Celebrating Age Without Limits’ first national Action Day
Wednesday 20 March 2024 will be forever remembered as a critical day in the growth of the Age Without Limits campaign and the life of the Centre for Ageing Better
Our Chief Executive, Dr Carole Easton OBE, looks back on the many highlights from the campaign’s See and Be Seen themed Action Day.
Thank you. Thank you to everyone who made our first Age Without Limits Action Day possible.
Thank you to everyone who attended the more than 70 events up and down the country organised by community groups and businesses.
From intergenerational hip hop to photography competitions; variety performances to all ages discos; guided walks to writing and performance workshops; from podcasts to dance activities. The range of events was incredible. You took our theme of See and Be Seen and you made it your own.
Thank you to everyone who has attended (or is planning to attend before 8pm on Saturday) our Challenging Ageism: See and Be Seen digital exhibition at the Now Building, off Tottenham Court Road in London.
You came from all over; you wowed us with your enthusiasm (banging on our doors an hour before opening because you couldn’t wait to come in). You stood in contemplation of our attention-grabbing images; you took the Are You Ageist? quiz in droves and you sparked some great conversations about ageism.
Thank you to everyone who engaged with the #SeeAndBeSeen on social media.
It was so wonderful to see so many individuals, employers, community groups and organisations engage and show their support for the Action Day.
And thank you to everyone who took a moment out during the day to think about ageism and the representation of age in society.
This is where it all starts, to challenge and change the ageist attitudes that society may have dumped on each and every one of us.
We hope our Action Day has helped challenge the narrow, negative and stereotypical portrayal of older people and ageing in society. We hope it has given people the opportunity to see a broader and more diverse depiction of later life.
Through our Action Day events, we hope we have given you an opportunity to take part in activities that reflect your interests and passions with like-minded others.
Through our exhibition, we hope we have shown you the sort of images that you have told us you would like to see more of, images that better represent your own lived experience.
We will continue to do this and continue to expand our Image Library so everyone can see themselves and be seen within our collections.
Seeing those brilliant image library photographs writ large on the huge displays of the Now Building was wonderful, inspiring and uplifting.
But they also serve a greater purpose. Narrow, negative and stereotypical depictions of later life can make older people feel excluded and ignored by society and build an inaccurate picture of what we are capable of as we age. These stereotypes become the cultural norm that feeds into ageism.
It is incredible to think that the Age Without Limits campaign is only two months old.
And this is all new territory for us. The Centre for Ageing Better has never had a public-facing campaign of this magnitude. We’ve never run an advertising campaign. We’ve never tried to organise a public exhibition.
We’re extending ourselves as an organisation because we know that the issue of ageism, with all the harm it causes and the lives it damages, will not just naturally melt away over time.
The fight to eradicate ageism from society will not be easy, we’ve always known that.
But if we replicate and grow the spirit that we saw up and down the country on our first Action Day, I’m confident it will only be a matter of time before we succeed. Together we are mighty.
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