Summary: an exploration into Living Well in the Digital Age, with Age Action Alliance, has led to plans for local Living Labs, and a Digital Age Learning Network. In order to develop the network we need to map who's who in the field, the experience and resources that they may offer - and how to relate that to major challenges. David Wilcox and Drew Mackie david@socialreporter.com drew@drewmackie.co.uk This paper is at http://mediablends.org.uk/livingwell/adagroup
Over the past eight months we have carried out an exploration with the AAA Digital Inclusion Group to show how developments in technology present both challenges and opportunities for older people, once they are connected. We’ve developed:
Overall:
### Local Living Labs
The Promising Approaches report from Age UK and the Campaign to End Loneliness suggests identifying and connecting local assets, building relationships, developing a menu of project options, and personalising solutions. Our Living Labs model provides a practical approach to putting those proposals into practice. The Labs Kit will include methods for:
Asset map of Croydon, under development
We are piloting some of these methods with Croydon Voluntary Action, and have run games and simulations testing the approach with Age UK London, Southwark Council, Local Government Information Unit and others. We ran a joint workshop with the DCLG Grey Cells initiative.
At the recent AAA Loneliness and Social Isolation Group we explained our work on Living Labs, a kit for local pilots, and network development. Presentation here
During the exploration we developed blog posts and briefing papers on the importance of digital technology and new ways of working at policy, local and personal levels. We are discussing with the Centre for Ageing Better how they might bring more on digital technology into their future plans.
We also developed an ideas forum, and demonstrated how ideas could be generated …
… then mapped and clustered
Our exploration - and a symposium convened by SEEFA - confirmed that current approaches within the ageing industry are unlikely to offer to older people the full potential of the Digital Age. We found:
After discussion with the AAA secretariat we have agreed an approach that would mirror at national level the asset-based approach that is being developed locally:
We can start that mapping today!