March 2018
We run the first full session of our one-day training programme devised and delivered jointly with the Centre for Accessible Environments. Entitled ‘Co-Design for Inclusive Placemaking of External Environments’, the programme combines theory and practice from our co-design activities and takes place in, and around, Holyer House in London.
Máire Cox attends ‘The 100 Year Life: the role of housing, planning and design’, a workshop focusing on how a design-led approach to where we live can help to prepare for the UK Government’s Grand Challenge of Ageing and Green Paper on Care for Older People.
Convened by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, Design Council and Centre for Ageing Better, the workshop brings together 40 invited participants to explore the Grand Challenge, and to generate, organise, prioritise and frame opportunities to address it.
Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP) is cited in ‘Physical Activity in Later Life: Shining a Spotlight on Social Context’. This summary report reflects back on the ESRC funded seminar series ‘New Directions in Ageing and Physical Activity: More of the Same is Not Enough’ (2015-2017) involving policy makers, health and social care practitioners, physical activity and sport providers, and people working within the voluntary sector.
February 2018
Richard Coyne’s photo of an older volunteer wearing the headset used in our Environment and affect study wins MMP first prize in the People & Skills category of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) National Science Photography Competition. Professor Tom Rodden, Deputy Chief Executive of EPSRC, said “Every year we are stunned by the quality and creativity of the entries in our competition and this year has been no exception. The images help the public engage with the research they fund, and I hope they will spark interest in science and engineering among people, young or older.”
January 2018
Press coverage of our paper in Social Science & Medicine highlights the importance of access to greenspace across the life course. The Scottish Daily Mail quotes Julie Procter, Chief Executive of Greenspace Scotland, as saying “[the research is] a key reminder of the importance of outside play for children and young people. The positive impacts of exposure to greenspace on stress and mental wellbeing are well documented. This study goes much further in demonstrating experience of green space as a child, and throughout life, has benefits in terms of ageing well”.
November 2017
Professor Jamie Pearce speaks at the Voluntary Health Scotland conference on why access to green space is a determinant for health throughout life. He draws on a number of studies by the Centre for Research on Environment Society and Health (CRESH), including the Life course of places, health & mobility element of MMP, findings from which are published (first online) in Social Science & Medicine.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson gives an invited presentation at the Urban Green Space for Health and Wellbeing conference in Stockholm. Focusing on the urban landscape as a place to flourish, specifically on green space near home and daily life, she addresses an audience of landscape architects, planners and other professionals working in Sweden and Norway.
October 2017
Co-designed proposals for age-friendly places, produced as part of MMP, go on show at Scotland House in Brussels for a fringe event celebrating the European Week of Regions and Cities 2017. Organised by the City of Utrecht, the event takes the form of a panel discussion on ‘Health at the Heart of the Urban Development Strategy’, with Professor Catharine Ward Thompson (pictured) as one of four panellists, alongside partners from Utrecht, Métropole de Lyon, the World Health Organization and DG Santé.
A guest blog by Iain Scott is published by Architecture and Design Scotland on its website and in its monthly e-newsletter. Entitled ‘Designing across the generations for age-friendly places’, the blog focuses on our first topic, Co-created environments, in which older and younger people have come together to envision places which are inclusive, enabling and inspirational.
Read Iain’s guest blog on the A&DS website
August 2017
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson writes a guest article for Scotregen, the online journal of Scotland’s Independent Regeneration Network, SURF. Responding to the theme of Community Empowerment, she focuses on the use of participatory, co-design activities in MMP, and what we’ve learned from this work about older people, regeneration and place.
Read Catharine’s article, Co-design and the Commonplace, on the SURF website
July 2017
Iain Scott runs a summer studio on the design of gerontological co-housing in the School of Architecture at Harbin Institute of Technology, where he also delivers a lecture on MMP. While in China, he visits Yuncheng University, where he delivers a further lecture on MMP and runs a seminar on walkable neighbourhoods.
Dr Katherine Brookfield presents an hour-long seminar on the role physical environments could play in supporting community reintegration following a stroke. Including a Q&A and discussion, the event is held in partnership with Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland (CHSS) and is attended by practitioners working in different roles within CHSS, with particular support for, and interest in, MMP’s findings on the value of stroke clubs.
Professor Anthea Tinker attends the 46th annual conference of the British Society of Gerontology in Swansea, UK where she presents a paper on our participatory research entitled ‘Mobility, Mood and Place: Seeking the Views of Older People on Age Friendly Environments’.
