AEA DIGEST Association for Education and Ageing Issue no 19 Spring 2007

FROM THE CHAIR….. Jo Walker

Another conference and AGM are upon If you are a member planning to come to us! The opportunity to work with our Eric’s lecture and the AGM that follows, friends at Birkbeck University of please arrive at 2.45pm – further details London was too good to pass up, so our are in your AGM invitation. If you annual conference this year will be would like to come to the whole day, 22nd-23rd March in Bloomsbury, under please register with Birkbeck, who are the title ‘Learning for the Lifecourse’. handling the administration for us. You will have had details from Carol Contact them at [email protected] and we hope to see you there, especially or use the form that Carol has on the Friday 23rd March, when the distributed. programme is particularly about later life learning. Publication of last year’s memorial lecture by Professor Brian Groombridge Friday’s programme will also include is underway, through NIACE, for whose the Frank Glendenning Memorial support we are grateful. This will be Lecture, which is to be given this year available in May; it will be launched at by Dr Eric Midwinter. Eric is currently an AEA session within a conference in chair of the Centre for Policy on Ageing, Glasgow to celebrate 20 years of later but has been prominently involved in life learning at Strathclyde University. older adults’ learning for many years, ‘A Legacy of Learning’ will be held 9th- not least through the birth of the 11th May at the Senior Studies Institute. University of the Third Age in this If you would like further details of the country. He remembers Frank conference, contact them at particularly through AEA and the Beth www.cll.strath.ac.uk/legacy/index.htm Johnson Foundation in Staffordshire. 2

Our ‘capacity building’ project is well the nearby town of Vammala (south west underway, funded by the Esmee Finland), Italy, Slovenia, and the UK. Fairbairn Foundation. Our consultant The local people invited us into their has contacted a representative range of community centre, the former village people who have an interest in AEA and school, warmed by traditional wood the Executive Committee has had a burning stoves. Soon we were making recent away day to consider the views Valentine cards out of raw flax and hand collected so far and to agree the made card while, using their English, foundations of strategic and business Enni and the other children acted as plans. When these plans are finalised we interpreters. will be in a good position to approach Back in the education centre in funding agencies for support for Vammala, the crafts being practiced development work of various kinds. were more varied and skilful but still using simple materials: basket making, I look forward to seeing you at the quilting, Viking jewellery making, conference / lecture / AGM and to being felting and others, but again the in touch through another year. generations were well mixed. This was ------an international episode in the In February, Brian Groombridge went intergenerational projects developed in to Finland with an Educational Centres the four countries over the last three Association team to take part in the EU- years. Funded by the EU’s Grundtvig funded 'Teddy Bear' project, bringing Programme, administered here by the older people together with some very British Council, supporting the adult much younger. He tells us here about learning work of the Educational Centres his Vammala Experience Association. Each country’s project has a different focus - rural crafts in The temperature was about minus 30°C. Vammala; reminiscence work in The snow was deep and crisp and even, Herefordshire, Stoke and Wedgwood and several of us enjoyed standing or College; mobile phone and computer use sitting on kick sledges and sliding down in Italy (even working with people with the slope outside the village hall. incipient dementia). They are learning Pushing back up was harder work, so I from each other, acquiring a better stopped and talked to a member of the understanding of what kinds of joint welcome party with a lovely smile. educational activity can be successfully ‘Could you tell me what this sledge is undertaken by people of very different called in Finnish?’, I asked. She replied: ages. Slovenian colleagues are now ‘Yes. It’s called a Potkukelkka. Shall I planning a project in the same co- write it down for you?’. She wrote the operative spirit. word in my notebook and we exchanged The Vammala college provides a wide names: ‘I’m Brian’ and ‘I’m Enni’. range of adult education courses, Enni was ten years old. She was there particularly strong in music and drama, with two older brothers, several other computer training for older people, and children, many older people, some very Open University courses (in alliance old, and a craft tutor, all from Lantula, a with the universities of Tampere and village of 200 inhabitants. We were Turku). With help from a professional adult educators and social workers from interpreter, we also took part in a one- 3 day conference for craft tutors. It was adopted in my term of office, and I shall opened by the college principal, a follow it up wearing several hats, musician who continued the rural craft including my special interest in Future theme by calling the meeting to order Studies. In Helsinki I took the with a goat’s horn. The programme was opportunity to renew contact with varied: an ebullient woman with a Finnish friends and colleagues whose lifetime’s experience as a milliner work includes linking the arts, health reminisced; an academic from the and education in later life (the theme of University of Turku Centre for Future my Frank Glendenning Memorial for the Research, explained the need to plan AEA last summer). ECA colleagues led education with changing demography, by Chairman Bernard Godding working skills requirements and other major with the other three Teddy Bear teams factors in mind. ended the week by planning the next I am not directly part of the Teddy Bear phase of the work. I came home with a team, so it was a privilege for me to be card thanking me in English for my visit, at this event. I went as the ECA’s made by Enni and one of her senior President Emeritus; the project was assistants.

