Reimagining the Future in Older Age, 2020-2022

This data was collected as part of the Reimagining the Future in Older Age project. The aim of this exploratory, qualitative and create project was to develop social understandings of the relationship between future time and older age within an economically-advantaged, minority-world context. The objectives were to 1) add to sociological knowledge of how the relationship between older age and future time is socially constructed; 2) contribute to sociological knowledge concerning how older people perceive and narrate the future; 3) contribute new knowledge to existing sociological understandings of the future in older age by using utopian, arts-based methods; 4) provide suggestions on what would be the features of a society in which having a desirable future in older age is valued; 5) elicit ‘counter narratives’ of the future in older age from members of the public who identify as older, by using participatory forum theatre.

In June 2016 after the UK had voted to leave the European Union, the UK press published several articles on how older leave voters had 'stolen the futures' of younger remain voters. The Times columnist Giles Coren wrote that 'The wrinkly bastards stitched us young 'uns up good and proper... they reached out with their wizened old writing hands to make their wobbly crosses and screwed their children and their children's children for a thousand generations' (Coren 2016: 28). In The Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrote that 'unless our scientists somehow miraculously discover how to halt the ageing process ... within 10 years, many of those who voted for Brexit will either be dead or in care homes that millennials will be subsidising' (Cosslett 2016). What was striking about these articles was, firstly, the assumption that older people have no stake in the future. Secondly, the apparent inability of people who did not consider themselves to be 'old' to imagine a future in which they would be old. So why do we assume that the future matters less to older people, and why should we be concerned about this? How does the future matter to older people? This project addresses these questions and challenges dominant, ageist assumptions that older people do not belong in the future. The undervaluing of older people's futures is revealed in political and media narratives where the future time of older people is collectivised, such that the sum of potential years left to be lived in older age is represented as a 'problem' to be addressed, and where older people's futures are predominantly regarded in terms of 'cost rather than potential' (Cruikshank 2003: 7). Cultural narratives of older people are similarly pessimistic, with older characters typically being 'stuck in the past' (Small 2007). We use cultural narratives as resources to inform our own ideas about what kind of people we think we are, or who we would like to be. In the absence of positive cultural narratives about the future in older age, how can we construct meaningful futures in our own lives? As most of us can expect to live into old age, it is in all our interests to have a sense of belonging in the future. Not recognising the value of older people's futures can perpetuate ageist practices and elder abuse, and failing to attach value to our own futures as older people could result in apathy. This project gives a voice to older people and allows them to tell their own stories about what the future means to them. The research is designed to elicit intra and intergenerational connection. The reading groups can foster intergenerational solidarity, and the participatory forum theatre asks older participants to create shared futures. In doing so, it will provide policy makers and third sector organisations with the resources to think more imaginatively about supporting older people in ways that will address their aspirations rather than just their needs. The project findings will also contribute empirical, theoretical and methodological knowledge to understanding the relationship between future time and older age, an area which is under-developed. The project has three stages. The first aims to understand existing narratives of future time in older age by conducting an interdisciplinary literature review of the relationship between old age and future time, and secondary analysis of narratives concerning time and age that were elicited through the Mass Observation (MO) project. The second aims to deconstruct narratives of future time and older age by asking intergenerational reading groups to explore how fictional representations of old age and future time can be used to imagine a society in which older people's futures are more valued. The third will create narratives of future time and older age by using forum theatre to allow older volunteers to create and perform their own 'narratives of the future'.

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