Inspiring and emotive: AWL Day sweeps across the nation
Thousands of people across the country were moved to take actions big and small to celebrate ageing and challenge ageism on Age Without Limits Day.
Our Chief Executive, Dr Carole Easton OBE, reflects on a landmark day for our growing Age Without Limits campaign.
Well, that was a birthday party like no other.
After months of hard work and planning, how wonderful now to sit back and reflect in the afterglow of our second Age Without Limits Day.
We wanted Age Without Limits Day to be a day for us all to come together and take action to end ageism - as individuals, with friends and family, in our communities and in our workplaces.
We wanted people to take a moment out of their busy lives to celebrate ageing and challenge the negative stereotypes and biases that limit us all.
And how wonderful to see so many of you take up that opportunity, to seize on the spirit and the meaning of the day and to play your part in our growing movement.
We wanted people to get involved in whatever way they could, coming together to create a wave of positivity around ageing which pushes back against the day-to-day negativity we see in an ageist society.
Involvement in Age Without Limits Day ranged from people posting out on social media encouraging others to get involved and celebrate their age too, to posting our posters locally to spread the message and also friends, neighbours and colleagues coming together to talk about ageing and ageism at coffee dates, quizzes and informal gatherings.
The campaign’s action day has inspired a wonderful range of events taking place all over the country, everybody just taking our Celebrate Ageing Challenge Ageism theme and running with it.
Social clubs in Doncaster taking part in their own age-positive version of the comedy panel game show Taskmaster, a taster session of physical activities including walking football in Watford, saree draping workshops in Brighton, intergenerational community picnic and storytelling in Birmingham - just some of the activities that bloomed from the inspiration of AWL Day.
A number of Pledge employers showed their commitment to age-friendly employment with workplace events. These included Aviva, who had an Intergenerational workplace chat event, and Newham Council and Subco Trust who held a day of celebrating ageing activities in partnership with Age UK East London and Immediate Theatre.
And how wonderful to see empowered and energised AWL supporters organising their own events to share their commitment and enthusiasm for the campaign. We had Val inspiring her local arts centre in Chester to hold a performance and coffee morning event while Genny held an Age Without Limits Day celebration and wellbeing event at her local library in Gravesend.
In a sign of the growing awareness of our campaign, this year saw Age Without Limits Day publicly acknowledged by the Minister for Women and Equalities and endorsed by a number of MPs and Lords, united in agreement that ageism has no place in our society.
We also had a number of celebrity supporters including Gavin & Stacey legend, Larry Lamb, and Traitors' Diane Carson supporting the day on social media.
I want to thank everyone who played their part in the day. You have done something special, to be part of a movement and collective action that we hope eventually will lead to the end of the limiting and damaging prejudice that is ageism.
At Ageing Better’s offices we held our own event and it was wonderful to be involved in so many great and positive conversations about ageing.
Looking across everything from the day was like seeing a glimpse of what a society without ageism might look like. Too often ageism leads us to commiserate our age. AWL Day was an opportunity to celebrate our years instead.
A society where people could feel empowered to celebrate all that their age has brought them, not to feel like it was something to hide or be ashamed of because age is deemed a liability and a hindrance.
It really brings home the importance of what we are doing with this campaign. How it can move so many people to take action and shows how wonderful it would be to remove the shackles of ageism from everyone.
Yesterday was also an exciting time to think about how far the campaign has come in such a short space of time.
In March last year we held our first action day. It was a special day which saw us break new ground for Ageing Better by hosting our Challenging Ageism: See and Be Seen digital exhibition. We were blown away by how well supported our fledgling campaign was with more than 70 events up and down the country organised by community groups and businesses. It was just two months into the launch of the campaign and we were still learning about the potential impact Age Without Limits could have. The day showed us what appetite there was for change.
Since then, the campaign has just grown and grown.
Our work has been validated and vindicated by the Women and Equalities Committee in its barnstorming report in February which agreed that ageism is “widespread” and “culturally embedded” and which requires stronger legal protections against age discrimination and a new cross-Government strategy to address. We look forward to seeing action being taken on many of the excellent recommendations the report made.
We have been greatly encouraged by the progress that regulators such as the Advertising Standards Authority are making in recognising the significance of the issue within their own sectors.
Our own research has shown that awareness around the issue of ageism has gown consistently since we launched Age Without Limits as our adverts, social media messages and newspaper articles reach more and more people. Only through wider awareness of ageism, and the harms that it causes, can we hope to stop it.
Now the important thing is to keep the momentum of the campaign moving forward because ageism doesn’t sleep.
We have much more planned throughout the year which we hope will inspire and raise awareness so do please keep checking in with all that we are doing.
But we also hope that everyone who has been inspired by AWL Day will also keep the conversation going and encourage everyone to feel more comfortable talking about age. Please share and use our challenging ageism through conversations guide, which champions positive representations of ageing and later life.
And we hope that many of you can encourage your employer to join the Age-friendly Employer Pledge and join more than 500 other employers who are committed to improving work for people in their 50s and 60s.
Ageism. Together we can overcome it. After yesterday, I believe that more strongly than ever.
