My next post sharing a preview of colleagues' LILAC conference presentations is from Dr Pamela McKinney, about a session which be on day 2 of the conference (31st March), Digital Literacy through arts and culture activities: supporting older adults. The abstract is here. Pam writes:
This presentation will report on the findings from a small-scale pilot study that took place in Leeds in 2025 to understand how creativity can foster digital literacy and digital inclusion oin older adults. The project was led by my colleague Dr Sharon Wagg, and funded by the Arts Council.
The project team, including PhD student Laura Woods and our collaborators, 100% Digital Leeds collected data from organisations in Leeds about their approaches to supporting digital inclusion in older adults that focused on arts, culture and creativity. We discovered a really broad spread of activities, including:
- Digital art and multimedia creation e.g. digital collage, zine-making, animations, digital Christmas cards, digital embroidery
- Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality e.g history experiences on VR headsets
- Engagement with local history e.g. using the Leodis image archive for research
- Digital photography e.g. to record experiences on an excursion, or to align wth other interests e.g. gardening, walking
- Creative writing, storytelling, folklore and oral history
- Online and hybrid arts and culture activities e.g. dance and cooking.
- Digital music making
We found that a caring orientation, which focused on fun and play, was really effective for supporting digital inclusion “by stealth”. Older people told us that the support they received these organisations helped them engage more with digital tools and services in other areas of their lives. The project website has links to our report, infographic and podcast, and the toolkit developed by 100% Digital Leeds
Photo of an older man with camera, "Photography", from the Centre for Ageing Better age-positive image library
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