Throughout the process so far, we have brought many different community groups together. This has enabled them to discuss their own experiences and activities and share best practice. For residents this has meant they have learnt about existing age-friendly activities. We have made sure to document these through the Age Friendly Hulme & Moss Side Calendar. We have also assisted with promotion of exiting activities through printed copies of the calendars. These can be shared online, but we have acted on feedback from residents, organisations and community members who rely on posters and printed advertising material to find out about activities. These printed calendars are now routinely handed out at the board meetings and at research events such as drop-ins, focus groups and workshops.

We held a focus group with members of an informal social group for over 55s, administrated by a Mosscare neighbourhood officer. This is a structured discussion where we discuss topics such as the environment, high street, transport, housing, civic participation, social activity, change in the neighbourhood etc. The group had a lively discussion with various issues coming up. They decided that they would like to work together to develop a project (or projects) to look at some of the issues that were raised. MAFN are now in the process of designing a workshop to get the group thinking about the risk factors of social isolation to help facilitate project proposal discussions. At the end of the focus group Age Friendly, calendars were given out and one resident took four more copies to give to his neighbours.

Another smaller example of the distribution of the calendar is a board member who has a keen interested in Hulme’s history never realised there is a Hulme History group who meet monthly (the members of whom no longer live in Hulme!) but read about it in the calendar and is planning on attending the group’s sessions.

We hope to develop a project to keep the calendar up to date and a distributed printing of the calendars so that it can be circulated across the community physically and online. You can find links to each neighbourhood’s age friendly calendar on the Ambition for Ageing Manchester home page.