Professor Jamie Pearce, Dr Niamh Shortt and Dr Mark Cherrie participate in the 17th International Medical Geography Symposium, IMGS 2017, in Angers, France. They present two papers on our life course work in sessions on spatial justice and longitudinal health.
June 2017
We run a pilot session of a new, one-day training programme devised and delivered jointly with the Centre for Accessible Environments. Twelve participants from a range of local authorities, regional and national agencies, and private practice join us for ‘Participatory design: effective co-design and engagement’, which combines theory and practice from our co-design activities.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson and Dr Katherine Brookfield give an invited talk to around 50 members of the Wheatley Group, Scotland’s leading housing, community regeneration and care group. Sharing findings from MMP, as well as tips and techniques from our A-Z of Co-Design, the talk forms part of the Group’s regular TalkRegen series and is entitled ‘How can the design of our homes and neighbourhoods make a difference to keeping healthy and active into older age?’.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson briefs City of Edinburgh Council staff on the links between greenspace and health at a lunchtime training session. The capacity event at the Council’s headquarters is part of a series of training sessions linked to Open Space 2021, a strategy to protect, look after and expand the city’s network of green spaces for the next five years.
May 2017
Five members of the MMP team presents key findings and messages from the project to policymakers at the Scottish Government. Organised by the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services team, the invited seminar is for the benefit of colleagues across a range of policy areas, including health, the environment, built environment and transport.
Professor Anthea Tinker presents at a Silver Marque event at London Television Centre. In her talk on ‘Predicting the future needs of the 1960s baby boomers’, she stresses the importance of working collaboratively with older people, as we have done in MMP research.
Máire Cox participates in an Interface event on Tourism Innovations for an Ageing Population at Napier University, Edinburgh, where our A-Z of Co-Design is on display. Focusing on making tourist destinations more accessible across the lifecourse, the event brings together industry agencies, companies and researchers.
April 2017
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson presents at ‘Places and Spaces for Health and Wellbeing’, an Impact Engagement conference in Glasgow on the connections between health and wellbeing, place making and use of urban built landscape and open spaces, and, in Oxford, at the first meeting of the British Society of Gerontology Special Interest Group on Research on Transport and Mobility.
Professors Anthea Tinker and Catharine Ward Thompson and Dr Chris Neale present at ‘Global ageing: Challenges and opportunities’, a two-day international conference at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) co-hosted by RSM and the King’s Centre for Global Ageing. Between them, they run two workshops: Age friendly cities in a global context; and Mobility, mood and place.
Professor Jamie Pearce gives a talk at the School of Geography & Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews drawing on the third MMP topic, Life course of places, health & mobility.
March 2017
Professor Jamie Pearce presents at a meeting of the Cross Party Group on Health Inequalities at the Scottish Parliament. Addressing a session on the theme of ‘Health Inequalities and the Built Environment’, Jamie draws on research evidence from MMP and his study of tobacco and alcohol environments and influences on inequalities.
Máire Cox, Dr Mark Cherrie and Dr Steve Cinderby participate in an ARCC network event in York on key messages and findings from Lifelong Health and Wellbeing funded projects on Design for Wellbeing.
Professor Jamie Pearce travels to Simon Fraser University, Canada, as the Department of Geography and Faculty of Health Sciences’ Annual Distinguished Speaker. His talk, ‘Can a ‘lifecourse of place’ approach enhance our understanding of health, place & inequalities?’, is based on the third MMP topic, Life course of places, health & mobility.
Dr Sara Tilley presents at ‘Life events and mobilities across the life course’, the final event in the University of Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit Seminar Series 2017. Her talk, “You’ll Need a Car, Won’t You?”, is on the changing impact of life events on mobility – from childbirth to retirement.
February 2017
Dr Katherine Brookfield and Iain Scott attend the Age UK’s annual For Later Life conference in London to participate in discussions on the theme of ‘creating a culture of wellbeing’ and share outputs from our research, including our A-Z of Co-Design.
MMP enters a new phase, in which findings and key messages are being shared with audiences in policy, practice, communities, and the not-for-profit sector to drive forward change in age-friendly approaches to place. These year-long activities are funded by an Impact Acceleration Award (IAA) from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
January 2017
Over seventy guests join us for an evening reception at the House of Lords to celebrate the end of the research phase of Mobility, Mood and Place and the start of a year of impact-focused activity. We are honoured to be joined by Baroness Greengross, who talks about the importance of our work in her speech, and to share our research with partners and representatives from industry, policy and the not-for-profit sector.
