Our Work

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Age Unlimited

Age Unlimited is developing and trialling new services that allow people in their 50’s and 60’s to continue contributing to society through work and voluntary activity and keep socially active and networked in their local community so that ageing becomes a positive experience.

NESTA believes older citizens are a hidden source of innovation whose assets - time, commitment and insight - can play a critical role in the design and delivery of innovative new services. Therefore Age Unlimited is also exploring how older citizens can play a central role in the design and delivery of these services.

In 1952, an annual 3000 centenarians received a birthday message from the Queen. That figure has now tripled reflecting the changing demography of our society. By 2025, half the UK adult population will be over 50, and resulting costs - social care, long-term health conditions, pensions and benefits - can be estimated at more than £300bn[1]. We need to address the worrying reality that life expectancy is rising at a much faster rate than improvements in our health in older age and the resulting pressure that this puts on our social support systems.  Age Unlimited helps to address this issue by developing new services that focus on delaying some of the negative effects of ageing.

There is also a lack of recognition about the opportunity that the ageing demographic presents. The current market for new services and innovations that are targeted at older people is weak. There are insufficient incentives for providers to develop innovations, a lack of data about the potential market for new products, and sometimes inflexible bureaucratic boundaries and regulations.

In trying to address these issues, through Age Unlimited we are currently running pilot programmes which fall into two areas:

1) How employers can help prepare people in their 50's and 60's for retirement

2) How organisations can work with help keep people active in retirement

These two themes focus on delaying and preventing some of the negative effects of ageing and retirement that many people currently experience.

In 2010 NESTA selected the following 10 projects to receive funding, advice and support to test and develop their ideas over an 18 month period until November 2011. Whilst developing the project ideas, emphasis has been placed on involving people in their 50's and 60's in the design and delivery of the services:

  • Grandparents Plus: Grandparent Reward Scheme
  • Coventry University Institute of Health, Design and Technology & Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust: Later Life Working Plan
  • Carers UK: Workplace Carers Network
  • Portsmouth Diocesan Council for Social Responsibility: Prescribing Volunteering
  • Barnardos: Third Age Mentoring Programme
  • Unionlearn with NWTUC: Empowering workshops and seminars
  • Beth Johnson Foundation: Peer Coaching for Later Life
  • UK Cohousing Network: Senior Cohousing Network
  • York College: WorkAge - extending working lives
  • Age UK Hackney: Forward Thinking Programme

At the end of the projects we aim to:

  • share insights about the role employers and organisations can play in preparing people for retirement and in keeping them active and engaged during retirement
  • share insights about the value of, and principles for better involving users in the design and delivery of services
  • encourage the development of more impactful and cost effective services for an ageing society
  • publish information on the cost-effectiveness of some of these approaches
  • share learning about the effectiveness of using social innovation methods such as ideation and prototyping

The hypotheses we are testing through Age Unlimited are:

1. Engaging users in the design and delivery of services will increase the effectiveness and impact of services, reduce the cost of delivery, stimulate the demand for such services and change the behaviour of citizens as they get older and reduce dependency on costly mainstream public services.

2. Engaging purchasers in the design and delivery of services will increase the effectiveness and impact of services, and lead to different, better business models that go beyond standard public sector funding streams.

3. Social innovation methods such as idea development and prototyping will help to refine and test ideas early and will improve their ability to be scaled and replicated by experimenting with different markets and business models early on.

4. The market for innovations for people in their 50s and 60s is weak, this programme will provide practical inspirational examples which will stimulate this market and provide methods to others to engage this and other 'hard to reach' groups.

5. The models we are developing through Age Unlimited can be used to address major social challenges outside of ageing.


[1] NESTA's Preparing For Ageing report

Innovation for a New Old Age, an Age Unlimited event

What's the future of retirement? Watch the video of our event in our Age Unlimited series. It brought together author and social campaigner Marc Freedman, NESTA fellow Charlie Leadbeater, Geraldine Bedell, founder of AgeBomb website, and Caroline Waters from BT.