Brian Groombridge and young Enni enjoy an intergenerational discussion at Vammala 4

Eleven years ago at the age of 50 work he did as a Principal. I could William Tyler downshifted in his career empathise with that. from being a College Principal and became a freelance worker in the field of I began on the 1st January with little in Adult Education. He writes here about the way of work but with a great weight his reasons and the pros and cons of lifted from my shoulders. I began to Downshifting. network like frenzy. The work began to come in, some reasonably paid and some I remember at the time some of my definitely not. But at this stage I simply colleagues envied me, others thought me wanted people to know that I was on the misguided. market. I even agreed to appear as the ‘Tea at Three’ guest on the local BBC Why did I downshift? Overwhelmingly Radio Station. for health reasons. I felt after over 20 years in senior positions that I had had My wife and I have survived, both enough. My health wasn’t good and financially and as a couple. The last is when the college doctor began to no joking matter as having the husband question the wisdom of soldiering on to at home everyday can place a strain on 65 or even 60, I knew I had to take any marriage. We’ve both enjoyed the notice. last ten years, and reckon now that our lives would have been much less Of course, there were other reasons too, interesting had I continued in post. the most important being how disillusioned I had become with the way In terms of work I would have missed that Government was treating Adult out on meeting such a wonderful Education. I felt desperately out of assortment of people and doing a wide sympathy with the prevailing emphasis selection of tasks, ranging from being a on the utilitarian argument for education. professional witness for an adult student This was a long way from my own suing her university to designing a beliefs and experience of education in folklore poster for The Foreign Office general and of adult education in and doing a consultancy on an academic particular. library.

After a lot of soul searching the answer My advice to others is now simple – was obvious - Get out. Thus, having Don’t let your life drift away. Make a offered my resignation in the June, I was decision in your late forties or early out of the college by the end of that fifties on how you want to spend the December. First lesson of freelance life next part of your life. You may choose was soon learned. No one owes you to keep working in your chosen field, anything, and what you have been and you may opt for a second and totally achieved counts for nothing. A great different career, you may choose to adult educator, for whom I worked in the retire early or like me, you may choose early part of my career, was prone to say to downshift within your chosen that when teaching or researching he was profession. It doesn’t matter what you doing ‘proper work’ as opposed to the choose. It is the choosing which is the important thing. 5

More detail on our Annual Conference, which is taking place this week in conjunction with Birkbeck College in London, where the events are being held on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd. Day One is on the theme of PART-TIME STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: MOTIVATION AND BENEFITS. This event is free, courtesy of Birkbeck Day Two is the actual AEA C onference and the theme is EXPANDING HORIZONS IN LEARNING FOR OLDER PEOPLE. There is a charge for this of £35 for non members or £20 for AEA Members and Unwaged. Lunch, tea and coffee are free on both days. Registration is 9.30 am for 10.00 am start on both days. Also on Day Two is the Frank Glendenning lecture at 3.00 pm (see From the Chair page 1), followed by the AGM at 4.45 pm. These last two events are free to members. If you are planning to attend the conference, you will of course have booked your place by now. But if you haven’t and would still like to attend, it might be worth e-mailing Ms E. Kitteringham at Birkbeck [email protected] to see if there is still a place available. If you are only planning to come to the Frank Glendenning lecture and the AGM, please let Carol Allen, AEA Secretary know for catering purposes before Wednesday 21st March. Otherwise you might not get your cup of tea! Contact details for Carol are: e-mail: [email protected] or 020 7385 4641

And if you don’t manage to make any of the events, fear not. There will be a full report in the next edition of AEA Digest.

