Through the work of its pilot test beds in Santander, Helsinki and Flanders, URBANAGE has collected valuable insights on ways to engage senior citizens in urban policy co-design. The results of this work are captured in various project deliverables, such as this policy brief on ‘Older Adult Engagement Practices for Age-Friendly Cities’.
Keen to promote these findings beyond the scope of original pilots, members of the URBANAGE consortium (Tecnailia and 21c) travelled to Groningen, the Netherlands, for a Living Knowledge Conference. The event, which celebrated its ninth anniversary this year (hence the hashtag #LK9), always brings together many experts and practitioners in community-led research, so was a perfect opportunity to both disseminate results and learn from others’ best practices.
URBANAGE achieved this dual objective by joining the LK9 poster session which took place on 30 June 2022. The session featured more than 30 poster presentations and was attended by hundreds of participants from the main conference. The URBANAGE poster attracted a lot of attention the moment the session opened, with visitors from Canada, Ireland, the USA, Germany and other countries all stopping by to learn about the project, its engagement strategies and use of disruptive technologies like AI and Digital Twins.
URBANAGE, for its part, picked up many interesting ideas on how to run a Quality & Condition Survey as part of Community Research (Cork City Parks project), how to co-create a serious game with quadruple helix stakeholders (Bonn Science Shop), and how to conduct effective Citizen Science with vulnerable groups (STEP CHANGE project), to give just a few examples.
Judging by the amount of interactions and interest in URBANAGE, LK9 was definitely worth attending, and we are certainly looking forward to next year’s edition, covid permitting!
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