What makes later life worth living? A report published by Age UK last year revealed some definitive results: according to its findings, creative and cultural participation is the top-most contributor to wellbeing among older people, even ahead of other significant factors such as physical activity, level of education and social participation.
These results inspired Age UK to delve more deeply into what creative and cultural participation means to peopled aged 60-plus: what it is, who does what and how it differs depending on people’s overall level of wellbeing.
Last month, the charity published a follow-up report based on this qualitative research, entitled Creative and Cultural Activities and Wellbeing in Later Life. Its findings, based on longitudinal data gathered between 2010 and 2012 through the Understanding Society Survey, have important implications for the museum sector.
The report found that “literature”, “the visual and performing arts” and “historical” were the three most participated-in categories of cultural and creative activity among both men and women. Museums came top of the visual and performing arts category, with 42% of older people saying they had visited one during that period. Trips to heritage sites, meanwhile, also featured prominently, with 40% having visited a historic building and 37% a historic fort, castle or ruin.
Interestingly, however, levels of participation in both the visual and historic categories decreased markedly with age – particularly accelerating once people reach 75 – and falling more steeply than in other categories such as craft, music and literature. The report warned that such a marked decline meant organisations in these sectors could be losing a large part of their audience by not being more accessible to people in their later years.
Barriers to participation
Some factors that negatively affect participation among older people are self-evident, such as lack of transport, poor health and lower levels of wealth; other more subtle factors mentioned by the report include being a carer, lack of friends and living in a rural area.
The study also contrasted participation among older people living with low levels of wellbeing to those with high levels. It revealed that, among people in the bottom 20% of wellbeing, using a public library was the second most popular activity, just behind reading for pleasure.
Farrell Curran, the cultural partnership manager at Age UK Oxfordshire, says: “The fact that libraries were so important to people at the bottom 20% of wellbeing was rather telling. There is obviously something significant about the role of the library in connecting with people who don’t take part in other cultural activities, and something for us to learn here.” Partnerships with libraries might be a way for museums to reach those older people with lower levels of wellbeing, says Curran.
Ahead of the game
In many ways, museums in the UK have been ahead of the curve when it comes to engaging with older people. Practice related to health and wellbeing has expanded significantly in recent years, spurred on by a move towards social impact work, as encouraged by the Museums Association’s (MA) Museums Change Lives campaign, as well as a drive to tap into different areas of funding. Reminiscence work for people living with dementia has become common at many museums, with collections shown to have a therapeutic and stimulating effect on participants.
But are museums doing the right things? Several misconceptions about ageing and older people still exist that affect how museums engage with those audiences, says Nicolette Hamilton, who manages the Age Friendly Museums Network.
Primary among these is a propensity to think of older audiences as one homogenous group when, in fact, they are as diverse as any other segment of society in terms of sexuality, ethnic diversity and income. And while older people are well represented in many museums as both visitors and volunteers, they tend to be seen as passive “in a ‘running the tea shop’ kind of way”, according to Hamilton. To challenge this, she is organising a session at the Museums Association conference in November, Age of Activism, that will feature older panellists who have been involved in protesting and campaigning “in ways traditionally associated with young people”.
In addition, although health and wellbeing work is hugely valuable and worthwhile, there is a tendency in the museum sector to focus exclusively on this aspect of engagement with older people – “to stop them getting sick” – rather than to inspire and impart knowledge as a goal in itself, says Henry McGhie, the head of collections at Manchester Museum. For the past two years, he has been involved in a project run by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at Leicester University, which explored how museums could move beyond the medical “deficit model” to a more rights-based model of engaging with elderly people. “It’s not about diminishing health and wellbeing work,” says McGhie. “It’s an ‘and’ rather than an ‘instead’.”
Funded by the MA’s Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, the project was called Encountering the Unexpected: Older People, Nature and Natural Heritage Collections. As the title suggests, it invited museums with natural history collections – many of which tend to be marketed more to children and families, or otherwise held in storage and used solely for research purposes – to run a series of museum experiments connecting older people to nature, with the aim of supporting successful ageing.
The project focused on natural heritage because of the proven impact that having a personal relationship with nature – or “nature connectedness” – has on overall happiness, as well as research showing that people grow more distant from the natural world as they age.
Challenging preconceptions
This approach also aimed to challenge the view that older people are mainly interested in the past, says Ceri Jones, a research associate at the RCMG, who was a member of the project’s steering group.
“There’s a missed opportunity to work with older people on the challenges they face in the present and what they can contribute to the future,” Jones says.
Participating institutions included National Museums Liverpool, the Whitaker, the Atkinson, Manchester Museum, Bolton Museum and Gallery Oldham. At a recent conference to reflect on the project, which ended earlier this year, delegates heard about the “unbelievably powerful” impact of some of those experiments on participants, says Jones.
The activities – which included viewing natural history specimens through microscopes and creating related artworks and poetry – revived their sense of “curiosity and wonder”.
A framework for the wider museum sector based on this research is now available on the project’s website (unexpectedencounters.le.ac.uk). It encourages museums to offer opportunities to older people that enable active engagement, allow them to live in the moment, connect them to people, objects and wider social issues, and bring about a sense of meaning and purpose.
One of the things that emerged from the research was a sense that museums, along with wider society, need to change how they approach older people, and the subject of ageing more generally. “There’s a very negative perception of ageing within society – older people aren’t given the opportunity to still contribute,” says Jones. “How can museums find ways to offer that to people?”
