Reflections on the ‘Radical Creative Ageing: Passion and Practice’ event held by Creative Ageing: Development & Agency (CADA)
Live Music Now musician, Mickey Bryan, recently attended a symposium hosted by the Creative Ageing: Development Agency (CADA) at the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester, entitled ‘Radical Creative Ageing: Passion and Practice’. The event was aimed towards both established and emerging older artists and comprised of a variety of performances, workshops and forums designed to explore concepts around older age, ageism, diversity and creativity.
‘Radical Creative Ageing: An Immersive Gathering was co-created by our RUPT Associates, designed to disRUPT the status quo when it comes to creativity, diversity, and ageing. Delegates were invited to question their assumptions, think deeply about the role of creativity as a fundamental human right, and ‘think, by doing, creatively, together. As an organisation that recognises the value of co-creation, and champions the musical potential of everyone, it was a privilege to have Mickey from Live Music Now at our event, to contribute in such a meaningful and considered way.’
– Farrell Renowden, Director of CADA- Creative Ageing: Development & Agency
At Live Music Now we aim to deliver our work though co-creation, and collaboration, nurturing and giving space for the expression of individuals’ creativity and musical identity. In the space of older people and the arts there is danger that the voice, agency and leadership in creativity of older people themselves is not embraced and given space, or is even underestimated, excluded or ignored.
This can lead to an uninformed approach, based on unconscious bias or assumptions, that is more doing to than doing with, and that does not realise the opportunity for the full potential of a rich creative exchange and process. The idea that everyone is musical and has a musical identity is vital to the success, quality and impact of our work. We train our musicians to work in a way that gives space and opportunity for this to be expressed, nurtured and grown in participants, making something new together which would not otherwise happen. Of course some of our musicians might identify themselves as older people, and our revamped approach to recruitment, has over the last couple of years increased the number of professional musicians over the age of 50 who work with us.
Engaging with this event brings new lived experience, expertise, ideas and provocations into our thinking and practice and helps to advance our ongoing equity diversity and inclusion journey. It supports us to question and consider attitudinal and practice barriers that may be in place, and how we proactively work to overcome them .
Mickey writes:
The event began with a spoken word piece jointly orated by CADA’s four RUPT associate artists: Amanda Holiday, Bunmi Ogunsiji, Maya Chowdhry and Sama Hunt. It posed a series of unanswered ‘what if?’ questions, provoking the audience to begin thinking about ageism and identity in the arts, thus setting the tone and preparing the ground for the day’s activities and lively discussions. Following this, we were invited to design and create our own placards with emblazoned with anti-ageist messages which we later used as part of a group demonstration/performance art piece around the gallery space.
Splitting up into smaller groups, we then attended a series of workshops, each delivered by one of the RUPT associates. The first workshop I attended was led by Maya, an interdisciplinary sound artist, in which we created soundscapes employing a variety of interesting and unusual methods of sound production. These methods included using contact microphones to amplify the sounds of water, uncooked rice and moss, as well as sonification processes whereby the electric signals of a variety of organic materials (such as mushrooms and chilli peppers!) were translated into synthesised drone-like textures. Our improvisation set out to create ‘a sonic interpretation on radical creative ageing’ which Maya recorded and subsequently played back to us while we reflected on the work and its meaning.
The second workshop, ‘A Cross Sticky Poem’, involved writing poetry which sought to challenge uncomfortable ideas and harmful stereotypes concerning ageing. We were first asked to consider and reflect on different words associated with ageism as part of a group discussion. Listening to these perspectives from older artists, their negative experiences and the various external pressures and internalised negative messages related to being an artist in later life was both illuminating and poignant. We then each picked a word and wrote an acrostic poem, juxtaposing our chosen word with poetic lines which directly undermined its negative meanings and connotations.
Having frequently worked with older people and people living with dementia in songwriting projects, I decided that my poem would aim to refute the harmful notion that the artistic voices of people from these communities are sometimes deemed less relevant than those of younger people. Using the word ‘irrelevance’, I thus set out to comment on the enormous creative potential and the rich and insightful perspectives that can be produced through collaborating with older people.
Finally, the event concluded with an evening session which endeavoured to draft a framework towards an ambitious and radical creative ageing ‘manifesto’. As with the earlier workshops, I took the opportunity to listen to the experiences and viewpoints from the many older artists in attendance. It uncovered a number of aspects which I had perhaps underexplored or even overlooked, both in terms of my work as a practitioner working with older adults but perhaps to a greater extent, as a musician who will possibly at some point also self-identify as an ageing artist. For example, I had not fully appreciated what was described as the dwindling sense of peer experience and connection to an artistic community that can occur as artists grow older, which can engender feelings of isolation and alienation. More generally, reflecting on what it may mean to be an older artist/musician was a particularly thought-provoking experience for me personally and, truthfully, an area I clearly had not spent enough time reflecting on previously.
It brought into focus the idea that we each have our own musical identities which we attribute to our personhood and how our relationship to these identities changes and evolves as we age. For music practitioners, it is clear that reflecting on these changes in relation to our own future selves as artists, and learning from older artists and how they are affected is incredibly valuable. In doing so, it can only help develop a better understanding and deeper sense of empathy when working creatively with older people.
In summary, CADA’s Radical Creative Ageing event was a provocative and eye-opening experience. I would encourage anyone working creatively with older people to check out their work and also consider what being an older artist or arts practitioner, whether now or in the future, might mean for one’s practice and broader sense of self.
– Mickey Bryan 2024 (Live Music Now musician); Douglas Noble, 2024 (Strategic Director, Music in Health)
