The IncludeAge Project - Inclusion of diverse older people in community and public places and virtual spaces

IncludeAge Standard Newsletter:
Issue 18 December 2025

Welcome to our IncludeAge Newsletter!

In this, the last newsletter of 2025, we would like to warmly wish you a lovely break, and here's to a Very Happy New Year! 

Project Update

We have now almost completed each planned data generation phase of the project, here is an update on our numbers: 

• 154 life course interviews
• 69 Place Study participants and over 770 surveys submitted
• 55 follow-up interviews with a few more to go
• 65 Organisational Interviews with different types of organisations in our communities
• 27 Social Network Analyses

We also currently have two students on the MRes Health and Social Care course at Hertfordshire doing research placements, which is great! The students are helping with data analysis on some of the Life Course interviews and the Place Study data. A big welcome to Yasmin and Samara.

Would your Organisation like to Hear More from IncludeAge? 

We are really happy for members of our project to come along to meetings and events to talk about different aspects of IncludeAge, from theory to findings, online or in person.

Please get in touch by replying to this email if you are interested in inviting us to share our research.

Workshops on the Way

We are currently inviting academics to an online Research into Action workshop coming up on 9th December.

The aim of this workshop is to share findings from the IncludeAge project, and to build on findings to envision healthy, active and inclusive future environments. We will focus on sharing ways to influence policymakers and practitioners, as well as developing possible recommendations and guidelines for policy and practice. Ideas for future research will also be discussed. 

If you have any questions about this online workshop, please contact: Dr Richard Vytniorgu (R.Vytniorgu@herts.ac.uk) or Dr Joe Tai (JTai001@dundee.ac.uk), or you can reply to this email.

We are also in the planning stages of two more workshops: Our Evidence into Policy workshop will be held on 21st January and our Evidence into Practice workshop will be on 11th February.

We will be looking for people who work in policy and practice related roles to attend these workshops early in the new year. 

Recent Presentations

• Judith gave an invited presentation at Heriot Watt University on ‘Understanding the Inclusion of Mid-Older People with Learning Disabilities in Physical Places and Online Spaces’.

• Judith gave two presentations at the Gerontological Society of America event in Boston in November. One presentation was on ‘Exploring Community Inclusion with Mid-older LGBT+ and People with Learning Disabilities’, and the other was ‘Co-Researching with Mid-Older People with Learning Disabilities’. We also provided a poster on ‘Organisational Perspectives on Inclusion’. If you would like to learn more about any of these presentations do please get in touch. 

• Judith and Pat were invited to the British Society of Gerontology (Scotland) Inclusive Housing Event in November. Judith gave a presentation on “When is home not a home: perspectives of mid-older people with learning disabilities” and Pat was an invited panellist sharing her specialist knowledge of intergenerational work and ageing research. The event recording can be found HERE

Other News

Our next IncludeAge Exhibition "Through Our Eyes, in Our Words", will be held at the Bonington Gallery in Nottingham from 16th January - 7th March. If you'd like more information, please click HERE.  

One of our Postdocs Richard has had a Think Piece published on multigenerational places. The Think piece can be read HERE on the Glass House website. The Glass House is a national charity dedicated to connecting people with the design of their places, and connecting design with people. 

The National Development Team for Inclusion has been working on a programme called Small Supports, where they are working with local systems to develop small, bespoke, person-led support organisations that enable people with complicated lives to thrive in their own communities. You can access some podcast recordings and find out more information HERE, and find the recordings of their August webinar series HERE 

And last but not least, we have published some new Blogs, you can read these on the blog section of our website HERE

Keep in Touch

Remember that you can get in touch with us by replying to this email, or by visiting our website HERE