AEA Secretary and Digest Editor Carol enough and light enough to fit into my Allen not only writes about films for this handbag. "Crikey", I thought. "With a publication and others, she also nurses digital camera and the Dogme an ambition to make them! And at the philosophy - using only available lights, beginning of this year, she achieved that props etc - anyone can make a film now. ambition in a small way by entering the Even me." BAFTA Orange One Minute Film Competition “60 Seconds of Fame”. It has however taken me a while to get it It was, as she tells us here, a very together. Three years ago I scraped educational experience. together the money to buy a decent quality digital camera and shot a goodly Meeting director , a amount of footage of my friends for the member of the Dogme “back to basics” practice films I intended to make - mini film movement at the London Film DV tapes are really cheap now. I tried Festival in the late nineties brought to get myself onto a video editing course home to me to the impact digital but they were either too expensive or the technology was about to have in terms of subsidized ones were aimed at young film making becoming accessible to people working for an NVQ anyone who wanted to have a go. qualification ,not for older people just During our interview Vinterberg showed wanting to learn (have we not been here me the digital camera on which he had before?), and often only available to the shot his film "". It was small unemployed or those living in a 6 particular local authority area. I was dry run in my living room, balancing the even refused entry to one on the grounds camera on various bits of furniture, I that I knew too much! So I bought realised I was going to have to buy myself an editing programme on the myself a tripod as a Christmas present. internet but somehow I never found the I then made a list of the shots I needed to time to learn how to use it. Until two link my existing material together. days before Christmas, when my Videoing oneself is an interesting attention was drawn to the "60 Seconds experience - setting up the shot, flicking of Fame" short film competition The the LCD screen over so you can see closing date was 4th January, not too late what you're shooting, getting into for me to get my act together, if I really position and then realising you're going concentrated. to have to do it all over again because you've chopped the top of your own The object of the competition was to head off! But by the end of the encourage anyone with a good idea for a afternoon, I had my footage "in the can". one minute film based on the chosen Next stage was to select the shots I theme "Celebrate" to have a go. With needed from my existing tapes, put these the world closed down between plus the results of my afternoon's shoot Christmas and New Year, I needed an into the editing programme, along with idea that I could shoot by myself in my the still photographs, which I could scan own living room. And I got it one into the computer. Learning to use the evening, when listening to the Beatles editing programme was to put it mildly a "Rubber Soul" album and the track "In challenge, one which at first I thought I My Life": would never master. But once I'd learned the basic principles of how to "With lovers and friends I still can recall arrange the shots in order and trim them Some are dead and some are living fore and aft with the help of a near In my life I've loved them all" impenetrable handbook and a charming young man on the telephone helpline, it I had my story, "Celebrating Friends", I went reasonably swimmingly though, as had all that footage and several carrier my first cut though came out at 1'45", a bags full of old photographs going back whole chunk had to come out of the over the years. Unfortunately I couldn't middle. I was then reduced to cutting use the song that had inspired me as my fractions of seconds out of the remaining soundtrack - no copyright material was shots and dumping a couple in order to allowed - but there was a library of get it down to 59". Putting a title on music tracks, which one could download proved to be surprisingly easy, as did and use for free for the purposes of the adding the music track and learning how competition only and it wasn't difficult to fade in and out at the beginning and to find something suitable. end of my little movie. The final stage was to "export" or save my video in one As this was the story of me and my of formats acceptable to the organizers friends, in order to create a coherent and “upload” it onto the site, which was visual narrative I was going to have to another challenge. video myself - and anyway, I had no other actress available. After doing a 7

No I didn’t get into the finals but neither and indeed anybody could also put to a did several other films, which were variety of educational purposes, such as better than mine. Competition judging living and local history, storytelling and is a very subjective thing after all. But I other projects. Or equally to make a learned a lot from the experience and memento of a holiday or an important now have several other projects in my family occasion. head, which I’m hoping to turn into movies. It’s also of course a skill that I

