The Culture Capital Exchange is delighted to announce the first of a new series of Ideas Labs, designed to bring our researchers together around topics of mutual concern. Our first Ideas Lab is being developed in collaboration with the Drama Dept at Queen Mary and Split Britches and will be on the topic of Ageing and the Arts and Cultural Sector.

The UK’s ageing population presents a number of challenges, not to mention opportunities, and this subject is gaining visibility  and appears to be becoming established as a concern in policy circles and on Government’s agenda more broadly. Recent research* has identified that the number of young people coming into the modern workforce will be insufficient to meet the needs of the future and, on top of this, we are seeing an increased lack of agency and invisibility of elders, where they become progressively absent from decision making and public life in general.

For the cultural sector, retention of workers  has been found to be a particular issue, with workers over 50 routinely overlooked for promotion despite possessing the knowledge and experience needed to fill the leadership skills gaps.

At the Ideas Lab we will be asking:

• How can we more deeply understand why this happens?
• What are the impacts of this?
• How can we respond, are there useful strategies we can use to redesign how work happens in the creative sector for elders?
• What might we need to do to effect some kinds of change?
• Can we translate this across the sector, beyond elders?

We are interested in bringing together researchers from across the TCCE membership who may be interested in exploring possibilities around working together further on this topic.

Spaces are limited but we would be delighted to hear from TCCE member researchers and cultural practitioners who are interested in contributing to this discussion.

Please RSVP to Georgina Potts georgina@tcce.co.uk no later than Monday 18th January 2016.

Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. 

*research sources available upon request