My most formative experience in gerontology was a student gap year in Marseille. I was a volunteer with Les Petits Frères des Pauvres, a charmingly radical organisation dedicated to improving life for older people (http://iti.ms/1i65u1Q).
Its motto – les fleurs avant le pain (flowers before bread) – seemed twee at first sight.
The realisation that the state tends to provide the basics and that many older people lack a sense of celebration, fun and style was an eye-opener.
In addition to providing heavy-duty home care with volunteers, there was a major focus on outings, birthdays and holidays, with the agenda generally set by the older people.
Beauty and fun
Such positivity towards older people and their vitality in the face of often devastating disability lit up my imagination.
The attention to style, beauty and fun provided a link between the warmth and positivity towards older people in my own family, and that of the broader constituency of older people which has sustained and encouraged me during my career as a geriatrician (http://iti.ms/1i672Ja).
Last month, I experienced a magnified revival of these insights and energy at a remarkable conference on cultural gerontology in Galway, organised by the dynamic Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at NUI Galway (http://iti.ms/1i67xmw).
Analogous to the relationship between the medical humanities and medicine, cultural gerontology examines the personal and societal narratives of ageing through the arts, humanities and social sciences (http://iti.ms/1i68hIn).
While “culture” is open to broad and conflicting usage, it can be described as a tendency, or a field, with a central focus on meaning, a desire to transcend old paradigms and bring a fuller, richer account of later years than heretofore presented in gerontology (http://iti.ms/1i68GKX).
By deploying diverse methodologies – visual, literary, spatial and tactile – cultural gerontology brings new aspects of later life into view, exploring topics such as consumption, embodiment, identity, time and space.
The engagement of older people with research and researchers was a welcome and recurrent theme.
And what a range of narratives. Spoilt for choice among a palette that included ageing among Native Americans, poetry, music, film, fashion, history, walking sticks and theatre, to name but a few, it was hard to settle on which of the eight parallel sessions to join.
Theatrical performance
As a flavour of what was on offer, I was part of a discussion during a session on research and performance, teasing out the impacts of a theatre performance by older people based on the research with which they were participating.
This bold idea was entertaining and stimulating, and generated much discussion about how such engagement drew on and dissolved boundaries between scholarship, public engagement, advocacy, ownership by older people of research about them and elements of action research.
Literary works
As chairman of a symposium on literature about ageing, I was struck by the relevance of Irish literature in a global context, with perceptive presentations on ageing through the works of Samuel Beckett, John Banville via Barthes, Walter Benjamin and Jennifer Johnston from the UK, Madrid and Sweden respectively (http://iti.ms/1i69JKH).
In the session where our own team presented on aesthetic deprivation and ageing in clinical settings, there was a wonderful presentation on what older people thought of key social gerontology concepts such as “resilience” – not a lot, as it turned out (http://iti.ms/1i6aeo0).
An entertaining insight from the floor mentioned the experience of asking an older woman about the now outdated concept of “successful ageing” – http://iti.ms/1i6aseX – after a day’s delay, she reverted: “It’s an oxymoron.”
Flair and style were notable in the sharp and witty presentations of Hannah Zeilig, a gerontologist in the London College of Fashion, who also gave an insightful talk about using art to train dementia carers (http://iti.ms/1i6aLq0).
Beauty was also centre stage in an exquisite and challenging video reflection on ageing, sexuality and beauty (http://iti.ms/1i6bbwD).
Ugly duckling
We are accustomed to the metaphor of the ugly duckling for the transition to adulthood from adolescence. Continuing the avian theme, I left this conference reflecting that the avian fable for later life is surely that of the phoenix, rising – singed, the worse for wear, but still magnificent – from the ashes of midlife.
If the wait for the next cultural gerontology conference in 2017 in Graz (http://iti.ms/1i6byr3) seems too long, the 2015 congress of the European Region of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Dublin will have a strong representation from this vital, sparky and invigorating aspect of research into ageing (http://iti.ms/1i6bI1F).
Prof Desmond O'Neill is a consultant physician in geriatric and stroke medicine at Tallaght Hospital, Dublin.