Consortium for Applied Research and Professional Education, Nov 2013

CARPE is The consortium for Applied Research and Professional Education or the CARPE consortium brings together some of Europe’s leading applied science universities.

Manchester Metropolitan University is the UK representative amongst the members of the consortium: Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS), the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU), Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg), the Polytechnic University Valencia (UPV) and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Themes covered in the Conference included:

• The Future of Health Care: Life Stages
• Teaching & Assessment Techniques
• Social Innovation: Meanings of Social Innovation in Theory & Policy
• Sustainability
• Entrepreneurship Policy and Theory
• Applied Arts

Speakers were both national and international, which gave a great flavour to the Conference.

Kirsteen Aubrey and Helen Felcey spoke about the Social Innovations of using Craft and Design Skills to impact on health and wellbeing in an ageing society. The full paper will be published next year, and in it we discuss Manchester’s role as a city for Valuing Older People (VOP), and the importance of socially responsive projects.

Statistics and case studies begin to  demonstrate the important role that Higher Education and the skills of Craft and Design can have on the health and wellbeing of an aging society.“The world is rapidly ageing: the number of people aged 60 and over as a proportion of the global population will double from 11% in 2006 to 22% by 2050. By then, there will be more older people than children (aged 0–14 years) in the population for the first time in human history” (World Health Organisation, 2013)

Manchester is an age-friendly city and as such we have great access to developing inclusive projects for staff and students, so watch this space! An age friendly city is defined as “a city committed to social inclusion ensuring that older people, so often marginalised in society, are involved, are part of and feel comfortable and valued in the city in which they live.” (Friere, P, 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Academic. Pp. 88)

In the session that Kirsteen and Helen spoke in, they were joined by staff from Finland who shared their experience of teaching socially responsive projects, with potential links for us to inform and develop future research and teaching practice. Keep an eye out for future developments!

I am now developing this work into (hopefully!) an Mphil. This will have a key focus on Dementia and Age/Wellbeing , so if you’re interested, stay in touch!- Kirsteen