Creatively Ageing

Despite the past 15 months of broken contact and lack of physical community, somehow we still connected with people, through our screens and telephone wires. The importance of connection cannot be understated. A post-Covid world is still emerging, bringing new opportunities with it. Near the beginning of the year I was looking for experiences that would benefit my applications for graduate jobs. I was interested in the idea of working within the university itself, and with my tutors on a project separate from my own studies. 

I managed to land the role of research assistant, a real paid opportunity to work with Dr Rachel Connor, Dr Jayne Raisborough and Prof Susan Watkins on an exciting study in ageing in the cultural industries. It was a paid role with great experience involving social media management and working within a small team to meet deadlines, reach out to participants, and organise the connection between them, all while working remotely. 

I got the chance to build the project digitally and create a social media presence for the study to generate some noise about it. I got to reach out to some inspiring women and invited them to Zoom workshops, which were led by Rachel and Susan, filled with structured writing prompts, giggles and even some tears. 

I got to be part of women telling their human experiences, holding space for emotion and trauma, for their triumphs and losses. I got to work behind the scenes for something genuinely exciting, all to be collated and bottled into an anthology brimming with emotion in the near future. As a younger woman I was ready to passively listen to the women taking part in the workshops, be open and understand their perspective, as I certainly had not gone through the hardships they had.

Ageing isn’t this linear timeline I always thought it was: it is dotted and fragmented by events that happen to take place in our life, like loss, joy, regret and hope for the future. Life doesn’t seem to slow its pace as soon as you hit a certain age ‘milestone’, and many of the ways in which we perceive ageing have been fed to us through lifetimes of prejudice against older people, especially women. 

Through targeted cosmetics, less opportunity in the workplace, being tokenised and patronised, or just not having your voice be heard, the taboo around ageing can hinder creatives in ways not thought about or planned for in younger years. However, ageing is divergent and something to look forward to. Hearing the different perspectives of a variety of women, all differing in age and all together in one place made for emotional and poignant conversation. I realised I didn’t have to stay quiet and polite, that in fact speaking up and ‘rioting’ was better than staying silent.

As a younger woman, the participants' voices and stories I heard and read helped me to release this boxed-in idea of age I had in my head. I had not focused on the damaging stereotypes I had subconsciously retained throughout my life, of the fear I had of getting to an age that is ‘past my best.’ Being a part of the workshop helped me to reflect on that, and work past this idea of ageing as a negative thing. 

It was an inspiring job, not only for personal reasons but to connect with women in such an uncertain time and to be reminded that human contact can happen in all its tenderness. The naked and raw expression that links us as people has survived the pandemic and continues to inspire and connect us.