Events for the Ageing Playfully Network

NAPA engagement session with their Activity Provider Consultancy Group (Date TBD)

This workshop will bring academics together with Activity Providers to consider how the Ageing Playfully Network might best support playful care efforts in care homes across the UK.

Virtual Reality in Care Homes: Playfully Expanding Worlds (Date TBD)

This event will bring together the ROVR team, a VR company brining VR to care homes, and members of UCL’s Immersive Factual Storytelling MA to discuss the possibilities of VR in old age and in care. This event is immersive: there will be time before and after the workshop for attendees to play with VR headsets.

Elderflowers: Clowning as Care (Date TBD)

This workshop will be an immersive event investigating clowning as a method of care in care homes and hospices across the UK. Led by two Elderflowers, clowns who are trained to playfully engage older people with dementia, this workshop will begin with a brief training session in clowning methods and will end with a discussion about clowning and caring.

A Playful Engagement with Age: A Cross-Sector Approach (Date TBD)

The Ageing Playfully Network and the Association for Anthropology, Gerontology and the Life Course, this panel examines how ageing studies might benefit from a playful engagement with age. The panel will feature Robert Speker, an award-winning Activity Provider who led the Care Home Album Cover project during covid-19; Phoebe Davies, an artist who produced a film playfully depicting older people at a day centre in London; and Carrie Ryan, who runs the Ageing Playfully project and researches the impact of playfulness on older people’s wellbeing.