Baroness Greengross addressing guests at our evening reception at the House of Lords.
December 2016
Researchers working on our second topic, Environment and affect, participate in a five-day Neuro-Urbanism Workshop at the University of Virginia, USA. As well as leading the capacity-building workshop on the application of mobile neuroimaging techniques in environmental research, Dr Chris Neale and Panos Mavros give public lectures, while Professor Jenny Roe wraps up the event with a talk on workshop outcomes and applications for future research.
Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley present MMP in a multi-sensory design showcase on creating healthier public spaces. The interactive exhibition forms part of the final event in the ‘Feeling Good in Public Spaces’ series co-hosted by the ARCC Network and Feeling Good Foundation; Máire Cox spoke at the fifth event in the series in May 2016.
November 2016
Professors Catharine Ward Thompson and Jamie Pearce speak at ‘Mental Health and Architecture’, a pre-conference workshop organised by the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) Section on Public Mental Health in advance of the ninth European Public Health Conference in Vienna, Austria.
Professor Anthea Tinker speaks to mayors from across Europe at the Mayor of London’s international conference on ‘Building better integrated, more cohesive communities’ . Drawing on MMP, and her related research on an Age Friendly London, she talks in the policy session on ‘Creating new city spaces for bridging generational and social divides’.
Dr Sara Tilley speaks at Spaces & Flows, the seventh International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
October 2016
We welcome 100 delegates to our international conference in Edinburgh. Over the course of 54 presentations, including three keynotes and four plenaries, we hear from established and early career researchers, as well as collaborators and co-designers who work outside of academia, for example in national and local government, industry and the not-for-profit sector. The final day takes us out of the conference centre to a range of sites and resources around Edinburgh, with our delegates joining students and local older people in workshops on ‘designing for dementia’, ‘urban brainwear’ and ‘places, then and now’.
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) publishes POSTnote 539 on Creating Age-Friendly Cities. Mobility, Mood and Place team members were interviewed for, and peer reviewed, the note, and the project is cited in the sections on Housing and Involving Older People in the Design of Cities.
Iain Scott presents our work on Co-created environments at the annual Scottish Government- supported Scottish Housing and Support Conference in Edinburgh. Co-designed by service users and providers, the event is themed ‘Your community, your future’ and is attended by stakeholders from housing, health, social work and the voluntary sector.
September 2016
Máire Cox attends Scotland’s first National Loneliness Summit in Edinburgh, exhibiting MMP and other projects led by OPENspace which explore the role that well-designed environments have to play in addressing social isolation.
Professor Jamie Pearce and Dr Sara Tilley present a paper on MMP at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers in London. ‘Living in the moment or experiences of a lifetime? ‘ covers all aspects of our research, considering environmental influences past, present and future on mobility in older age.
Professor Anthea Tinker presents a paper on our work on involving older people in the design of environments at the ISG’s 10th World Conference of Gerontechnology in Nice, France. At the same event, she gives a keynote speech on her related research on London as an Age-friendly City. The proceedings from the conference are later published in a supplement in Gerontechnology (2016, vol 1).
August 2016
Dr Steve Cinderby presents a paper on our Environment and affect research at the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers and talks about the project at the associated ‘research into policy’ event co-hosted by the Transport Geography Research Group and UK Department for Transport (DfT).
July 2016
We launch our A-Z of Co-Design and MMP exhibition at the 45th Annual Conference of the British Society of Gerontology at the University of Stirling. At the same event, Professor Catharine Ward Thompson gives a plenary presentation, Professor Anthea Tinker chairs a session on Quality of Life and presents a number of papers, Dr Sara Tilley and Dr Chris Neale present on our Environment and Affect topic, and Iain Scott and former students deliver a co-design workshop.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson and Máire Cox attend the opening of the new Centre for Dementia Prevention at the University of Edinburgh. As exhibitors at the event, they have the chance to talk to HRH The Princess Royal about MMP and other research by OPENspace.
June 2016
Our commentary piece, Informal Science Learning for Older Adults, is published first online in Science Communication. Based on our experiences of developing and delivering the Habitats for Happy Ageing programme in spring 2015, the paper considers successes, challenges and audience reception, with selected recommendations for future science festival-type events aimed exclusively at older people.
