My role in SAACY has been to deliver Policy Labs[ii], as a mechanism to mobilise the research into policy and practice, to create real-world change. In October 2024, we delivered a Policy Lab which brought together 30 diverse stakeholders – of all different ages – from the worlds of policy, academia, charity, the media, and advertising, to explore how we can change the way that ageing is represented in the media (see report here)[iii]. We focused on the media because it’s a multi-billion-pound industry with enormous reach, that has a powerful influence over how we think about the world around us.
The Policy Lab determined that it is not only important to increase the visibility of older people and the ageing process, but we also need to consider how we represent ageing and older people. We endorse that representations of ageing should be honest, diverse and open to the positive possibilities that ageing can offer.
We identified opportunity for media content to be more intergenerational, and for it to be developed by age-diverse teams. We also identified systemic opportunities for change, drawing upon regulation, funding, data and education-based strategies.
Specifically, an important step would be to make the commercial case in advertising. If we can show that shifting representations of ageing will lead to a bigger return on investment, then it is in businesses’ own interests to improve how they represent ageing. Additionally, we could lobby for change to the Editors’ Code of Practice to protect against age discrimination in the same way that other forms of discrimination are protected against. We could design processes to ‘complain better’, having nuanced conversations around ageist content and identifying patterns, rather than having to point to a discrete moment on the tv. Finally, we can develop initiatives to promote and celebrate best practice, such as developing a screenplay prize for depicting ageing and older people in ways that are honest, diverse, and open to the positive possibilities that ageing has to offer.
Such findings are detailed in a Policy Lab report3, launched at the House of Lords on the 13th May. The Rt Hon. The Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ageing and Older People, endorsed our thinking as a real blueprint for shifting representations of ageing, one that provides solutions to pave the way for best practice. The SAACY programme continues to disseminate these ideas to galvanise efforts on rethinking ageing, including through delivering a conference (‘The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course’), 4th-6th June at King’s College London, and an exhibition at the Science Gallery (‘Lifelines: Rethinking Ageing Across Generations’) which you can visit until 2nd August 2025.