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Speeches

Remarks at the Age and Opportunity Conference

8th May 2012

Thank you for your kind invitation to open your conference, ‘Creating a New Old’ this afternoon. The very full programme over these three days is testimony to the wealth of exciting collaborations and intergenerational initiatives currently underway.

Thank you in particular to John Hynes, Chairperson for inviting me to join you at this conference as part of the Bealtaine festival. In its celebration of creativity through communities across Ireland, over its seventeen year history, Bealtaine is changing perceptions and challenging misconceptions and stereotypes of what it is to be ‘old’ in Ireland.

Certainly, in some ways, the years take from us as we age: but they have given as much as they have taken. A deeper insight. A greater perspective. An appreciation for what truly matters. Indeed, the broad horizons by which we measure the progress of our lives are never clearer than now.

But for many, this is also a time when those same horizons begin to narrow. A time when door after door closes, yet no window opens. When the clock slowly runs down on our day. When life’s opportunities grow smaller by the day.

It should not be this way.

There’s a saying: “small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.”1 I firmly believe that the great enterprise of society needs what older people have to contribute if our society is to be the rich diverse experience it can be, full of possibilities, full of potential.

The arts have always helped us define the possibilities of our lives. It is through them that our sense of a shared existence is created, and passed on. The arts are a repository of those images, stories and rituals by which our collective existence as a nation - as a community of possibilities - is expressed, explored and celebrated.

Thomas Duddy tells us that the media of language, literature and the arts were the chief preoccupation of the Gaelic revivalists such as Douglas de Hyde and George Russell, precisely because they are the chief media through which a national consciousness or national personality could be made to discover and celebrate itself. The artist creator has the opportunity, as John Hutchinson says, of “dramatizing the lessons of a community’s historical experience and thereby inspiring future generations to individual and collective self-realization.”

Writing in 1930, shortly after our independence, George Russell was particularly and specifically concerned that Ireland would develop a national reflective tradition, a way of ‘thinking authentically’ and that the creative among us, including “scholars, economists, scientists, thinkers, educationalists and the literary” would fill what he called the ‘desert depths’ of national consciousness and “turn the void into a fullness.”

But the arts will fail in that task, if they lack images, stories and rituals that encompass all the seasons of life.

To ensure this, our society must provide opportunities for older citizens to engage in the arts. This already happens in many ways. In amateur arts practice. In the collaborations between professional artists and older people. And in arts practice by older professional artists themselves. Older people also contribute to our artistic cultural life in other ways, as in the organisation, governance and support of arts events and organisations.

This is good cause for celebration. Within the arts and cultural sectors in Ireland, there is now a growing recognition of the contribution older people can make to the arts. As a result, opportunities for access and participation have grown enormously over the last ten to fifteen years across the country.

Of particular note is the Bealtaine Festival. Established in 1996 and supported by the Arts Council, this month-long arts festival engages older people in the full array of art forms to be met within Ireland. Its partner network includes national cultural institutions, arts organisations, local authorities, venues, libraries, older peoples’ groups and care settings.

Together they work to offer older citizens the chance to engage fully with the arts – as participant and spectator. Year on year, the number of those participating in Bealtaine events has grown. It is estimated that last year some 122,000 people took part in events.

The Bealtaine Festival continues to raise artistic standards and cultivate flagship projects. In so doing, it encourages work that - in its diversity and ambition - reflects the interests, ideals and concerns of older people from around the country.

I am aware that the Bealtaine Festival is very highly regarded internationally and that organisations in both Scotland and Australia are in close contact with the Bealtaine Festival as they prepare to adapt the Bealtaine model to their own countries.

I find innovative developments in the arts, such as Bealtaine, immensely heartening. Not just because there’s something fundamentally decent about it. But because of what it means for the arts themselves.

Diversity is the life-blood of the arts. For a culture to flourish, we must remain alert, open to the meaning and challenge of transformation in, and throughout, one’s life. Without doubt, older people have much to give in this regard.

I also congratulate on your capacity for self reflection and your commitment to constantly improve your approach. A 2008 evaluation of the Bealtaine Festival published by the Irish Centre for Gerontology found that some older groups remain excluded. They might lack access to transport, or perhaps they live alone, or they live without the support of others who could help them participate . Older men most especially appear vulnerable to isolation.

In this regard your work to highlight the lives and experiences of older gay men in the 2008 play Silver Stars is particularly important and I congratulate on bringing that Irish voice and those experiences abroad to New York, Paris and elsewhere. We need to ensure, too, that those in our ethnic minorities can find their creative space within the many opportunities that are present. I had a visit to the Áras recently of some members of a Traveller Group for older Travellers. They told me how difficult it was to make a connection with the Older Persons groups in their locality: these were groups actively campaigning on ageism, but had not fully reflected on their own attitudinal barriers which are such a potent inhibitor to creativity and inclusivity.

It is in all of our interests to ensure opportunities for a creative older age. We all know that, day by day, we all grow a little older. But with every passing year, advancements in medicine and improvements in lifestyle, transform what it means to grow old. More of us will live well into our eighties or nineties – perhaps longer. Many of us will wonder what to make of it. I believe we have an opportunity here. We know that active engagement in the creative arts can help improve personal health and well being, heighten our sense of identity and self awareness and through collaborations and networking, improve social and community cohesion.

This year, in light of 2012 being European Year of Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations, I encourage Irish people of every age and across generations to break out of their comfort zones, their old routines and by doing so, ignite their creativity.

During my campaign for the Presidency I saw intergenerational solidarity in action, with older and younger people expressing concern for the suffering of other generations. We now need to put practical programmes and actions in place to encourage this solidarity to build an ‘intergenerational intelligence’ or the process of putting oneself in the shoes of a different age-group.

This ‘intergenerational intelligence’ will in turn create and enhance solidarity as generations learn to respect and admire each other. This intergenerational solidarity is a vital ethical resource to the transformation of our society.

Ireland can, with inclusive citizenship and a creative society, be a beautiful, peaceful and magnificent country within which to grow older. We have been through the Celtic Tiger and are now dealing with the consequences of a society that valued people as consumers, and on the basis of their ability for amassing material wealth. Great pain was experienced and many are still living with great uncertainty and economic hardship and we cannot forget this. However, I believe we have the capacity, if we act collectively to move on from this and create a new kind of society for all the ages - a society that strives to create the best possible environment for growing older, a truly 'age friendly society' in the fullest sense and meaning.

We, the elder generation on this island, have lived our lives opening up new possibilities for others. Our lives have always been about seizing the opportunity to build a better society, to leave society more enriched for ourselves, for our children, for our loved ones.

Now, another opportunity arises. The opportunity to create a new place for the older citizen in Irish life. The opportunity to discover a new way to live this new phase in life. Not an end, not a silencing, but a vociferous, stylish, exuberant phase, another new chance to learn, and pass on, a new lesson.

Let us take this opportunity, and make it the beginning of the great enterprise of re-imagining these years and placing them at the heart of our community, our culture and our shared life.

*Demosthenes

1 A quote from Demosthenes, a Greek orator from the 4th century