Different ways of experiencing Take Five to Age Well - Ageing Well Public Series 2025/26

Join us for Talk 7– Different ways of experiencing Take Five to Age Well via Haringey Experiential Festival and offline pledging with Age Scotland.

Part One - In this session, Doug and colleagues will share learning from their experiences working with older people directly in the community, to age well. Continuously, the Age Scotland, with Doug as Lead, have been supporting offline access to Take Five to Age Well and worked with diverse groups of participants across the rural Scotland. Offline pledging explored how older people benefit from peer support and group facilitators while using primarily paper-based resources to enable participation by those who prefer or require alternatives to digital engagement.

The Speakers

Doug Anthoney is Health and Wellbeing Manager with Age Scotland, Scotland’s national older people’s charity. His role is to develop messages and resources that engage and empower people to age well, working with older people directly, and with professionals and volunteers that support them. Doug has worked closely with the Open University Take Five to Age Well team throughout the development of the challenge. In Scotland he piloted delivery of the challenge to older people in community group settings, where they can benefit from peer support, using primarily paper-based resources to enable participation by those who prefer or require alternatives to digital engagement.

Part Two - Ashley and her colleague will present on how services in London Borough of Haringey worked in partnership to create an Age Well Experiential Festival inspired by the Open University ‘Five Pillars for Ageing Well’ and Take Five to Age Well, to promote the importance of healthy ageing and support diverse communities with improving their lifestyle choices. They will discuss why there is a need to engage people in conversations about their wellbeing and why new methods of communicating are needed in communities where trust may have been broken. Supporting the fact that older people are Valuable NOT necessarily Vulnerable!

Ashley Grey has worked for the past 7 years, as a Community Connector with Reach and Connect (a support service for people age 50+) which is commissioned by Haringey Council. She has had a rewarding 45 years’ career in community development – including 10 years as Head of Development in Haringey’s Leisure Service, 15 years as Head of Community Development in Islington Secondary Schools, 10 years in Arts Management of Theatre companies such as GRAEAE, one of the first theatre companies for and run by performers with physical disabilities. She has lived in Tottenham for 38 years and one of her proudest achievements is setting up The Antwerp Arms, north London’s first community owned pub!