May 2016
Iain Scott presents on our first topic, Co-created environments, at the third ‘Challenges and Best Practice in Co-production’ conference at the University of Sheffield, sharing insights from our three years of co-design work with Edinburgh College of Art students and older people in Manchester, London and Orkney.
Dr Sara Tilley presents on our second topic, Environment and affect, at the annual Scottish Transport Applications and Research Conference. Her paper is entitled ‘Mobility and transport choices in older adults: the role of emotional interactions with place’.
Professor Anthea Tinker talks about co-design with older people in her plenary presentation to the Housing and Long Term Care: A challenge for Europe conference hosted by The European Federation for Living in Helsinki, Finland.
Máire Cox presents at Sensing Through Impairments, the fifth event in the ‘Feeling Good in Public Spaces’ series co-hosted by the ARCC Network and Feeling Good Foundation.
While in London, Máire also meets with the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology to discuss its Briefing Note on Age-friendly Cities, and the Director of the Centre for Accessible Environments to discuss training and publication opportunities.
April 2016
Professor Anthea Tinker speaks at a meeting organised by the network organisation, Silver Marque, which engages industry with the latest thinking and practice on the over ’50s market.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson participates in a Government Office for Science ‘Foresight’ workshop on the Future of an Ageing Population.
Dr Chris Neale demonstrates our EEG research at the 9th Windsor Conference, a gathering of experts interested in using comfort expertise to design buildings that are genuinely low energy, comfortable and sustainable.
March 2016
Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley speak at the American Association of Geographers’ Annual Meeting in San Francisco, USA. Chaired by Weiqiang Lin of the National University of Singapore, their session is the first in a series of paper-led sessions on Seniors’ Mobilities: Meanings, Affects and Drivers.
Máire Cox attends the Policy Forum for Northern Ireland Keynote Seminar on Improving Care for Older People in Northern Ireland and speaks at showcase for Say Hello to Architecture, Architecture and Design Scotland’s contribution to the Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design 2016.
Professor Anthea Tinker presents cases studies on MMP, and her work on Age-friendly London, at Urban Health, the inaugural Social Science Health and Medicine Undergraduate Research Showcase at King’s College London.
February 2016
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson is appointed an Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health (CEHH) for a three year term. The Centre is based within the Medical School at the University of Exeter.
Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley attend ALR2016, the Active Living Research Annual Conference in Florida, USA. Reporting on Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP), they deliver two of the three papers in the session on older adults; only 20 academics papers were accepted to the conference overall (in addition to 20 by practitioners).
US blogger, Elizabeth Housley, publishes an interview with MMP team members, Dr Katherine Brookfield and Iain Scott on Nature Sacred’s Open Voices Blog. Primarily focusing on our first topic, Co-created environments, the interview includes the researchers’ insights into the co-design process.
January 2016
We visit the Northern Scottish islands of Orkney to hold two days of co-design activities. Over 30 people participate, including undergraduate Architecture and Landscape Architecture students from Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), and local older people. Activities include a hands-on, five-hour design workshop, site visits, and a two-hour coffee morning. The events are promoted in The Orcadian, Iain Scott is interviewed on BBC Radio Orkney, and researchers Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley record a fifteen minute podcast on what makes a place age-friendly for Orkney Podcasts.
MMP team member, Professor Richard Coyne, publishes his new book Mood and Mobility: Navigating the Emotional Spaces of Digital Social Networks (MIT Press). Jeff Malpas (University of Tasmania) describes it as “A highly original work … accessible and relevant across a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.”
December 2015
Mary Craig attends the launch of the Covenant on Demographic Change at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels. Building on the outcomes of the Thematic Network, AFE-INNOVNET, the Covenant brings together local, regional and national authorities, and other stakeholders, to voluntarily commit to making age-friendly environments a reality.
November 2015
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson presents evidence on urban green spaces and health to the World Health Organization European Environment and Health Task Force (EHTF), the leading international body for implementation and monitoring of the European Environment and Health Process.
Her presentation frames the issue within the wider context of, for example, demographic change and is followed by a discussion on the formulation of policy goals and political commitments in this area.
Professors Jamie Pearce and Ian Deary give keynote presentations at the Faculty of Public Health Scottish Conference, ‘Securing Scotland’s Health’, in Perthshire.