As well as film making, another of your The classes take place across different editor’s educational pursuits is taking venues in Islington and vary in style part in a weekly jazz dance class – good from Ballet, Gentle Movement, Egyptian exercise, fun and intergenerational. Dance, Asian Dance, Zumba – a salsa The class ranges in age from 14 to mid based dance style, Samba to Lindy Hop 60s. However for those who don’t fancy and cost a very reasonable £1 for an measuring their less than flexible bodies hour. against the young, a new project Let’s Dance in Islington, London, could Project organiser Sheila Dickie describes perhaps be a more enticing option. them as “gentle classes, designed to entice the over-55s into becoming more Let’s Dance was launched to the press active, having fun and meeting other with a tea dance led by five piece band people”. They are run by professional Ray Fernandes Sound, the in-house tea teachers experienced in working with dance group from The Ritz Hotel, older dancers, and are for anyone over Piccadilly. That was however a one off 55 - no experience necessary. They are event! The project is a new series of proving to be very popular and some of nine, low-cost, dance classes aimed at the students who have signed up are well the over-55 age group and supported by into their eighties. Age Concern Islington, The London Borough of Islington and Sadler’s Wells Which is great if you live in the borough and has funding up until March next of Islington but unfortunately the classes year. are only open to Islington residents. However, as Sheila points out, this excellent project could be replicated 8 anywhere in the UK and is a fun and non-stop worries about just about exciting way to improve fitness levels in everything and everybody. But there are an older age-group. So if you’d like to exciting times ahead as Marie celebrates start a project like this in your own area, her sixtieth birthday; she’s already done Sheila, who is an enthusiast in her sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and now she subject, has very kindly offered her wants to ‘start doing old things, not advice. You can contact her by e-mail young things’. on [email protected] or by telephone on 07970 670 809. And if So we experience Marie’s delight as she you live in Islington and would like to collects her pension, acquires her take part just ring Age Concern Islington Freedom Pass and becomes eligible for on 020 7281 6018 and ask them to send free prescriptions. But she is resolutely you a brochure with details of the NOT going to learn Italian, do an Open classes. University course or join the University ------of the Third Age (‘That’s what Marion Another positive use of one’s leisure does. She’s forever doing nodules or time is of course reading a good book. whatever they are’). She doesn’t want to Alex Withnall has been reading “No! learn about anything ever again I Don’t Want to Join a Book (‘learning is for young people. Done young’) and is particularly scornful of Club” by Virginia Ironside, which ‘those oldies who spend their lives is of particular interest to older readers. bicycling across Mongolia at eighty and

paragliding at ninety’. And as for Virginia Ironside is already well known joining a book club as one of her well- as a journalist and agony aunt and meaning friends suggests – no thanks! indeed, as the author of what is widely acknowledged as one of the best books And yet, as we follow Marie’s progress on bereavement ever written. (‘You’ll get into ‘old’ through her diary entries, it’s over it’. The rage of bereavement. impossible not to be aware of the new Virginia Ironside – 1996 Penguin learning journey she’s undertaking. Books) Now as she herself hits her Firstly, there’s the birth of her grandson sixties, she has given us the diaries of Gene. Initially, she’s unmoved but as he her alter ego retired teacher Marie Sharp. grows and she takes on some babysitting Long divorced, Marie lives in Shepherds duties, she finds herself completely Bush (‘”up and coming” but never overwhelmed with a new kind of love actually up and come’) and has to cope for this little creature (‘I’m like a on a day-to-day basis with her flighty lovelorn teenager pining for Cary French lodger, her gorgeous young male Grant’). Secondly, she faces the rapid Polish cleaner, various bizarre decline and death of her gay chum neighbours and her assorted friends as Hughie; yet even as she experiences well as her only son Jack and his girl terrible sadness, she comes to understand friend Chrissie who are domiciled in that grief is a kind of blessing ‘…only Brixton. On top of that, there are another side of loving, one part of what invitations to dreadful dinner parties, it is to be human.’ And then thirdly and mysterious spam emails, all those health most unexpectedly, Marie realises that concerns (‘For the last week, I have been even though she’s resolved to embrace convinced I have throat cancer’) and 9 celibacy, she’s still capable of fancying laughter one minute and reaching for a her first love, the indomitable Archie tissue the next. It may have been who’s now a widower but who, we described in the blurb as ‘what happens learn, did actually reciprocate her when grumpy old women meet Bridget feelings all those years ago. As we leave Jones’ but Marie’s diary is something her, Marie has a date looming and is more than that. For me, it’s a joyous finding ‘the whole thing utterly thrilling celebration of later life and the triumph and goofy-making, and tender and lovely of love in all its forms. Highly all at the same time…’. Not at all what recommended! she expected ‘old’ to be! “No! I don’t want to join a bookclub” I read this book at a sitting during a by Virginia Ironside is published by . particularly tedious train journey and Penguin/Figtree at £12.99 certainly got some strange looks from ISBN 0-670-91624-2 fellow passengers as I was helpless with

