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, Co-ordinator at the Age Friendly Museums Network,for the opportunity to have your item shared in our next e-newsletter.

ThisIntroduction to Age of Creativityis a great startingpoint for learning more about using and contributing to the website.

Upcoming Training

The Age Friendly Museums Network will be organisingworkshops across the UK over the coming 2 years the next training is

Cross-sectorworkshop

Working with older audiences:exploring diversityand sustainablepartnerships

Thursday 25th June9.30am 4pm

1. Meet colleagues from health and social care and the museums sector to share ideas

1. Explore how partnership working can benefit your clients through inspirational case studies

1. Gain a greater understanding of what museums might have to offer

1. Find out how museums can improve the lives of older people.

1. Have all your practical questions answered

At the British MuseumTo request a booking form please email Jane Turner,Community PartnershipsCo-ordinator at theAge Friendly Museums Network.Closing date 4th June 2015

Museums reaching out to older audiences

Dementia Friendly Reminiscence

The Winding House museumin New Tredegar is working with the Alzheimers Society and Caerphilly 50+ Positive Action to develop the museums 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 museums own collections which relate to each theme.

Award winning Memory Wall - update

Stobhill Hospitals 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 availableand 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 patients families and visitorsReminds 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 exhibitionDefining 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 28thJune 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 partnersThe Place, Londons 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 semi-retired 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 U3Aor 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.Theyaim to broaden choices for older people by providing a service that puts vulnerable elderly people at the heart of everything it does.One of BCOPs 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 ODonnell:sean.odonnell@bcop.org.uk

Every word counts with older audiencesDoes 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, particularlyname/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 producingthe 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 informationcontactinfo@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 Londons(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 years 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 PrescriptionThis 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 Martins 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 AccessDr 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, Kings College London. She was also part of the steering group for Dementia Friendly arts venues with Alzheimers UK.In July 2014, Hannah completed an AHRC funded national reviewWhat 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 researchwhich 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 SummaryThe 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 ofWorking 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 representations of "dementia"

Have older generations overplayed their hands?

Working towards successful retirement: older workers and retirees speaking about ageing, change and later life

Stories of creative ageing

Financing later life: why financial capability agendas may be problematic

Ageing and representation

Clickherefor the full table of contents.Working with Older Peopleis 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 researchAnnual 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 orclick hereto 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 Institutes 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 TurnerCommunity Partnerships Co-ordinator: Age Friendly Museums Network

Supported by