Late-life Creativity and the 'new old age': Arts & Humanities and Gerontology in Critical Dialogue

英国的人口正在老龄化，这一人口趋势为我们的社会和知识经济带来了挑战和机遇。我们认为，一个关键的话题是创造力，特别是晚年的创造力。我们的主要问题是：什么是“晚年创造力”？我们该如何定义它？它与生命早期阶段的创造力有什么不同？我们将探讨这些问题，汇集在艺术和人文和关键老年学的学者，沿着与创意艺术家和表演者，社会护理从业者，和老年人。该网络将由四个主题研讨会塑造，重点是：身份和纪律;“晚期风格”;记忆;和社区。近年来，老年学家探索了晚年生活的新生活方式及其对理解社区和福祉的影响;而在文学和戏剧，艺术史和音乐，有一个关键的重点，对老年的共同理解的局限性，在评估晚年的创造性产出-有，例如，一直在稳步增长的兴趣，思想的'晚风格'，也就是说，在这方面，我们的工作是研究作家、艺术家或作曲家的最终作品之间的关系，这些作品的风格与他们早期作品的关系，以及他们在老年和/或接近死亡时的创造力的实用性--在回忆戏剧中，从业者与不同世代的人合作，创造对过去和晚年创造力的新理解。这些不同的研究和创造模式都致力于类似的目的，但并行不悖，而且令人沮丧地彼此脱节。该网络的重点是将他们聚集在一起，这样对晚年创造力的新理解将从批判性对话中产生，并将能够跨越边界。我们的建议为艺术和人文学者提供了一个机会，既可以影响老年学的政策和实践，也可以从老年学研究的传统中学习，该组织一直致力于将想法转化为旨在加强社会包容的行动。因此，我们建议的对话不仅包括这两个领域的学者，而且包括作家、表演者、参与创造性活动的老年人以及参与养老护理理论和实践的人。所提出的想法将转化为可以广泛理解的成果，并有助于形成未来的跨学科研究和政策思维。这反过来，我们相信，将有助于创造新的开口，他的参与与晚年生活，特别是与晚年的创造力，无论是在研究和实践中。

The UK's population is ageing, and this demographic trend poses challenges and opportunities for our societies and the knowledge economies that serve them. A key topic, we believe, is creativity and specifically late-life creativity. Our primary set of questions is: what is 'late-life creativity'? How might we define it? And in what ways is it different from creativity at earlier phases of life? We will explore these questions by bringing together scholars in arts and humanities and in critical gerontology, along with creative artists and performers, social care practitioners, and older people. The network will be shaped by four themed workshops focused on: identity and discipline; 'late style'; memory; and community. In recent years, gerontologists have explored new lifestyles in later life and their implications for understanding community and well-being; while in literature and theatre, art history, and music, there has been a critical focus on the limitations of common understandings of old age in the assessment of late-life creative output - there has, for instance, been a steadily growing interest in ideas of 'late style', that is, of the relationship between writers', artists' or composers' final works, the style of those works in relation to their earlier output, and the practicalities of their creativity in old age and/or the proximity of death - and, in reminiscence theatre, practitioners have worked with people across different generations to create new understandings of the past and of late-life creativity. These different modes of research and creativity have worked to similar ends but in parallel and rather frustratingly out of contact with each other. The point of the proposed network is to bring them together, so that new understandings of late-life creativity will emerge from critical dialogue and will be able to cross boundaries.Our proposal represents an opportunity for arts & humanities scholars both to influence policy and practice in gerontology and to learn from the traditions of gerontological research, which has always sought to translate ideas into actions designed to enhance social inclusion. For this reason, the dialogues we propose will include not only academics in the two fields but writers, performers, older people involved in creative activity and those involved in the theory and practice of old-age care. The ideas developed will be translated into outcomes that can be widely understood and help give shape to future interdisciplinary research and policy thinking. This, in turn, we believe, will help create new openings for HE's engagement with later life and specifically with late-life creativity, both in research and in practice.