Call for student applications: GUSEGG

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ACT is sponsoring a module on ageing, communication and technologies as part of the Graz International Summer School Seggau (GUSEGG), to be held in July 2017 and organized by the University of Graz.
This year the module focusses on (Re)configuring Age and Ageing: Critical Mediations in Critical Times, and is taught by ACT researchers Line Grenier and David Madden. ACT will partially fund up to five graduate students to attend the school, and specifically cover costs pertaining to tuition and boarding. You can learn more about the GUSEGG here, and the module on ageing here. More information about ACT’s involvement in the school from 2015 (including a great video “trailer” produced during the summer school) can be found here.

This opportunity is open to ACT-affiliated students who have not had the chance to participate in the school. Interested students need to apply to ACT. Applications should be sent to application@actproject.ca by April 12, 2017 and should include:

1) a 500-word letter on the student’s motivation to attend Graz International Summer School Seggau 2017 and why the topic of the lectures and seminar model is of value to them. The student should especially explain how their research fits within ACT and how they will benefit from courses in the module of (Re)configuring Age and Ageing: Critical Mediations in Critical Times.

2) A C.V.

3) The ACT student support form signed by a co-applicant or collaborator (form attached)

Successful candidates will be asked to provide more information to the GUSEGG, including academic transcripts and a copy of their passports.

End of fieldwork for Smartwatches, adoption(s) and appropriation(s)

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The team for the ACT-funded research project Smartwatches, adoption(s) and appropriations(s) has recently completed one year of fieldwork.

The fieldwork extended from Winter 2015/16 to  Winter 2016/17. During this amazing period we conducted bi.monthly semi-structured interviews with participants, and performed a usability test. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and we are now analyzing them to bring the results into discussion in conferences, and to publish journal articles.

The project involved nine participants: five in Barcelona (three women, two men), four in Rome (one woman, three men). With ages between 65 and 80 at the beginning of the study, the average age was 71.1 years old. We provided participants with a smartwatch: they could choose from among the Moto G 360 models available on the market during the recruitment process.

The project is led by ACT co-applicant Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol of Open University of Catalonia’s (OUC) IN3 in Barcelona, and includes other ACT members Francesca Comunello of Lumsa University in Rome, Simone Mulargia of Sapienza University of Rome and Núria Ferran-Ferrer of OUC.

RECAA-ACT Pop Up Restaurant

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Ressources ethnoculturelles contre l’abus envers les aîné(e)s (RECAA) and ACT invite you to their POP-UP Restaurant at Place Commune on March 25th, from 12pm to 2pm in Montreal.

This event is part of a food blog project, Food Talks, À table with RECAA and friends, developed in partnership with ACT. The project has unfolded through four main types of activities: cooking sessions and food forums that invite conversation, participation and inclusion; intergenerational digital skills workshops that focus on the skills required to write blog posts (photography, audio and writing workshops); the production and publication of blog posts and printed promotional cards; and cooking and eating events with partners and friends to favour discussion and raise awareness through community about RECAA’s concerns and mandate. Through this food blog project, RECAA, as an activist organization, strives to develop agency within a contemporary “food culture”.

Come to enjoy recipes from our food blog at foodtalks.recaa.ca and find out more about the project on the ACT project page.

Where: 7669 Querbes, Parc Extension – Wheelchair accessible (Metro Parc, 80 Bus)

When: Brunch will be served on March 25th, from 12pm to 2pm

How much: $8 for a plate; $2 for tea/coffee

ACT members on CKUT radio in Montreal

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ACT members will be alongside partners Respecting Elders Communities against Abuse (RECAA) on the Older Women Live (OWL) radio programme on CKUT in Montreal. They will discuss the recent food blog project, and will talk about the longstanding collaboration between ACT and RECAA that spans creative and research projects. Listen in on Wednesday, March 8 at 6pm on CKUT (90.3) in Montreal.

ACT at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference

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Join us later this week, as several members of ACT present at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference as part of panels organized by NWSA’s Caucus on Ageing and Ageism. The conference is being held from November 10th to 13th at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. The full conference program is available here.

 

PANEL I: Unsettling the Linear Logic of Age: Narrating Complexity in Later Life (Friday, November 11, 11am – 12:15pm)

Captives of Care: Margaret Atwood’s “Torching the Dusties”
Ulla Kriebernegg, University of Graz

This paper analyses Margaret Atwood’s short story “Torching the Dusties” as a representation of the fourth age as exile. In Atwood’s story, in which a violent anti-elderly mob sets out to burn down nursing homes, the care home as a space of exclusion is a spatial metaphor for the experience associated with old age. A metaphorical reading of such narratives can take us from the concrete to the abstract level, and allow us to think about life on a radical and existential level, leading us to ask the question whether there is an “ideal place” to live and grow old.

