What makes a city the kind of place where you can grow older and be an older person? No Bindings is collaborating with Bristol Ageing Better (BAB) to explore the possible answers to this question!

No Bindings is a project, started in Bristol, by Lily Green. Lily is a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio at the Watershed. She makes sound recordings and handmade books. These book-come-audio pieces are called publication-podcasts!

Over the autumn months and beginning of winter, Lily will join forces with Pat Gregory, a member of BAB’s Steering Group. Equipped with a dictaphone, they will get to know the ins and outs of nine projects that work with and for older people in Bristol. They will collect interviews and stories and hear what project leaders and older people have to say about how age friendly the city is. The chosen projects will be a reflection of the following nine factors that make a city age friendly:

Navigating this City (Transport)

Dignity (Respect and Social Inclusion)

Inside Spaces, Outside Spaces (Outdoor Spaces and Buildings) 

My House, My Home (Housing)

My Voice (Civic Participation and Employment: Being Heard and Making Decisions)

You're Invited! (Social Participation)

I'm Well (Community Support and Health Services)

#connected (Communication and Information)

My Value (Civic Participation and Employment: Access to Work and Volunteering)

But it doesn’t stop there, No Bindings wants to hear from you! If you have something to say about one of those nine areas, try your hand at producing a creative written or visual piece to submit for selection to the final publication-podcast. If your piece is selected, you’ll be gifted £150 for your involvement, which includes a relaxed, recorded interview with Lily and Pat, to talk about your work, your selected theme, and if you’re happy to do so, a bit about you. The deadline for submissions is 10th November 2017. Please read the brief and submission details carefully.

The final publication-podcast (as yet to be given a title!) will be ready to go in late April 2018. Launch and broadcast schedule to be confirmed.

No Bindings and BAB hope that this creative project will bring to light the efforts people are already taking to make Bristol age friendly, as well as the steps that still need to be taken. As something to read, something to listen to and something you can send in the post (2nd class large letter 76p, don’t you know!), the hope is that this publication-podcast will spark many more conversations about how the citizens of Bristol can and do help make the city a place where people can grow older and be older.

Lily Green is running this project. If you’d just like to chat about the project before you decide to be involved, please get in touch!

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Lil Green

Combining workshops, making books + making podcasts to co-produce multimedia literature + events with frequently underrepresented voices