Creative Ageing Lab
“The art of ageing: Voices, visions and futures of growing older”
Merging creativity, science and policy engagement, the Creative Ageing Lab is an initiative led by the Universities of Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and Bradford and supported by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
In May 2026 we will bring together artists, researchers from different disciplines, older people and civil society to explore the multiple meanings of ageing, identify key shared challenges, and generate innovative, cross-disciplinary solutions to prioritise and promote inclusive, equitable and healthy ageing.
We are inviting participants to act as curators for a collaborative and multi-modal graphic novel that combines multiple art forms including illustration, creative writing, photography and AI image generation, painting and so on. Participants will engage with each other and with artists to explore how to creatively present not just their own research but find the synergies between their diverse disciplines and ways of working. In this way, the graphic novel aims to communicate experiences, challenges, and new ideas about ageing in an accessible way for the general public and policymakers.
To achieve this, we are collecting contributions from around the world—including poems, short texts, photography, and artworks—with the goal of integrating multiple cultural perspectives and diverse voices into this collective narrative.
Poems
Short texts
Photography
Artworks
Some of the questions we are exploring include:
- What does it mean to age? What fears, desires, or stereotypes do we associate with ageing? Is ageing positive, negative, or context-dependent?
- How does the experience of ageing differ by country or culture? Ageing in developing countries or in contexts with social, demographic, or cultural challenges differs from ageing in countries with a high quality of life. Who has the privilege to age well? How do gender, social class, or ethnic background influence the experience of ageing?
- What does it mean to age in today’s world, within the social, economic, environmental, and legal frameworks we live in? Would we like to live longer? Why? If we lived longer, what would be the implications for society, the labour market, pensions, the climate, and the environment?
- How do we imagine ageing in the future? What solutions can address current challenges of ageing? How might our cities, care systems, labour models, or public policies transform?