Age Better co-design events and campaign
Creative lead and facilitator: Justine Gaubert
Graphic designer: Paul Ward
Client: South Yorkshire Housing Association (lead organisation) funded by the Big Lottery.
Winner: £6 million funding from the Big Lottery. Winner of National Outstanding Campaign of the Year 2015 (National Housing Awards).
“We commissioned Justine to work with us on the development of the BLF Fulfilling Lives Ageing Better bid for Sheffield. She created the strategy for a city-wide campaign to promote a positive image of ageing and engage the city in the conversation on how to reduce
isolation and loneliness. As part of the strategy, she developed and delivered a groundbreaking co-design framework for the city. She delivered a programme of creative co-design events to
engage older people in setting the vision for the Sheffield Ageing Better programme - from spoken word nights to touring theatre groups in extra care schemes. Justine and her Community Journalists then developed a co-design toolkit which has been rolled out across the voluntary, private and public sector to drive up the quality of the approach to co-design across Sheffield.
We have now worked with Justine for over five years, and persuaded her to be our marketing manager for two of them! She brings originality of thinking to everything she does. She has driven real innovation through the programmes we have worked with her on.
She makes an excellent partner - consistently delivering on time and on budget and always exceeding even the highest expectations on the quality of what is delivered. She always places the customer at the heart of everything she does, living and breathing the ethos of true co-design and delivery.”
Project summary
I had just run my first Community Journalist programme at Silent Cities and had an eager and skilled team of creative volunteers chomping at the bit to put their skills to use. I had heard that South Yorkshire Housing Association were leading Sheffield’s city-wide bid with the aim of securing £6 million from the Big Lottery Fund to help reduce isolation and loneliness with older people in Sheffield.
I set up a meeting with the legend Juliann Hall who was leading on the bid, and put our community journalists forward to help capture stories to put at the heart of Sheffield’s bid. We talked about the best way of putting genuine co-design at the heart of the strategy, and how to make sure we captured stories from the most isolated older people across the city.
We got to work, and in just six weeks, our army of community journalists and creative network of pals and volunteers designed and ran six creative events across the city, from tea parties in older people homes, to a spoken word night at Queens Social Club.
We collected over 50 hours of stories, edited them, pulled them into themes and a report, then created a co-design toolkit for SYHA to share with other organisations across the city.
Sheffield was awarded the full £6 million which went on to run innovative projects with older people for the next 7 years. This has resulted in the lasting legacy of the creation of an Age Friendly City (opens new window).
Our strategy was to put co-design at the heart of Sheffield’s bid and to use the campaign to collect stories from the most isolated older people across Sheffield. In just 6 weeks, we designed and delivered:
A ‘jamboree’ at Sheffield Royal Society of the Blind with various stalls, selfie booths, diary rooms, hand massage and co-design activities to collect stories from Sheffield’s most isolated older people with additional disabilities. This included vox-pop interviews carried out by our youngest community journalist, Jasmine.
We brought our infamous spoken word night ‘Words Aloud’ back for one more time. The night was entitled ‘Growing old Disgracefully’ and we filled the Queens Social Club. Older people from extra care schemes across the city were in attendance, some performing work they had created specifically for the event.
Tea parties in old people’s homes across the city.
Vox pops and in depth interviews with some of the cities’ most isolated older people captured on busses across the city.
An older people’s theatre group on tour around extra care schemes with Bridie Moore’s ‘Passages’ theatre group.
We took an older people’s theatre group on tour around SYHA’s extra schemes to stimulate discussion with residents. Pic credit, Justine Gaubert
We collected over 50 hours of stories from older people across Sheffield and our report and their stories informed the strategy and the campaign for the city, headed by the visionary Juliann Hall. We also created Sheffield’s first co-design toolkit to share our approach with other organsiations across the city to use in their organisations.
“THE QUALITY OF WHAT JUSTINE AND HER TEAM DELIVERED WAS EXCEPTIONAL AND WAS A CRITICAL FACTOR IN SECURING £6 MILLION OF BLF FUNDING FOR SHEFFIELD. BLF STATED THAT THE LEVEL OF INNOVATION ON MARKETING AND CO-DESIGN WAS ONE OF THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF OUR BID. ”