 

PANEL II: Re-Imagining Aging: Creativity in Later Life (Saturday, November 12, 1:45 – 3:00 pm)

Resistance of the Gaze: Women’s Self-Im/Aging
Magdalena Olszanowski, Concordia University

Our ostensibly ubiquitous image-based technology culture is an affront to the aging population. Its image/inary of older women depends on lack of access to technologies for these women and their hyper-invisibility (Meagher 2014). What tactics are women using to resist this ageist culture? For this presentation, I will foreground the multiplicity and incoherence of the gaze by asking how aging women challenge conventional patterns of looking and subsequently demonstrate pleasure in being looked at via image-based technologies. I will use two examples: 1) the feminist resistance of aging self-imaging artists 2) feminist activist imaging work with elders in Montreal.

 

From PAR to CARR: Media-making and the Art of Activist Ageing
Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University

This paper explores media-making with communities of older adults and institutions (public libraries, social housing groups, and activist organizations) in Montreal to re-imagine what it means to age as an activist in a digitally networked society. Drawing on feminist methods for community engagement through the arts (Cohen-Cruz 2006), PAR/participatory action research (Blair and Minkler 2009) I build on Virginia Eubanks’ CARR or Collaborative Action and Reflection Research (Eubanks 2011) and add “creative” as an essential element to her methodological reflections.

 

PANEL III: Borders of Belonging in Later Life: Old Age in Indigenous, Minority, and Resistant Communities (Sunday, November 13, 8:00 – 9:15 am)

Ageing Across Species Boundaries
Constance Lafontaine, Concordia University & David Madden, Concordia University 

Our paper seeks to emphasize the multiplicity and the connectedness of ageing bodies and life courses by conducting interviews with older women in Montreal, Quebec who share their lives with cats. We seek to explore and vex the notion of “cat ladies,” a term that connotes an older single woman who shares her life with a multiplicity of cats, but a term that also entails the dismissal of a later life lived outside of heteronormative expectations. We explore and record dismissed personal narratives of interspecies love and co-aging that exist through time and across species boundaries.

Shannon Hebblethwaite presents on “Grannie’s on the net” at McGill University

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Shannon Hebblethwaite, Assistant professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University, will present her ACT-funded study on the uses of Facebook for family communication. This comparative case study brings together research on social media use, specifically Facebook, in Romania and Canada. The purpose of the study is to investigate how grandmothers communicate with grandchildren who move far away from home. The presentation, titled “Grannie’s on the net: Intergenerational communication on Facebook” will take place on October 25, 2016 at 3:30pm in the Wendy Patrick Room on the first floor of Wilson Hall at McGill University.

More information about the talk is available by consulting this poster.

ACT members at the International Conference on Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population

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ACT members Andrea Rosales, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Margarida Romero and Eugène Loos were involved in the Second International Conference on Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population (http://2016.hci.international/itap), 17-22 July 2016, Toronto, Canada. They organized and chaired the following invited sessions: New media in the everyday life of older people and Silver Gaming.

They also presented several papers, published by Springer; J. Zhou & G. Salvendy (Eds.) Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population. Healthy and Active Aging, Second International Conference, ITAP 2016, Held as Part of HCI International 2016 Toronto, ON, Canada, July 17–22, 2016, Proceedings, Part I and II:

  • Eugène Loos & Annemiek Zonneveld: Silver Gaming: Serious Fun for Seniors?
  • Margarida Romero & Hubert Ouellet: Scaffolding Digital Game Design Activities Grouping Older Adults, Younger Adults and Teens
  • Andrea Rosales & Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol: Generational Comparison of Simultaneous Internet Activities Using Smartphones and Computers

Statistics Canada Study on Women in Canada features a chapter on Senior Women

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The recent Statistics Canada Study on Women in Canada features a chapter on older women, titled Senior Women. The report, published in March 2016, features data as recent as 2015 and provides comparative analyses of various topics, including demographic trends, internet use, employment rates of older women and social participation. Summary points are available in the press release and the full report is also available on the Statistics Canada website.

Art for Social Change: WEAAD event on June 9

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WEAAD RECAA

To mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, elders make waves towards an age friendly city.

On Thursday June 9th, Montreal-based groups RECAA, Union United Church and Le Groupe Herencias/Encounters project will join forces with their partners to bring community awareness to the importance of an age friendly city in preventing elder abuse. Starting at 11 am, local groups, including mostly seniors, will meet at the Lionel-Groulx metro and march to the Union United Church. Once at the church, lunch will be served. There will be speeches and more arts-based interventions. The purpose of the day’s activities is to engage the public with work that is being done by local groups to prevent elder abuse. Under the banner of “Elders Make Waves towards an Age Friendly City”, the groups have been focusing on issues of accessible transportation, social inclusion, and health and social services. This event is being held in anticipation of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD), which happens annually on June 15th. Media and the public are invited to join.

Date of Event: Thursday, June 9 (11am to 3pm)

Location of Event: Lionel-Groulx metro (at 11am) and the Union United Church, 3007 Delisle Street (12pm-3pm)