The UK Government’s ambition is to harness the power of innovation to meet the needs of an ageing society. Innovation is a key driver of economic growth and improvements to living standards, and allows people to remain active, productive, independent and socially connected for as long as possible.
This workshop is the first in a series hosted by UK Department for International Trade at the British Embassies in the Nordics, in collaboration with the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing, moderated by Nic Palmarini. It will explore the future of ageing, longevity and urban environments.
The workshop aims to explore with specialists, businesses, innovators and policy makers, “what are the drivers of change and how to address them for the challenges of the future?”
Discussion 1:
Age-friendly city: from past experiences to future needs.
Hear from our panelists:
- Paul McGarry, Greater Manchester Ageing Hub
- Tim Barclay, Appello
- Trond Halvorsen, SINTEF
- Mari Patronen, City of Tampere
- Louise Vang Jensen, Is It a Bird
- Kenny Jansson, City of Uppsala
Discussion 2:
Accessible housing and public spaces: re-thinking our life contexts.
Hear from our panelists:
- David Howarth, DRDH Architects
- Outi Jolanki, Tampere University
- Eric Kihlstrom, Centaur Robotics
- Erin Walsh, Connected Places Catapult
- Wenche Lerme, Åldersvänliga Göteborg
- Eli Undlien, Nordic Office of Architecture
For questions and more information about the workshop, please contact DIT.Norway@fco.gov.uk
Nic Palmarini is the Director of UK’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing (NICA) a world-leading organisation, created with an investment from UK Government and Newcastle University, to help create a world in which we all live better, for longer. The Centre brings together world-leading innovation experts, scientists, industry, and the public, to design, develop test and bring to market innovative business models, services and products which enhance and improve the several holistic dimensions along our life-course. Before, he was research manager at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and leader of the AI for Healthy Ageing practice at IBM Research. He holds a decade of experience in research on supporting older adults’ autonomy and independence. He is an author, teacher, applied research scientist. The work of his teams has been awarded two times with the Computer Honors Award, and at the United Nations for Aging Initiative.
Since 2003, Paul has led multi-agency urban ageing partnerships, and in 2016 was appointed as the Head of the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub. Paul has had a number of journal articles on ageing published, and given presentations to high-profile events in the USA, Asia, Europe and Australia. Paul has an MA in social gerontology and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Paul has been a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Network of Ageing Friendly Cities Advisory Group, and the Scientific Steering Board for the joint Age-friendly Environments in Europe project.
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Tim Barclay joined Appello as Chief Executive Office in Feb 2017 to help the company accelerate its growth in the Telecare Monitoring and Technology-Enabled Care (TECS) markets. Under Tim’s leadership, Appello have focused their strategy on delivering quality of life enhancing solutions to those in later life and/or the vulnerable. Tim was also part of a Healthy Ageing Expert Mission to China in 2019 where he led talks on the subject of improving life experience through the careful and appropriate use of technology. Prior to joining Appello, Tim was Chief Operating Officer for BT’s Global Government & Health organisation where we oversaw their Future Cities, Digital Health, and Strategy teams.
Trond Halvorsen is a researcher with a special interest in the design and implementation of digital innovations in the public health and care services. With a PhD in behavioural economics, he is keenly aware of the challenges that ageing populations pose to the welfare state. Together with engineers, architects, and health experts at SINTEF, he is helping business and care providers to innovate and invent new ways of providing care. His research covers welfare technologies, housing and transportation solutions for seniors and people with disabilities.
Halvorsen is a member of the Norwegian Cluster for Co-Creative Service Design and Innovation (CCSDI) and the HelsA (Health promoting architecture and surroundings) research center. He is also member of the Norwegian Evaluation Association and the COST action From sharing to caring.
Mari Patronen is a Director of Elderly Services at the City of Tampere. She has several years of expertise in providing services for the elderly, mainly in the public sector. She leads the city’s largest service field with more than 2,500 employees. Her key strengths include development and innovation: how services and living environments for older people can be improved and how services for older people can contribute to this support. She thinks that an age-friendly city is a city for everyone and it requires decision-making together at all levels and sectors of planning.Mari holds Masters’ degrees both in Social Sciences and in European Issues from the University of Tampere and the University of Leuven. She also has an EMBA degree from the University of Jyväskylä.
Louise is positioned as Director of Research and Insights at IS IT A BIRD, a human-centred innovation agency based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Louise is a business anthropologist specialised in defining valuable deep insights in human behaviour and turning them into new business opportunities and innovation potentials.
Louise holds a track record of collaboration across industries counting VELUX, NOVO, NIKE and The Danish National Railway Company, DSB, and has core expertise in smart city development, contributing to the field with a human lens and the point of view that technologies change fast whereas fundamental human needs do not. At IS IT A BIRD, Louise has developed a solid innovation toolkit for addressing the fundamental human needs in the smart city context, operationalising how to involve humans as key to succeed with any future smart city solution.
Kenny Jansson is the coordinator of Uppsala’s work to become a more age-friendly municipality. He is responsible for the municipality’s program and action plan for an age-friendly municipality. Uppsala municipality joined the WHO Age Friendly Cities project in June 2016 and the development of the action plan has been based on citizen dialogue and 360 degree feedback from the elderly community in Uppsala. Kenny has a background in Human Geography and prior to his current role he was a researcher at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University.
David is an architect and co-founder of DRDH Architects, an award-winning practice based in London and Antwerp. DRDH are known in Norway for Stormen, a Concert hall, theatre and library in Bodø, which received the Norwegian State Architecture Prize 2015 and the A C Houen Diploma for Outstanding Architecture 2019.
The practice has recently completed a new concert hall for the Bijloke Music Centre in Belgium and ongoing public work includes the remodelling of the Bourla Theatre in Antwerp, the restoration and extension of the Ghent Opera House and a new public library in London. Specialist residential projects have included housing for the elderly and community facilities in Aarschot Belgium, build to rent housing in London and a number of ongoing urban masterplan projects, including Antwerp docks and Nyhavna Trondheim.
Currently I work as a research director and researcher at the Tampere University, Faculty of Social Sciences and at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Finland. My central tasks are linked to the activities of the Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care (CoE AgeCare 2018-2025, www.jyu.fi/agecare) in which I act as the co-leader of the Tampere University group.
My research covers disciplines of social gerontology, sociology of health and illness, geographical and environmental gerontology, care studies, old age care and housing policies. In recent years my research has focused on linkages between living environment and wellbeing, communal senior housing models, emerging hybrid housing models combining ordinary housing and service housing, and sustainable senior housing solutions.
Eric is Chairman of Centaur Robotics, a next generation personal electric vehicle service provider. He volunteers as an Expert Advisory Board member to Royal College of Art’s Design Age Institute and Honorary Associate Professor of Primary Care Innovation at De Montfort University. He also volunteers as the UK’s Ambassador to Aging2.0.
Previously, Eric helped to launch the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – Healthy Ageing as the Interim Director. Following this role, Eric went on to become a co-founder of the Secretariat to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity.
Eric studied Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and has an MBA from New York University.
Wenche is an architect SAR / MSA, Urban Planner and since 1 January 2021 Manager for Urban Development in the City of Gothenburg, in the completely new, Administration for the Elderly, nursing and care. Her work and interest focus on urban development issues in a socio-spatial perspective where housing and urban planning issues are related to urban form, functionally integration and accessibility to the city, and urban life, for the elderly. It will be a natural continuation based on the work in recent years in the City District Angered and issues of urban planning linked to segregation and housing shortages, and its negative effects for people and the local community.