Lifelines: Rethinking Ageing across Generations

SAACY explores how we talk and think about ageing and how this influences our experiences of ageing and the decisions we make about older people.

In the tradition of the Health Humanities and Age Studies, SAACY takes a life course approach; an approach that thinks with the biological, psychological and social dimensions of ageing; an approach that emphasises how much inequalities early in life impact on health in older age; an approach also that focuses attention on intergenerational cohesion and care.

SAACY reaches across disciplines and sectors. Literary study sits alongside empirical research and policy work. Most of all, SAACY closely collaborates with sector leaders Age UK and Ageing Better as well as a growing number of charities and community groups that operate nationally and locally, in the King’s home boroughs and elsewhere in the UK.

Two weeks ago, we launched our second SAACY Policy Report in the House of Lords, to foster rethinking ageing through the media, and next week we are back here with the Annual Meeting of the European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts to bring together the voices of Health Scientists and Medical Humanities Scholars to focus on ageing as a lifelong process.

We hope that Lifelines will similarly serve as conduit through which to influence developments in policy and practice.

Sociologist and Health Humanities scholar Arthur Frank stresses that an added function of academic critique is to amplify voices and to connect them for enhanced strength. Throughout this exhibition, you will hear the voices of those whom we worked with. For example, in a film produced together with community groups at our Lifelong Ageing Fair in Lambeth Town Hall last November, and through the objects that stem from a collaborative workshop with InCommon, Rupert House Independent Living and a local primary school.

Opening addresses are thank you speeches and I am unable to mention everyone by name who has supported SAACY and Lifelines over the years.

Both SAACY and Lifelines are intergenerational. A mid-career project thrives on the experience of senior colleagues within and beyond the home department and research hub, and on the energy, enthusiasm and dedication of postdocs and PhD students. Daisy Powell co-produced the film shown at the exhibition and together with Lily Rose Fitzmaurice, a PhD student from Cambridge who worked with us over the summer 2024, produced much of the text displayed throughout Lifelines; the library of things, collected by curator Laura Purseglove, is informed by Lily’s scholarship on children’s literature and ageing.

Representative for the professional services teams across the College, without whom we could not run such major research programmes, I’d like to thank Jon Turner and Sam Jeffery from the Arts and Humanities Grants Team. Science Gallery is an amazing asset to King’s, and I thank Laura Purseglove and Jen Wong for their expertise, as well as the creatives, our project partners, and the volunteers who agreed to share their stories.

Ageing is a global issue, and The World Health Organisation recently proposed that healthy ageing will only be achieved if we “change how we think, feel and act towards ageing”.

Lifelines is a participatory exhibition that offers space for conversations about how to rethink ageing. Add your own perspective, as Lifelines seeks to propagate shifts in policy and practice.

Thank you so much for coming. I hope you enjoy this evening – and begin to feel more optimistic about your own ageing when you leave the gallery.

Lifelines is a free exhibition and open until 2 August. Come and visit at Science Gallery London, at the foot of the Shard, London Bridge underground station.