The Association for Education and Ageing

Patrons: Baroness Sally Greengross, Mr Derek Legge, Professor Arthur Stock

President: Professor David James

Chair: Jo Walker, [email protected]

Secretary: Carol Allen, 132 Dawes Rd, London SW6 7EF [email protected] Tel: 020 7385 4641

Elected members:, David Crossan, Mervyn Eastman, Brian Findsen, Anne Jamieson, Carlie Newman, Jim Soulsby, Glenys Tuersley, Dr Alex Withnall,

And a final nag from your Subscription rates are: editor/secretary, before we look at some upcoming movies. Some of you have Individual membership £20 still not yet got around to paying your Unwaged £10 subscriptions. Corporate membership £60 My address for your cheques is in the (“With journal” subscriptions have for box above! the time being been suspended)

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On Screen It presents a chilling picture of life in Carol Allen East in the eighties, where the state demands total control of the lives Proving the point that stories about older of its citizens and the effect that has on people can also be of interest to the them. Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) a devoted young is “Away From Her”, a beautiful officer of the State Security or is and very moving film about Fiona and not only very good at his job but he Grant, a couple in their sixties (Julie sincerely believes it is essential for the Christie and Gordon Pinsent). Early in welfare of the people. He is assigned to the film we and Grant become aware the 24 hour of leading that Fiona is developing Alzheimer’s. playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Set in Canada, the film is written and Koch) and installed in the loft above his directed by actress Sarah Polley aged 28 victim’s apartment with tape recorders and it’s interesting and heartening that noting everything that happens she should choose this subject for her downstairs. But when he discovers the first feature and handle it with such operation is for the personal gain of a maturity and understanding. Christie is senior party official, Wiesler's faith in still very beautiful, even with a few lines what has been his life's work is seriously and grey hairs and she gives a lovely shaken. Superb acting in what is a performance of a woman of great grace complex, engrossing and tense drama. and charm, who is strong and self aware. Michael Apted’s “Amazing Grace” is She is conscious of what is happening to about MP William Wilberforce, who her and it is she who chooses, when the devoted his life to the campaign to time comes, to go into the care home she abolish slavery. A handsome looking and her husband have chosen. Soon she costume drama it is disappointingly a can no longer recognise him but she is little confused in its telling but Benedict still such a loving women, that she Cumberbatch is excellent as transfers her caring to someone who also Wilberforce’s friend William Pitt the needs it, wheelchair bound fellow younger, who became Prime Minister at resident Aubrey (Michael Murphy). the mind boggling age of 24, Ioan The story is told through Grant’s eyes, Gruffud fills the hero’s shoes well from and you really feel for him, as he is youth to middle age and it is the story of excluded from Fiona’s world. It is an Englishman of whose achievement primarily a love story about a 44 year we can be proud. old marriage and how it survives this Based on a W. Somerset Maugham tragedy. It also doesn’t avoid the issue novel, “The Painted Veil” perfectly of older people’s need to still express evokes the moral and social mores of the their love physically, which is very twenties. Kitty (Naomi Watts) is taken delicately handled. Good supporting by her cold and unapproachable doctor performances from Murphy as Aubrey husband (Edward Norton) to a remote and Olympia Dukakis as his strong wife. part of China as punishment for her And not only did I find it an emotionally affair with another man. Eventually the gripping and uplifting experience, so did work they both do there causes her my 27 year old goddaughter. finally to fall in love with him. The German film “The Lives of Others” Beautifully acted with the ring of truth well deserves its best foreign film Oscar. and very moving.