Networks, narratives and age-friendly expertise: Reflections from the 3rd World Congress of Age-friendly Cities and Communities.

In June, the network came together for the first time in 13 years for the 3rd World Congress of Age-friendly Cities and Communities held in San Sebastian in the Basque Region of Spain.

The Congress was an opportunity for strengthening collaborations and networks, building narratives, and sharing know-how between more than 700 policymakers, researchers and practitioners in attendance.  

Among those present were Natalie Turner, Deputy Director for Homes and Communities, and Charlotte Lewis, Head of Communities, from the Centre for Ageing Better and me. We were keen to share our learning, support the wider movement and be inspired by ideas that might inform work in the UK.

Networks: strengthening the collaborations and peer-support networks that are the foundations of the movement.

The Congress offered a unique opportunity to connect and learn from a diverse range of age-friendly initiatives and programmes. The Centre for Ageing Better supports the UK Network of Age-friendly Communities, which currently has 111 members and is one of 33 programmes affiliated to the global network.  Charlotte and Natalie were able to speak to people leading other national programmes to learn how they are supporting age-friendly communities in their countries.  

Notable areas of interest for future work in the UK came from the Age-friendly Ireland programme where they inspire good practice through annual age-friendly awards. And from Norway where they have advanced age-friendly housing through collaborating with the country’s biggest housing provider to produce an age-friendly housing guide. 

As part of my UKRI Policy Fellowship, I co-delivered a workshop to lay the foundations for a new Age-Friendly Futures Global Research Network. The workshop built upon recommendations from the Age-Friendly Futures Summit held in Manchester in 2025.  The goal of this work is to build connections, strengthen the research agenda and build the evidence base on age-friendly communities that will help shape policy and action in the UK as well as elsewhere.

Narratives: building on the story of the last two decades of age-friendly development to shape future directions.

Gatherings like this congress can help build and strengthen a unified narrative about the age-friendly movement, important because there are still many challenges to getting population ageing on the policy agenda.  

Part of the solution is thinking about better ways to describe the power of Age-friendly Communities in fewer words. Mark Awe Tachega from Henan Normal University in China described it as:

Many people talked about the importance of working with older people and centring their lived experiences in this narrative. Ana Ramovš, from the Slovenian national network suggested taking a “systematic and concrete” approach to age-friendly work. Systematically outlining the need (often with statistics) but also giving concrete examples of what works by sharing case studies from communities and from people with lived experience of the issues.

Know-how: sharing projects and practices and learning from research, policy and practice spanning the globe.  

The Congress programme was packed with examples of age-friendly know-how, providing inspiration to enhance work locally for everyone present. Natalie chaired a session on civic participation and employment and shared the development of the Centre for Ageing Better’s Age-friendly Employer Pledge.  Charlotte presented learning from the Age Without Limits Ageism Campaign and I presented on the range of ways cities work with older people to develop age-friendly programmes.

Other examples we heard about included a project in Madrid aiming to help older people recognise and combat misinformation online so they could feel more confident about navigating social media and AI, the Generation Games intergenerational sports in communities across Europe which started in Rotterdam, public art installations in Pittsburgh, and a university in Tasmania making published evidence about dementia-friendly environments more accessible to a lay audience.  

The 3rd World Congress of Age-friendly Cities and Communities brought together the movement, and our strength is in our diversity. Through a compassionate approach to networking, narratives, and know-how the movement can push itself forward, aware of collective challenges.

As well as population ageing, the Congress was delivered in the context of globalisation, climate change, and geo-political disruptions. Being age-friendly, therefore, is about transforming the systems that govern our cities and communities. Adapting society to the ageing population, not the other way around.