Age and Ageism – Taking part

Julia Honess offers a personal perspective on creating work with older participants.
Entelechy Arts has been working in South East London for fifteen years, developing an exciting programme of creative work with older people. The work brings together older people who might not usually have the opportunity to work creatively together  older white British, Nigerian, African-Caribbean and Asian people, and older people who have learning disabilities. The companys work reveals how different artforms can be reshaped by the diverse cultural perspectives and experiences of the older people involved.

We want to raise issues that people are afraid to mention, said one older artist. Often, the subjects that are chosen and the process of making work together attempt to dissolve the stereotyping that exists between different generations and communities, and endeavour to challenge attitudes to race, disability and age. The group has been working on a unique brand of Twenty First Century Tea Dance events, taking a convention associated with older people and turning it on its head. Here you will find tea and cake, certainly, but also you might also see older people performing new dance pieces, storytelling from laptops at your table, singing songs in English and Yoruba, accompanied by a band which includes a Kora player. Roads Home, is part of this tea dance programme, using video and live performance to tell two contemporary stories from the same London street  one Nigerian, one white British. Video was shot in empty flats and sound material was collected by older people from local streets, close to where the first performance took place. The company is currently developing this piece to link in with Julys launch of the Capital Age Festival.

Despite this, and many other projects producing high quality work with older people, there is still a lot of work to be done to promote older peoples contribution to the cultural scene. Its nearly five oclock. The geriatrics will be here in a minute, was a comment made recently by a worker in a theatre where Entelechy was rehearsing. When older people are involved in the non-professional or community arts arena, they often come up against the lack of experience and negative stereotypes that younger people have of them. Prejudice and discrimination which prevents their participation is often a more subtle overlooking of their needs: too many stairs, standing for long periods of time, rehearsals in theatres in poorly lit back streets a long way from the bus stop, lack of transport, raked seating, feeling an outsider in a culture dominated by younger people.

When community and non-professional arts programmes are targeted at older people, they are often reminiscence projects which, by definition, will focus on the past, or they subscribe to a convention of remembering the good old days. Older people find themselves, too often, the subjects for younger artists projects or that they are patronised or not taken seriously.

Julia Honess is Older Peoples Programme
Co-ordinator at Entelechy Arts.
w: http://www.entelechyarts.org