Alright, I admit it I was supposed to do two posts before the end of April but I think I can get away with doing this (in early May).


My last blog talked about the AEA conference in Ireland and I mentioned that it can be difficult to fit in my interest in later life learning with ‘the day job’. So it’s good to be able to report that since then I have been to two event that were (apparently) totally unrelated to older people but where I met different people who both shared this interest.

The first meeting took place at a meeting of a project developing ‘Learning Champions’ to encourage people to use OpenLearn resources to move from informal to informal learning. The meeting took place at Bangor University but the person I met worked with older learners at Communities First in Holyhead. The second meeting occurred at Staffordshire University where I had gone to attend a HEA event on inclusive assessment. The person organising it was a recently completed PhD student who thesis was about the role of art in later life.
It’s good to know that people are out there with these interests. I passed a copy of the regular digest produced by AEA to the first person I met and encouraged the Staffordshire colleague to join AEA.
(I’m trying to resist the temptation to encourage readers of this blog to do the same!)
Reading The Guardian on 11 April 2012 I came across this short article by Stewart Dakers: 'As an older person, I've had it good - and the young know it'. I think its conclusion is quite sad and I’m not sure that it’s warranted. But it does raise the issue of the importance of inter-generational connections in order that people see each other as primarily as individuals rather than as representing a different group or, in this case, generation.

Jonathan Hughes 04/05/12