A GREAT INTERACTION FOR A GREAT CAUSE: CHANGING OUR RELATIONSHIP TO AGING
What is GIRA?
An aging population represents a significant challenge, in terms of optimizing health, social participation and respect for the rights of individuals as well as in terms of ensuring collective equity and well-being. Many older adults are full-fledged citizens, yet their individual and collective capacities are limited by ageism—an age discrimination that gives rise to negative perceptions, attitudes and behaviours that contribute to social exclusion.
The Great Interaction to Break with Aging is an initiative led by the Research Centre on Aging (CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS) and developed by a community of researchers, elder associations, senior citizens and students. To work toward overcoming ageism, GIRA highlights and disseminates rigorous scientific research on the causes, effects and issues of aging, as a means to change our ageism-related perceptions, attitudes and behaviours.
A dialogue between the general public and ageism research
The Great Interaction to Break with Aging invites the public to engage with the findings of a broad ongoing action research project which includes key informant forums and a review of the scholarly literature on actions to counter ageism. This research will produce solutions for rethinking the place of older adults in society.
GIRA has three objectives :
- To promote awareness of the issues, effects and forms of ageism;
- To demonstrate that when it comes to breaking with ageism, solutions do exist; and
- To spark a conversation around ageism research.
GIRA wishes to put forward three essential messages in order to help break with ageism:
- The heterogeneity of aging: there are many ways to age and many ways to experience aging;
- Generational similarity: different generations have points in common which bring them closer and which must be highlighted, even exploited; and
- Non-stereotypical representations of older adults: they are much more than a state of health or a physical condition. We need to value a diversity of portraits, images and conditions.
Different venues for dialogue
To foster this intergenerational dialogue between the general public, older adults, and scholarly knowledge on ageism, GIRA uses four channels:
- A dynamic and interactive website (which you are currently visiting!);
- A Facebook-based dialogue and dissemination strategy;
- A pop-up installation featuring photos by artist Arianne Clément, photographer of older adults; and
- Press relations in which the media will be invited to share ageism-related information originating from the website or the pop-up installation.
In short, GIRA is an interactive and intergenerational crossroads between science, older adults and the general public, with the aim of changing aging-related perceptions and fostering inclusive behaviours.
Let’s work together to counter ageist attitudes and behaviour—to which we may all be subjected at some point or another!