Jamie’s talk is entitled Space, Place and Health Inequalities in Scotland: Securing an
Equitable Future; Ian’s is entitled The Epidemiology of Cognitive Ageing: What Public Health Needs to Know?.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson speaks at the EUROCITIES 2015 conference in Copenhagen / Malmo, bringing a focus on the pedestrian environment to a roundtable on urban mobility.
Máire Cox also attends the conference, at which the City of Edinburgh wins a EUROCITIES award for community participation in making the city more attractive and sustainable.
Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley speak at the fourth international City Health Conference in Barcelona, with Katherine presenting our research in a parallel session on Urban Health, mobility and accessibility.
While in Barcelona, the researchers also visit MMP Advisory Group member, Francesc Aragall, President and Founder of the Design for All Foundation.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson presents our research at the House of Lords as part of a Design Commission Inquiry evidence session on the relationship between the Built Environment and Behaviour. The session focuses on Neighbourhoods and Housing.
Professor Anthea Tinker and Máire Cox attend a one-day conference, organised by the British Society of Gerontology, on the ‘Future of Ageing Research’.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson presents at the European Conference on Biodiversity and Climate Change in Bonn. The theme of the event is nature-based solutions to the challenges presented by climate change in both urban and rural areas, with a particular focus on linkages between science, policy and practice.
Máire Cox attends the Access Association’s seminar on ‘Raising Standards in Inclusive Design’ at Leeds City Museum.
October 2015
Professor Anthea Tinker attends the launch of the World Health Organization World Report on Ageing and Health 2015 at the Royal Society in London. Later in the month, she presents on MMP at Later Life: the Art and the Science, an evening meeting of the Geriatrics & Gerontology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine which she also co-organises.
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson speaks at the Society for all Ages III: Environment for Ageing conference in Moscow. She participates in the panel discussion on ‘Community Space: Adapting Urban and Rural Environments for Ageing People’ moderated by Alexander Zmeul, Editor-in-Chief of archspeech and Director of The Changes Agency.
The OPENspace research centre responds to a Call for Written Evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, drawing on research from Mobility, Mood and Place and earlier project, Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors (I’DGO).
Dr Katherine Brookfield presents research findings from our first paper, The home as enabler of more active lifestyles among older people (open access), at the launch of the Building Research & Information (BRI) Special Issue on Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour & the Indoor Built Environment. Invited guests from the research community, built environment professionals and the health policy communities discuss research and policy linking the built environment to public health and other outcomes.
Professor Anthea Tinker speaks at a seminar organised by Cluid Housing, Ireland’s largest Housing Association, in Dublin. She presents a paper on Housing and Older People and participates in a Q&A session with, among toehr panellists, Kathleen Lynch T.D, Minister of State at the Department of Health with special responsibility for Primary Care, Social Care (Disabilities and Older People) and Mental Health.
Mary Craig attends a meeting of the Age Platform Europe UK Network in London, which focuses on the question, Does the EU benefit older people in the UK?
September 2015
Professor Richard Coyne presents at the 2015 Digital Humanities Autumn School hosted by Trier University in Germany as part of the International Digital Humanities Training Network. His talk on Digital Moods; the place of emotion in digital networks includes a discussion of our second research topic, Environment and affect.
MMP Study Manager, Dr Katherine Brookfield, presents at Wellbeing by Design, a conference on creativity and collaboration in practice-based inquiry. Based on our first topic of research, Co-Created environments, her presentation is entitled ‘co-designing age-friendly environments with older adults and designers-in-training: successes, challenges and lessons’.
The three-day event is organised by the Institute of Design Innovation at Glasgow School of Art in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and takes place at Horizon Scotland in Moray. Katherine also attends the 2015 UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference at London South Bank University.
Illustration by Giulia Fiorista
Professor Catharine Ward Thompson presents at the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology’s 8th Annual Research Day in Edinburgh (#ccace15), hosted by MMP Co-investigator, Professor Ian Deary. The presentation focuses on how we are using data from the Lothian Birth Cohort of 1936 in Mobility, Mood and Place, specifically in our epidemiological Life courses study.
August 2015
MMP researcher, Dr Jenny Roe, joins the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, USA, as the first ‘Mary Irene DeShong Professor of Design and Health’. Established in 2012 through an anonymous two million dollar gift, the professorship is intended to “integrate design excellence with rigorous scientific research to promote and create effective, just and economically feasible environments for human health at a variety of scales”.
Jenny will continue in her role on MMP, with support from University of York colleagues, Dr Steve Cinderby and Dr Chris Neale.
