Duration: 5 hours

 

Overview:

 

Join this hands-on, interdisciplinary masterclass to explore how to use mapping techniques to illustrate the lived experiences of older people and help inform age-friendly environment policy. This session blends theory with action, offering practical training in participatory mapping, spatial storytelling, and community asset mapping. You’ll leave with an applied toolkit, real-world examples, and an idea of how you could apply these approaches to your own work.

 

Description of Content and Format:

 

In this masterclass, participants will be introduced to a variety of mapping approaches that can be used to capture the lived experiences of older people as well as digital tools that can be used for enhanced spatial analysis and data visualisation. This masterclass offers an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented exploration, showcasing how combining qualitative and geo-spatial approaches can enrich our understanding of age-friendly environments, and help to enhance the age-friendly environment evidence base.

 

Recognising the demographic shifts associated with an ageing society, it is vital to ensure that our physical and social environments can respond to the evolving needs, preferences, and aspirations of older people. While policy frameworks such as the WHO’s Age-Friendly Cities and Communities provide guiding principles, deeper explorations are needed, to understand the various ways that older people engage with their local environments, and the implications of this for their ability to age well in place. Drawing on participatory and community-engaged techniques, we can ensure that age friendly policies are more locally grounded and informed by the lived realities of older people.

 

Format:

 

This session will provide an introductory overview of mapping techniques that can capture more qualitative, intangible and subjective experiences, drawing on existing research, methods and case studies. This includes mapping techniques used at different scales, including more individual ‘lifeworld’ mapping, as well as community asset mapping. A key feature of this masterclass involves a practical, hands-on mapping session, where participants can try out various mapping techniques. This interactive session will involve trialling out ‘lifeworld’, participatory and community asset mapping, as well as learning how to use the ‘StoryMap’ feature in ArcGIS Online, a powerful visualisation tool to present spatial stories. There will be an opportunity to discuss and reflect on how these approaches could be applied in participants’ own contexts and projects and to talk through any specific questions or challenges.

 

Learning Objectives:

 

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

 

1. Identify methodological approaches and techniques which can combine qualitative and geo-spatial approaches

 

2. Apply a range of participatory and geo-spatial mapping techniques to capture the lived experiences of older people

 

3. Reflect on the opportunities and/or challenges of using these approaches within their own contexts and projects

 

Expected Outcomes:

 

Participants will leave the workshop with an understanding of mapping approaches which can be used to provide insight into the lived experiences of older people, which can be used to help inform age-friendly environment policy. Participants will gain hands-on experiences trialling and exploring multiple mapping techniques, which can be used for their own projects.

Hannah Grove

 

Hannah is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanisation at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, and a Research Associate at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing.

 

Hannah is an urban health geographer and planner, with an interest in how social and physical environments influence health and wellbeing throughout the lifecourse. With experience that bridges academia, policy, and practice, she is interested in how we can co-design environments and communities that promote a good quality of life, whilst recognising and addressing existing socio-spatial injustices and health inequities. Hannah’s research interests span urban health and social geography, healthy urban planning, and geographies of ageing. She is passionate about innovative methods and methodologies including the use of qualitative, geo-spatial and community-based participatory approaches to understand lived experiences of place.

 

Hannah has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Dublin City University, a Research Assistant at Queens University Belfast, and as a Planning Policy Officer. She completed her PhD in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University, which explored how older people in the Greater Dublin Area define and enact ageing well in place.

 

Kate Bancroft

 

Kate joined the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing in 2024 as a Research Fellow. Prior to her appointment at Oxford, she served as a researcher within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy at King’s College London, where she held the position of Deputy Director of the PhD Applied Public Policy programme. In this role, she significantly contributed to the academic and research direction of the programme.

 

Kate’s research interests have consistently centred on asset mapping, with a particular emphasis on identifying and leveraging community resources to support healthy ageing. Her work involves mapping assets within communities to enhance the understanding of how local resources can be utilised to improve health outcomes for older adults.

 

Currently, at the University of Oxford, Kate is engaged in the EPIC Networks project, funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust. This project is dedicated to promoting healthy ageing and developing community connections through asset mapping. It is a multi-disciplinary, cross-sector initiative that integrates contributions from medical statistics, health economics, sociology, anthropology, and design. The project serves as a proof-of-concept and feasibility study, assessing whether this new model of asset mapping can be generalised, scaled, and sustained across diverse socio-economic and geographic settings in Oxfordshire through pilot testing.