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Creative Ageing in South Korea

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Blue skies and Changing of the Guard at Gyeongbokgung Palace

December 03, 2017

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Creative Ageing conference -

A full day of presentations in front of a packed room (250+) . David Cutler set out the case for access to the arts for older people as a human right. It was interesting to hear from our Korean colleagues about their concern about the baby boomer generation - the average age of retirement is 52! (My age...) but the state pension age is 65. There is a worry that there are tensions between the generations and that loneliness amongst older people is a huge concern. Kimon Kim of The National Institute of Dementia spoke about their three core missions - to improve citizens quality of life, to improve awareness about dementia and to build a foundation to lead research. Her slides above show the need for the sectors to work together. We heard from Professor Jeong Ok Hwang from Korea Dance Institute about a dance and dementia research project. Diane Amans (a leading dance artist from the Uk and a WCMT Fellow) will be leading two dance workshops this week. We also heard about the

Creative Ageing festival visit

After a gorgeous morning spent exploring the grounds of the Gyeongbokgung Palace with Susan Langford (Magic Me) Emma Robinson (Age Cymru) and Carol Rodgers (National Museums Liverpool) we were taken to the Cheongchun Festival. It was a hive of activity - the Festival was the culmination of work created by groups of older people who visit Senior Welfare Centres working with teaching artists (musicians/theatre makers/visual artists) all of which was state funded.. There were some fantastic costumes on display and a great sense of celebration in the hall. Some surreal theatre - led by a Johnny Depp look alike Grim Reaper - the show seemed to be a mixture of Waiting for Godot and a pantomime. I only wish I could have understood Korean in order to get the jokes. My favourite moment came when the large choir started dancing on stage and then spilled over into the audience to continue the party. As we were in the second row we were soon being pulled to our feet. I always dread audie

(Backup) The train to Busan

We travelled south to Korea's second city Busan. The city grew during the Korean War as people fled south - it now has a population of 3.2 million. We were taken on a trip to visit the old (1950s) part of the city, where a lot of older people live. IMAGO, a wonderful Senior centre, has two beautiful well used spaces. We met some of the people who attend the groups and were given a presentation about some of their programme. They have been involved in making Shadow puppet plays with local young people, flower arranging, and making amazing doll puppets. They have also created a game involving a hand made board (see above) and a giant dice. We all got involved in a game and it was very competitive (with some dubious dice throwing from David Cutler...) and joyful. The board made me think of some of the story map making that out artist Associates have been doing and there are many crossovers with our work - including the shadow puppets and intergenerational work. It made me w

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