July 2015
Professor Jamie Pearce presents at IMGS 2015, the 16th International Medical Geography Symposium, at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His presentation, Life course, place and health: incorporating place into life course epidemiology, which focuses on our third research topic, is part of the symposium session on Future Directions in Health Geography.
Catherine Tisch presents at a networking meeting for researchers working with GIS (geographic information systems) organised by the European Historical Population Samples (EHPS) Network. Her presentation is on our epidemiological Life courses study , specifically on how we are using GIS to integrate longitudinal environmental measures with Scottish cohort data.
Dr Sara Tilley is awarded an Early Career Researcher place by the Society of Social Medicine to attend the 1st International Conference on Transport and Health at University College London.
June 2015
The MMP Study Manager, Dr Katherine Brookfield, presents at the AGM of the Scottish Parliament Cross-Party Group (CPG) on Older People, Age And Ageing. Convened by Sandra White MSP, the purpose of this CPG is to help the Scottish Parliament address the challenges of an ageing population and provide its elected members, together with partners from a range of external organisations, with a source of information and expertise on issues of age.
We publish our first paper based on interview and focus group data collected from 22 older adults during our first two years of co-design work. Entitled The home as enabler of more active lifestyles among older people, it addresses the previously under-studied area of the home’s role in the active and sedentary behaviours of the older population. The paper is published online by Taylor & Francis in “Building Research & Information”.
The Masters of Architecture (MArch) students working on Topic 1 present their co-creative design work during the annual ECA Degree Show, a celebration of the work of more than 430 graduating students. Exhibits include models, drawings and other work based on fieldtrips and design reviews with older people in Hackney Wick, London.
Professor Anthea Tinker participates in an Expert Workshop on Embracing London’s Ageing Population in Neighbourhood Centres and Town Centres organised by the Mayor’s Design Advisory Group. Facilitated by New London Architecture, the session is organised around a series of six questions, with discussion chaired by architect, Stephen Witherford.
Mary Craig attends The Public Sector Show 2015; the largest event of its kind, designed specifically to address the issues and challenges that the public sector currently faces. She attends sessions on Collaborating to create better local services, How public sector buildings and social housing can benefit from the RHI, Creating better local services and stronger communities, and an IN FOCUS session on the Durham Ask project.
May 2015
Professor Anthea Tinker visits Australia as part of a joint project with the University of Adelaide, funded by the Australian Research Council, on older people’s social connections. While there, she talks about MMP to policymakers, NGOs, gerontologists and service providers at a range of seminars and discussion platforms in Perth (Western Australia) and Adelaide (South Australia).
Dr Chris Neale presents at the 46th Annual Conference of the Environmental Design Research Association, EDRA46, in Los Angeles, California. His presentation, Mobility, Mood and Place: Understanding the role of the environment on brain activity, takes place as part of the EDRAShorts session in which presenters have six minutes to describe their research and answer questions.
MMP researcher, Dr Jenny Roe, is invited on to the Kaye Adams show on BBC Radio Scotland to talk about green health and behavioural change.
Dr Katherine Brookfield presents findings from Topic 1 of the project, based on interview and focus group data collected from 22 older adults, to postgraduate research students at Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) as part of the Prokalo seminar series.
We welcome a new Administration Assistant to the team to work for a six month period on our research into Life course of places, health and mobility. Caroline Lancaster will be transcribing historical address and occupation information from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (and archival material) which will help us build up a picture of how environments have changed in Edinburgh over the past 100 years.
Dr Sara Tilley is invited to be part of the expert working group, ‘A Square Go at Cities’. This new initiative by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) aims to promote the development of public realm and cultural infrastructure spaces in Scotland’s cities. The group meets for the first time this month and will report early next year.
April 2015
Professors Catharine Ward Thompson and Anthea Tinker speak at the eighth European Region congress of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) in Dublin, Éire.
Dr Katherine Brookfield leads a Co-Design Lab on involving all generations in co-design at an Age of No Retirement event in the People’s History Museum, Manchester. She also participates in a session on the role of the designer as an agent for community change.
We participate in the official programme of the Edinburgh International Science Festival by running the second of our ‘Habitats for Happy Ageing‘ events and announcing the winners of our photography competition.
MMP researchers, Dr Katherine Brookfield, Dr Sara Tilley and Catherine Tisch, present on our progress to date at a Design for Wellbeing workshop organised by the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing-funded study, cycleBOOM. Focusing on methods for understanding older mobilities, the workshop is funded by the British Society of Gerontology (BSG) and takes place at Oxford Brookes University.
