before the Ageing in Place Pathfinder I really didn’t understand how creative engagement methods could work in the community. The ‘Micro Residency’ sessions early in the project were a real insight.  Using ‘movement into art’ as a method of engaging the residents was inspirational and helped me realise how powerful music and art can be in bringing a community together. Now we’ve run loads of creative workshops, and we’re more keen than ever to try new things …  and learn from them” -
  (Phil Brooke, Community Engagement Worker , Jigsaw Support)

• Creative Mapping:
  - Arts Director and Consultant Maria Bota was commissioned to deliver a process of research about local creative and cultural assets and workshops with local stakeholders in each neighbourhood to consider the potential role that they could play in the pathfinder. The mapping has contributed to the development of a Pathfinder spatial planning model using GIS that enables the Pathfinders to have dialogue with local residents about their lived experience of the places in which they live. Workshops were delivered both online and in person with a varied mix of residents and stakeholders in each neighbourhood encouraged to explore the role of culture and creativity for them and their neighbourhood.
  
  
• “Beyond Older Age: Approaches to Understand the Diverse Lives of Older People” by Amy Barron
  - At around the same time these pieces of commissioned work were taking place there was an opportunity available to Pathfinder to attend a session from cultural and social geographer Amy Barron sharing her work bringing together a range of approaches and tools to ‘Go Beyond Older Age’. A number of leads from Pathfinders attended this session and commented that this also opened up ideas on using creativity in their work

A short film for International Day of Older Person’s 2023, celebrating “Place” across the eight Pathfinder neighbourhoods (external link) was also commissioned from Talking About My Generation (Yellow Jigsaw), an older person’s led newsroom.