Paul McGarry’s top 10 tips for Age-friendly Communities

I’ve been working on the ageing agenda since the 1990s, seeing Manchester become the first city, and Greater Manchester the first city-region to join the global network of Age-friendly Communities. Over the years, I’ve learned some valuable lessons – here are my 10 top tips for others working to make their places better to grow old in.

The first thing to do is to have a good look around and find out what others are already doing well. And if it makes sense for your community, copy it. There’s some great Age-friendly practice already out there – both in the UK and Global Networks of Age-friendly communities. Sometimes there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

The most important element of the work we do is getting the story right or “narrative building”. When you go into a room, whether with your chief exec, your boss, or group of community organisations, you need to be able to show why ageing populations and the position of older people matters, right now, and the importance of planning for the future.

On the flipside, you may have to contend with other organisational – and sometimes personal – agendas.

No matter how good your story, not everyone will be interested in age-friendly work all of the time, so find people who are interested. Find your tribe. In the past we’ve worked with colleagues in local universities and turned to national and international organisations.

This should go without saying – but it’s almost so obvious that it often gets overlooked. Invest in your relationships with local older people. Work with different groups in different places, in official, structured and non-structured ways.

Older people should be at the heart of what you do, so make time to get out-and-about to make those personal connections.

Running a standalone campaign on Pension Credit for example, or campaigning to make one neighbourhood age-friendly, can have more impact for your age-friendly community than a series of many disconnected activities. (This used to be one of my tips – although I’m not sure I agree with it too much anymore; it’s better to do five things well!)

Working on ageing can be lonely work. You may well be alone in your local authority, or there may be a small team if you’re particularly lucky. And therein lies the importance of your age-friendly networks.

In the early days, I got to know people in Newcastle, Belfast, London, Sheffield, Nottingham, Amsterdam, New York and Melbourne – being able to connect with these places and people not only helps to boost morale, but it builds this thriving, vibrant, powerful community of people with a shared vision.

There are times when people just aren’t interested in your agenda. When the pendulum swings away from you, find where the energy is in your community and do something over there, or help to bring an age-friendly lens onto local priorities that people are talking about.

And when the pendulum is swinging back towards you, jump on it. We’ve seen how quickly agendas and priorities can change – so don’t rest on your laurels.

The phrase of never being the smartest person in the room doesn’t really hold true here. One of the things I’ve tried to do is to find out who knows most about ageing and housing, or sexual health and ageing, or whatever-it-might-be and ageing, and bring them into your work – whether they’re national or in your local area.

Because our work is so wide ranging, you need to know a little about lots of things; you need a lot about ageing, but you also need to know a bit about housing, or transport etc.

People often say to me ‘all this age-friendly stuff, we get it, but what does it look like?’ I tell them it looks like our Age-friendly Museums, it looks like our Keeping Well this Winter booklet.

You need to develop these emblematic projects, signpost people to them, and sing about them from the rooftops. These projects help to make 'Age-friendly' tangible and to build your reputation.

Your ability to bring people together to sit down and discuss is so important. As Age-friendly Communities, you’re in a unique position to bring together all of these different actors – the people and organisations – around what it means to be age-friendly.

Your power to bring all of these people, these organisations, and the passion together, is something that can be truly transformative.

And a final one... Never give up!

Watch Ageing Better's Developing your Age-friendly Community training for more tips on engaging stakeholders and gaining political commitment for your Age-friendly Community.

The views and opinions expressed in this guest blog are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the policy or positions of the Centre for Ageing Better.