Lambeth is one of King’s College London’s home boroughs – key sites for the College’s civic engagement initiatives – where the University takes a special interest in outreach and engagement with local communities, in partnership with policymakers, educational institutions, and local businesses. This exciting event, which attracted 100 visitors, came out of research exchange and collaboration between SAACY and other UKRI Future Leaders Fellows across disciplines who are researching on ageing, with a mutual aspiration toward outreach and shaping their research in dialogue with the local community.
The main hall space was used to host a variety of stalls from community groups, charities, and academics working across the life sciences, medicine, and the humanities, to represent the breadth of cultural discourses on ageing and to encourage attendees to consider how they think about health, age, and wellbeing, as well as signposting to relevant services and charities. Stalls staffed by researchers, community groups, and local as well as national charities were impressively varied, ranging from academics showing real human bones to demonstrate research on age estimation; to practical help offered older people in navigating certain technologies such as scanning QR codes; to stalls on research in and support for those affected by conditions such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease; to a sports therapist giving free massages to older people.
In concert with the stalls were well-attended and varied talks throughout the day by five UKRI FLFs on their research into ageing. Oliver Robinson asked: Can we make it so people live in good health until we die? He investigates what actually changes to us as we grow older. Unlike what our cultural attitudes toward ageing guide us to conclude about the ageing process, it is not actually so clear what makes a 70-year-old so many more times likely to die than a 30-year-old. Justin Christensen and Dayne Beccano-Kelly respectively presented on an experiential project to engage older adults with dementia with music, and on Parkinson’s disease and the development of strategies for early detection and intervention. Sarah Inskip presented her osteoarchaeological research on how our skeleton ages. Noemi Procopio presented on her research into the development of new methodologies for investigating time since death to improve criminal cases outcomes.
SAACY were also engaged in making a film over the course of the day, involving interviewing with researchers, representatives from third-sector organisations, and attendees of the Fair. You can watch this film at Science Gallery London, as part of the exhibition Lifelines: Rethinking Ageing across Generations that will run from 29 May to 2 August.
This event thus incorporated and collaborated with older people, the third sector, and the public sector to create an event engaged in transversing and transforming academic, industrial, medical, and popular discourses around the ageing process.