Join us for a free online workshop in partnership with creative facilitator and dementia practitioner Emily Bird.
Flourishing Lives, the Flourishing Lives Advisory Group (FLAG), and Emily Bird invite you to our free online workshop exploring working-class creativity, ageing and belonging in the arts.
In this interactive webinar, creative facilitator and dementia practitioner Emily Bird draws on over a decade of work with older people as a facilitator and project manager in community settings to explore how class continues to shape who feels able to access, participate in, and belong within creative spaces.
Focusing on the relationship between class, ageing and creativity, Emily reflects on the structural barriers that have shaped many older people’s relationship with culture across their lifetimes – “the barriers I navigate now as a working-class practitioner are rooted in the same structures that shaped many older people’s access to culture decades ago.” At a time when the arts sector is under pressure to reach “hard to reach” communities, widening inequality, the cost-of-living crisis and the closure of community spaces raise urgent questions about how participation is framed and who our cultural systems truly serve.
Together we will explore how class is signalled and experienced within arts spaces, how lifelong structural exclusion shapes participation in later life, and why working-class creativity has often existed outside institutional definitions of “art”. The session will also invite participants to reflect on whose norms shape our cultural environments and what it might mean to move beyond widening access towards recognising and valuing the creativity already present in communities.
Emily approaches this conversation from her own perspective, born and raised on an inner-city council estate in Birmingham. This session aims to open thoughtful discussion across the arts, health and social care sectors about how we can create cultural spaces where all older people’s histories, creativity and ways of seeing the world are authentically recognised and valued.
About Emily Bird
Emily Bird (she/her) is a facilitator, trainer and programme manager with over a decade of experience designing community projects across the arts, health, and social care sectors.
She is an accredited Reminiscence Arts Facilitator with the European Reminiscence Network, co-facilitating Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today — a project for people living with a dementia and their families. Emily currently leads LinkAge Plus an initiative reducing social isolation for people aged 50+ in East London.
Previously, Emily led Magic Me’s Care Homes Programme, supporting over 200 care professionals across the UK to embed everyday creativity in care settings and leading on the co-production of resources – DARE TO IMAGINE: a care home’s guide to creativity and Spark. She has also contributed to sector-wide resources such as Lingo of Connection, connecting with people living in the later stages of a dementia who may be non-verbal.
Join us to share ideas, refine your working practices, and meet other progressive people who are striving to innovate and excel in arts & wellbeing services for older people.
Date:
Wednesday 6th May, 11.00am-1pm BST