We welcome two new Research Assistants to the team to work for a fourth month period on our research into Environment and affect. Dr Esther Rind is a Health Geographer; Agnes Patuano is a PhD candidate in Landscape Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art.
Máire Cox participates in a workshop on signage and wayfinding in dementia environments hosted by the School of Health in Social Science at the University of Edinburgh.
March 2015
We hold the first of our ‘Habitats for Happy Ageing‘ events (pictured below) on 20th March, the UN International Day of Happiness. The event features talks by Neil Thin and Val Bissland and is attended by around 40 people, most aged 65 or over. The mix of presentations, demonstrations and exhibitions is incredibly well received, with 91% of people rating the event as enjoyable and useful. Held during Brain Awareness Week, the programme is covered by STV Edinburgh and by Maverick TV, media partner of Living It Up Scotland.
Image © Ben Shmulevitch
MMP Co-investigator, Professor Anthea Tinker, participates in The Guardian: Society’s live online discussion, How can we build a better society for older people?.
MMP Principal Investigator, Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, participates as one of three expert discussants in Routledge’s free webinar on the potential of landscape design to improve health. Watch a recording of the webinar.
Máire Cox attends Public Wisdom, a symposium by Cubbitt Education on ageing, creativity and the public realm, and meets with Nicola Mathers of The Design Council / CABE.
February 2015
We host Harvard University’s Professor Ichiro Kawachi, an expert on social capital and health, for a two-day visit to Edinburgh. An International Expert Advisor to Mobility, Mood and Place, Professor Kawachi participates in our regular Advisory Group and Academic Management Group meetings, gives a seminar on the publishing process for PhD students and early career researchers (with Jamie Pearce), and gives a free public lecture (which you can now watch online) to 200 people at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).
Five researchers from the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University (SNU) visit MMP researchers in Edinburgh to discuss co-creative design and multidisciplinary research on environments for ageing. Led by Professor Jongsang Sung, Chair of the Korea Institute of Ecological Architecture and Environment, the group also includes Young Ran Tak who, in addition to being a doctoral candidate in Landscape Architecture at SNU, is a Professor in the College of Nursing at Hanyang University.
Research Associate, Dr Sara Tilley, speaks at the Future of Cities event hosted by Prospect Magazine, in association with the Government Office for Science, at The Lighthouse in Glasgow. One of four events in four different UK cities, the discussion centres on what needs the UK’s cities have for future growth and which partnerships can bring them to fruition. Joining Sara on the panel are Sir Mark Walport, UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Alan Wilson, Professor of Urban and Regional Systems at UCL, and Kevin Murray, Director of Kevin Murray Associates and Honorary Professor of Planning at the University of Glasgow.
Mobility, Mood and Place (MMP) is cited in an international survey carried out on behalf of the French Laboratory for Inclusive Mobility founded by Wimoov and Total. The survey, which is published in full online (in French) compares French challenges and initiatives with those developed in other countries.
The Co-creative environments team return to The White Building in East London to publicly exhibit design work by architecture and landscape architecture students for older people to visit and critique. The designs have been produced over the past four months, following two days of site visits and interactive activities with older people in Hackney in October 2014.
MMP team members, Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, Dr Sara Tilley and Dr Katherine Brookfield, are awarded a Knowledge Exchange and Impact Grant from the College of Humanities and Social Science (CHSS) at the University of Edinburgh for Habitats for Happy Ageing, a project to engage older people in environmental psychology through science festivals. Two events are planned: one on UN International Day of Happiness (20th March 2015); and one on 8th April 2015 as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
Professor Jamie Pearce gives a talk to Edinburgh’s local history society, The Old Edinburgh Club, on environmental conditions and public health in Edinburgh over the past 100 years.
January 2015
MMP Principal Investigator, Professor Catharine Ward Thompson, chairs a Q&A session at ‘Sustainable cities – Looking to the future’, a sell-out panel discussion with Cambridge University Professors Doug Crawford-Brown, Koen Steemers and Peter Guthrie. Held at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, the event is organised by the Cambridge Forum for Sustainability and the Environment.
MMP team members, Dr Katherine Brookfield and Dr Sara Tilley, attend a Science & Medicine in Sport & Physical Activity Research networking event hosted by colleagues in the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAHRC) at the University of Edinburgh.
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