Are you an Age Activist? Am I?

The AofA Awards Ceremony is on Nov 20th 2025

What does Age Activism mean? And why do we need it? Nine years ago, Suzanne Noble and I co-founded Advantages of Age because we were sick of all the negative images that the media put out about older people. Old was something to be ashamed of.

Sagging, unsexy, tired, always creaking, retired, frail, perhaps with a rollator – we knew that this wasn’t the growing older women we were. We were – I was 63, she was 56 nine years ago – vibrant, full of projects, creative, curious, sexy, active, healthy. So what could we do to change the world around this kind of rampant oldism and ageism. We made Advantages of Age a social enterprise, we created events that dealt with the taboos around sexuality and our older bodies, we made films about death, we applied and got arts council funding, we tried to live up to our aspirations.

Suzanne who is a New Yorker and active is far too small a word went on to create Start Up for Seniors where she and Mark Elliot support Over 50s who have been made redundant or who find themselves ousted from their areas of expertise, particularly in the creative industries, to form their own businesses with government grants in different boroughs. She also started jazz singing, took lessons, practiced and practiced, became a professional jazz singer playing at upmarket clubs like Crazy Coqs with her own Dirty Blues Show. She also started a podcast and Substack called Sex Advice for Seniors, she’s passionate about older people having access to sensual pleasure and it doesn’t have to be monogamous as long as it's ethical. She also started spending her winters in Gran Canaria, a long held dream of not being in Britain during the cold and wet season. Suzanne at 64 is definitely doing her own thing as well as fighting for others who are Over 60 to have the best access to a better life.

As for me who is from Yorkshire, I got a grant to create the Willesden Junction Poets and a book of poems BeWILDering, and received Arts Council England funding to do a live performance and film with a group of Over 60s and two young choreographers in Kensal Green Cemetery called Dance Me To Death. I also put together our AofA anthology Death, Sex and Other Inspiring Stories with different essays about getting older. I commission pieces for a our Substack and edit them where I encourage others to write. More recently, I have embarked on an MA in Poetry Writing – my first academic foray for twenty years, I am now 72. I also am 13 years into a relationship with my partner, Asanga, who lives in North Wales so we usually travel between each other’s places, as well as being a committed grandmother – I look after him once a week during the day – to Santi.

We are both doing our own things around being inquisitive and still learning as we get older.

I just wrote an erasure poem about Ageism – I put black squares instead of the word ageism in order for the word to gain more potency and horror – where I tried to look at my internalised ageism as well as all the ageism that goes on out there in the world. Ageism is not talked about enough. Casual ageism is young people calling us love or cute, that is patronising. Internal ageism is me refusing to take a seat on the Bakerloo line when it’s offered to me by a lovely young woman. Devastating ageism is the sort that prevents us working in the industries that we’ve always worked in like journalism. I am going to use my poem in public spaces as an activist poem.

And we have challenging conversations in our closed FB group – Advantages of Age, Baby Boomers and Beyond as well as fun ones. We’re having one at the moment about who we think is going to look after us when we get older and less able to look after ourselves. Find Me A Groovy Care Home is another poem that I’ve just written. And I really wish companies would create a different kind of care home. Ones that have got more hippie vibes than pensioner ones. Ones that are intergenerational places to live. There needs to be a care home revolution.

There is the Older Women’s Co-housing Group which is co-housing rather than a care home. A great idea but not for when you need care. Some people go off to Chang Mai and get cared for there in Thailand, others move on to cruise liners but there is still a care hole in our midst.

We need more media people to talk about ageism and what it means. And we need to take people on who are being ageist.

There are more choices around death and dying these days in terms of funerals and death is more spoken about in general. However, a lot more could be done. The Coffin Clubs, Natural Endings etc are all organisations that are making people aware of the choices out there.

In November – advantagesofageawards.com – AofA is having its second Awards Ceremony and we hope to once again celebrate small companies who are doing wonderful things in the pro-ageing arena. We’ve got a few new categories like Exercise Star and a few old ones like Style Queen and King plus Grooviest End of Life Organisation. In 2023, it was moving because it was so eclectic. We had the Threshold Singers who sing people into that death transition, and the Sports God wearing a feather boa.

It was joyful, entertaining and serious. And inspiring. We hope you can be with us at the next one. Perhaps even sponsor a category…

Please do join us in acting against ageism and celebrating the pro-ageing community.