Here are a few resources for you to read, watch and listen over the weekend and in the run-up to April 26th. You don’t have to go through all of them, but they might help spark ideas for conversations and questions at NICA!

From the Economist, a 12-minute video on how the rich world is ageing fast. How can societies afford the looming costs of caring for their growing elderly populations?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJCr5WJapm8 (12-minute watch)

A podcast episode about what it takes to work with communities to build capacity. The Ambition for Ageing podcast has Yasmin Holgeth and Julie Bentley, both of whom worked with their local communities as part of Ambition for Ageing to identify, develop, fund and run a huge number of projects, all in the name of reducing social isolation and increasing age-friendliness. https://anchor.fm/gmcvo/episodes/How-can-we-work-with-communities-to-build-capacity–Episode-3-e10jqbk/a-a5h3451 (30-minute listen)

Created by NICA, ‘The Skills in Us’ is a series of short documentaries on the importance of skill-sharing, intergenerational conversations, and keeping skills alive. Here we watch Nadia’s story (3-minute watch) https://uknica.co.uk/the-skills-in-us-nadia/

A longer read – the Government Office of Science’s Future of an Ageing Population report. This is a long report but we suggest you focus on the Executive Summary form pages 6-14, which should take no more than 10 minutes to read. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/816458/future-of-an-ageing-population.pdf

Human bodies aren’t built for extreme aging: our capacity is set at about 90 years. But what does aging really mean, and how does it counteract the body’s efforts to stay alive? Monica Menesini details the nine physiological traits that play a central role in aging. Animated video. (5-minute watch) https://www.ted.com/talks/monica_menesini_why_do_our_bodies_age