Adult seniors awareness on Active Ageing: connecting Cultural Heritage with elders empowering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Adult seniors awareness on Active Ageing: connecting Cultural Heritage with elders empowering

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Context/background of the project
Active ageing helps people to stay in charge of their own lives for as long as possible as they age and to contribute to the economy and society. Some advances in active ageing have been performed during last years, but the awareness of adults still has room for improvement. European Cultural Heritage enhances tangible, intangible and natural richness of Europe and elderly people can play a key role in its preservation and promotion. However, specific use of European Cultural Heritage to promote active ageing is currently missing in other research projects. So, additional efforts must be performed to recognise the highly valuable knowledge and experience of elders in this field and to encourage elderly people empowerment and social recognition. On the other hand, to boost the elders’ implication on awareness activities related to its age process and learn how to understand and assimilate ageing, some digital competences should be enhanced in other in order to reach more European citizens.

Objectives
The aim of this project was to interrelate both European Cultural Heritage and active ageing, by 1) involving older adults in choosing the most important traditions and cultural values, 2) developing the awareness messages and 3) promoting and spreading in society the developed messages. In this sense, elders will be able to actively promote Cultural Heritage at the same time they understand the importance of active ageing.

Number and type/profile of participants
More than 5000 people have been reached during the project lifetime. Most of them were older adults (as the main target group), but also adults and youngers.

Description of undertaken activities and results
In the AGEment project, a European Cultural Heritage catalogue for the awareness of Active Ageing has been developed, including a collection of videos within different cultural heritage and active ageing areas. For the creation of the videos, semi-structured interviews with older adults were conducted to gather information on Intangible Cultural Heritage, active aging, and quality of life. After analysing the interviews performed to several older adults in the countries of each partner, the following Intangible Cultural Heritage practical cases have been selected: Heraldry, Handicraft, Dance, Folklore and traditional festivals, Classical literature, Painting and poetry, Women’s empowerment, Bread – Rites and traditions, Crafts in Gonçalo village, Călușul, and European identity. As a result, 28 videos have been produced in the different categories of intangible cultural heritage, which have subtitles in the languages of all partners of the project (Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese) and in English, as well as descriptive metadata. Another important result is the design of an app for the dissemination of the material created to raise awareness on Active Ageing, both for mobile Smartphones and SmartTVs. All contents of the app were organized according to the selected European cultural heritage areas and multimedia material (mainly videos in which the old adults were themselves the protagonists revealing their experiences and knowledge related to concepts of active ageing) were labelled in accordance to facilitate their consultation. Based on the identified requirements, the app has been designed for Smartphone and SmartTV devices, and can be freely downloaded from the Google Play Store. They have all content in the languages of all partners of the project (Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese) and in English.

Impact attained
AGEment project has a great external impact. Due to the lack of Cultural Heritage media devoted currently to promote Ageing Literacy, the AGEment results will improve general comprehension of the ageing process but getting closer of European sense of citizen. Additionally, digital competences have been reinforced and stimulated by means of user-adapted ICT solutions. Finally, involving elders in the whole creation process has empowered their self-esteem and even their social perception.

Longer-term benefits
The developed material can be easily consulted since it is available through different digital tools (apps and webpage). It uses multimedia content with high motivational content thanks to the relationship between European cultural heritage and the promotion of well-being in the adult age. Such content, delivered through digital tools, can be attractive either for older adults, young and middle-aged adults. In this sense, the materials can be seen by younger adults and influenced them to adopt behaviours that promote healthy and active ageing and simultaneously increase their awareness to preserve the European Cultural Heritage. Thus, the developed apps can have long-term benefits for society. Moreover, the apps were developed to allow the integration of new materials, maintaining the audience motivated to new information on active ageing and cultural heritage.

Project Website

https://agement-project.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 180119 Eur

Project Coordinator

FUNDACION CENTRO DE CIRUGIA DE MINIMA INVASION JESUS USON & Country: ES

Project Partners

• CENTRO SPORTIVO EDUCATIVO NAZIONALE
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DA GUARDA
• Fundatia GERON