A short course which enables older people to develop skills and confidence as activists and campaigners.
Active voices is based on a course developed by Professor Tom Scharf and colleagues in Galway called Touchstone 3879B246-BA88-40DD-90F5-426754830825.pdf (ncl.ac.uk). The Elders Council of Newcastle and the Workers Educational Association (WEA) delivered courses in a range of community settings in the North East during 2019.
We first trialled the course with members of the Elders Council Board and active members. The course was very well received. Even quite experienced activists valued the opportunity to refresh their skills. Participating in the course as a group strengthened relationships within the Elders Council Board. Enthusiastically, we then set up a partnership with the Workers Educational Association (WEA) to roll out the course into communities where people were less likely to have their voices heard. We called it Active Voices. It was hard to get people interested. We persevered, trying lots of different tacks to spark people’s interest. We had lots of conversations, exploring what really mattered to people. Gradually, we succeeded. For a South Asian group, it meant exploring their journeys of coming to the UK. For others, it involved engaging with the local bus company about the quality of their services. One group produced great songs and banners to celebrate Older People’s Day 2019. Learning from our experience, we developed a toolkit of ideas for the course.
The process of trying to engage people in taking part in Active Voices was challenging. We had to be imaginative about how we promoted the opportunity and needed to invest in building trust and relationships with local community organisations to reach people. We tend to underestimate the time this will take, and there is very useful learning from Ageing Better Camden’s ‘Not for Me’ training about the small steps we need to take when approaching people whose voices we don’t often hear.
Taking part in an Active Voices course assumes a fairly high level of interest and confidence. It needs to be part of a spectrum of different types of activity which engage people where they are at! It is also a useful way for people to refresh their skills and ideas and as a foundation for new groups coming together to campaign.
Barbara Douglas
