University of Sheffield

Ten years after the BSG conference was last held in Sheffield, BSG returned to the Steel City for the 36th Annual Conference. The conference took place in Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), right in the heart of the city. A wide variety of plenary talks, symposia, paper and poster presentations were available to the 230 delegates attending the conference, and an interesting and varied selection of these were available to the additional 70 people who came to the Older People Involvement afternoon on Friday.

The conference opened with a plenary talk by Professor Neil Small (University of Bradford) who gave an illuminating talk conceptualising ‘self’ and ‘care’ in relation to dementia, illustrated with a range of iconic figures, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, the Cutty Sark, King Lear and Plato.

Further plenary talks by Professor Kevin Morgan (University of Loughborough), who gave a fascinating talk on the gerontology of sleep and insomnia, by Professor Germaine Greer, who entertained the audience with a perceptive and humorous discussion on gerontophobia, and Professor John McKnight, who provided a stimulating final talk on ageing as a community asset, were highlights in the programme, which also contained many high-quality paper and poster presentations across a wide variety of fields. 

Among the symposia and papers presentations, I attended several sessions that provided useful insights into current and recent research in the use of Information and Communication Technologies for older people, including Technology and Environment, Assistive and Telecare Technologies convened by Tony Warnes, New Technologies and older people’s quality of life, convened by Gail Mountain and Peter Lansley. These sessions gave new and more experienced researchers the opportunity to discuss their research on how technology can benefit older people.

A feature of the BSG conference in recent years has been a dedicated poster session for researchers and practitioners to present their work, and the thirty or more high-quality posters were organised alongside the exhibition in the main hall. Delegates had the opportunity to view the posters throughout the conference, and examine the products and displays in the exhibition, while enjoying the refreshments in the session breaks. I hope that the photographs from the previous day of the conference on display on the main screen provided an interesting addition to the main hall.

Further highlights of the conference were the older people involvement afternoon, which is reported in detail elsewhere by Gail Mountain and the conference dinner at the historic Cutler’s Hall on the Friday evening. The Dinner was preceded by a reception, at which Professor Alan Walker was presented with a salver to recognise the important and influential contribution he has made to social gerontology and older people in his career.

The closing session on Saturday morning whetted our appetites for the annual meeting in 2008: Robin Means and Simon Evans introduced everyone to what would be in store for the 37th annual conference: guest speakers will include Professor Miriam Bernard from Keele University and Alex Kalache, Director of the World Health Organizations’s Ageing Program. For me the opportunity to hear Mr Tony Benn, one of the country’s elder statesmen and one of our leading politicians in the last century will certainly be a highlight. BSG 2008 will certainly be a conference to look forward to!

It was my pleasure to sit on the Conference Committee for the BSG conference, and I am very aware of the large amount of hard work by particular individuals that went into making the 36th Annual Conference in Sheffield such a success. In particular, Jill Hitchenor from Conference21 at SHU worked very hard behind the scenes and her contribution was above and beyond the call of duty. The Conference Committee Co-Chairs, Murna Downs and Merryn Gott contributed a huge amount of time and effort in organising the conference and deserve our thanks for all their work. In addition, Gail Mountain, Mike Nolan and Gill Herbert worked very hard to make the User Involvement afternoon a success for the 70 older people who were able to attend and contribute to the conference: a very important innovation for the BSG conference.

Thanks to all the other members of the Conference Committee, to the Conference sponsors and exhibitors for their support, without which the BSG conference would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank all the attendees for enabling me to make a photographic record of the BSG conference: copies of photos are available from me on request.

 

Please note: copies of photographs of the BSG conference in this report and on the BSG web-site and other photographs can be obtained from Peter Bath - peterabath@aol.com.