Age Unlimited, 2010-2012
The Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School, and the Warwick Institute for Employment Research are working with NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) as Learning Partner for their Age Unlimited programme. Age Unlimited is exploring ways of generating innovative new services for older people, working with both established organisations in England and with individuals in their fifties and sixties in Scotland.
The programme challenges conventional thinking on ageing, focusing on support to help people stay in work for longer and to enjoy active and creative activities in later years. One in three people in the UK is now aged over 50 and as people live longer, and continue to be more active in later life, retiring from work can leave them feeling isolated and vulnerable. Age Unlimited projects are looking at how to make leaving work less of an abrupt departure, how older people can help themselves by learning new skills, encourage entrepreneurial activity and through age management and age readiness programmes.
Age Unlimited Scotland is working with people in their fifties and sixties to uncover, support and seed fund new socially motivated community ventures which tackle issues of ageing and social isolation in the very old, working directly with individuals and local communities.
Age Unlimited is part of NESTA’s Public Services Lab initiative which is trialling innovative ways of delivering public services and bringing them to scale across the country’s public services. As Learning Partner, the Warwick team will be producing reports on the project methodology (rapid prototyping), emerging models of user centred innovation in the context of older people projects and, at the end of the project period in 2012, on the impact that the programme has achieved.
For further information please contact:
Katrina Ritters/Howard Davis at the Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School,
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
Email: Katrina.Ritters@wbs.ac.uk or Howard.Davis@wbs.ac.uk: Tel: 02476 522312
Funder:
National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts
IER project team:
Local Government Centre, Warwick Business School project team:
Katrina dot Ritters at wbs dot ac dot uk