The Age of Activism session will be held at the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2018, which takes place in Belfast on 8-10 November.
These results inspired Age UK to delve more deeply into what creative and cultural participation means to peopled aged 60-plus: what it is, who does what and how it differs depending on people’s overall level of wellbeing.
Last month, the charity published a follow-up report based on this qualitative research, entitled Creative and Cultural Activities and Wellbeing in Later Life. Its findings, based on longitudinal data gathered between 2010 and 2012 through the Understanding Society Survey, have important implications for the museum sector.
The report found that “literature”, “the visual and performing arts” and “historical” were the three most participated-in categories of cultural and creative activity among both men and women. Museums came top of the visual and performing arts category, with 42% of older people saying they had visited one during that period. Trips to heritage sites, meanwhile, also featured prominently, with 40% having visited a historic building and 37% a historic fort, castle or ruin.
Interestingly, however, levels of participation in both the visual and historic categories decreased markedly with age – particularly accelerating once people reach 75 – and falling more steeply than in other categories such as craft, music and literature. The report warned that such a marked decline meant organisations in these sectors could be losing a large part of their audience by not being more accessible to people in their later years.
Barriers to participation
Some factors that negatively affect participation among older people are self-evident, such as lack of transport, poor health and lower levels of wealth; other more subtle factors mentioned by the report include being a carer, lack of friends and living in a rural area.
The study also contrasted participation among older people living with low levels of wellbeing to those with high levels. It revealed that, among people in the bottom 20% of wellbeing, using a public library was the second most popular activity, just behind reading for pleasure.
Farrell Curran, the cultural partnership manager at Age UK Oxfordshire, says: “The fact that libraries were so important to people at the bottom 20% of wellbeing was rather telling. There is obviously something significant about the role of the library in connecting with people who don’t take part in other cultural activities, and something for us to learn here.” Partnerships with libraries might be a way for museums to reach those older people with lower levels of wellbeing, says Curran.
Ahead of the game
In many ways, museums in the UK have been ahead of the curve when it comes to engaging with older people. Practice related to health and wellbeing has expanded significantly in recent years, spurred on by a move towards social impact work, as encouraged by the Museums Association’s (MA) Museums Change Lives campaign, as well as a drive to tap into different areas of funding. Reminiscence work for people living with dementia has become common at many museums, with collections shown to have a therapeutic and stimulating effect on participants.
But are museums doing the right things? Several misconceptions about ageing and older people still exist that affect how museums engage with those audiences, says Nicolette Hamilton, who manages the Age Friendly Museums Network.
Primary among these is a propensity to think of older audiences as one homogenous group when, in fact, they are as diverse as any other segment of society in terms of sexuality, ethnic diversity and income. And while older people are well represented in many museums as both visitors and volunteers, they tend to be seen as passive “in a ‘running the tea shop’ kind of way”, according to Hamilton. To challenge this, she is organising a session at the Museums Association conference in November, Age of Activism, that will feature older panellists who have been involved in protesting and campaigning “in ways traditionally associated with young people”.
In addition, although health and wellbeing work is hugely valuable and worthwhile, there is a tendency in the museum sector to focus exclusively on this aspect of engagement with older people – “to stop them getting sick” – rather than to inspire and impart knowledge as a goal in itself, says Henry McGhie, the head of collections at Manchester Museum. For the past two years, he has been involved in a project run by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) at Leicester University, which explored how museums could move beyond the medical “deficit model” to a more rights-based model of engaging with elderly people. “It’s not about diminishing health and wellbeing work,” says McGhie. “It’s an ‘and’ rather than an ‘instead’.”
Funded by the MA’s Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, the project was called Encountering the Unexpected: Older People, Nature and Natural Heritage Collections. As the title suggests, it invited museums with natural history collections – many of which tend to be marketed more to children and families, or otherwise held in storage and used solely for research purposes – to run a series of museum experiments connecting older people to nature, with the aim of supporting successful ageing.
The project focused on natural heritage because of the proven impact that having a personal relationship with nature – or “nature connectedness” – has on overall happiness, as well as research showing that people grow more distant from the natural world as they age.
Challenging preconceptions
This approach also aimed to challenge the view that older people are mainly interested in the past, says Ceri Jones, a research associate at the RCMG, who was a member of the project’s steering group.
“There’s a missed opportunity to work with older people on the challenges they face in the present and what they can contribute to the future,” Jones says.
Participating institutions included National Museums Liverpool, the Whitaker, the Atkinson, Manchester Museum, Bolton Museum and Gallery Oldham. At a recent conference to reflect on the project, which ended earlier this year, delegates heard about the “unbelievably powerful” impact of some of those experiments on participants, says Jones.
The activities – which included viewing natural history specimens through microscopes and creating related artworks and poetry – revived their sense of “curiosity and wonder”.
A framework for the wider museum sector based on this research is now available on the project’s website (unexpectedencounters.le.ac.uk). It encourages museums to offer opportunities to older people that enable active engagement, allow them to live in the moment, connect them to people, objects and wider social issues, and bring about a sense of meaning and purpose.
One of the things that emerged from the research was a sense that museums, along with wider society, need to change how they approach older people, and the subject of ageing more generally. “There’s a very negative perception of ageing within society – older people aren’t given the opportunity to still contribute,” says Jones. “How can museums find ways to offer that to people?”
The Age of Activism session will be held at the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2018, which takes place in Belfast on 8-10 November.
