Editorial introduction

In common with the first two chapters of this book, this chapter takes a creative, participatory approach to exploring older people's experiences of resilience in their neighbourhoods. In this case, the authors used a ‘World Café’ approach to eliciting responses and generating consensus and, at the same time, used creative methods both to support participation and to communicate the findings to a wider audience. As such, this chapter has much in common with Chapters Five and Six, in so far as the researchers are explicitly concerned with helping participants to become aware of the resources they have to support resilience (which is seen as social) and to become engaged in wider social and political processes that impact on their resilience.

Introduction

How do we age in place? How, in the UK, do we grow older in our communities and find support in these times of austerity? The UK central government presents the hollowing out of the state as an inevitable consequence of globally created and nationally experienced austerity (Phillipson, 2012). The impact, however, is that the risk of exclusion arising from public sector withdrawal is disproportionately weighted towards groups who are vulnerable through individual or social and community factors. As we detail in the next section, support for adult care is now severely reduced, while neighbourhood institutions of community centres and libraries providing structured activity have also been thinned. Between 2010 and spring 2016 an estimated 343 libraries have been closed, including 132 mobile services targeted at housebound readers (Woodhouse and Dempsey, 2016). Two thousand bus routes were altered or withdrawn between 2010 and 2015 (Campaign for Better Transport, 2015); while 2,500 bank branch closures are expected by 2018 (Edwards, 2015). These lead to a loss of local services and, importantly, a loss of meeting places for social interaction.

This chapter reports on the findings of an arts-based participatory consultation with older people living in the English north-east city of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2014–15 and over a period of eight months we shared conversations about what people do to support themselves and others and what else they need to enjoy a ‘good later life’, living at home, being part of a place and neighbourhood.