Contemporary life is shaped by complex and evolving individual values that influence how people understand themselves and others. Cultural humility, therefore, becomes increasingly important, requiring ongoing self-exploration, self-critique, and a willingness to learn from others. It involves acknowledging and respecting differing moral perspectives and lived experiences. alongside that of others, recognising both shared perspectives and diverse values. Cultural humility shifts the emphasis from mastery to an ongoing process of selfreflection, critical self-awareness, and the recognition of personal biases. It encourages respectful partnerships with individuals from diverse backgrounds, and it is an essential foundation of true inclusivity.
Inclusivity, as promoted by the new Aged Care Act (2025), encourages us to confront our own biases and recognise our shared humanity. It reminds us that everyone deserves respect, kindness, and support, especially as we age and become more vulnerable.
This artwork features images of people from various backgrounds and a central mirror. The mirrors enable the viewer to become part of the artwork, which invites the viewer to engage in self-reflection and encourages them to reflect on their own cultural background alongside others, recognising both shared perspectives and diverse values. This art installation highlights the importance of exploring values. Exploring values is a useful way for us to examine our own deeply held beliefs.

We know that ageism causes significant harms and costs individuals, communities and society dearly – yet it remains one of the most ubiquitous and accepted forms discrimination. Using arts based, narrative and innovative collaborative programs, Celebrate Ageing works to dismantle the ageism experienced by older people.
Our mission is to build a movement that tackles ageism and builds respect for older Australians at all levels of society. We are working for a society where all older people are valued and respected.
In this art installation, we will draw on the powerful images that are generated through Celebrate Ageing’s creative projects – offering the viewer a range of different perspectives on what it is to age, to feel empowered, to love, to share, to be beautiful, to be respected.
This work comprises a series of 6 - 10 posters, together with an artist’s statement describing our creative, empowering and collaborative approach to engagement. The images that fuel our revolution.

CARER VOICES is an interactive, digital storytelling installation that showcases often unheard stories from informal carers supporting older adults living with mental health conditions in home care settings. This digital gallery consists of 11 short videos (<3 min each), which shares carers stories about what it’s really like to support an older adult living with a mental health condition who receives care at home. Stories will feature both challenging and rewarding experiences, and ‘call for action’ messages from carers, embedding an advocacy dimension that promotes a broader cultural shift toward recognising and valuing caregiving. In doing so, CARER VOICES aligns with the conference theme by calling for new ways of seeing, hearing, and supporting those who care.

The project is a partnership between Silverchain, Carers Victoria and Melbourne Ageing Research Collaboration (MARC). Funded through the 2026 MARC Seed Funding Scheme for Early Career Researchers.

This project explores the experiences of loneliness among older Chinese immigrants who migrated to Queensland after retirement. During the life-long acculturation process, they have to negotiate with social identity and status switch, language barriers, cultural shocks, expectation gaps, financial hardship, and care convoys change.

Project overview
Every Piece Matters is an interactive art installation that responds to The Ageing Revolution by reframing medication use and later life care through the everyday experiences of older people. Instead of portraying ageing as decline or dependency, the work foregrounds meaning, relationship, and agency and asks what it would take to genuinely centre older people in how care is designed and delivered.
The exhibition comprises three jigsaw puzzles, each developed from qualitative research with residents living in residential aged care. Each puzzle features an image and prompt reflecting what residents notice, prioritise, and question about their medications including routines, relationships, moments of reassurance, frustrations, and concerns about dignity and autonomy.
Individually, each puzzle highlights a different dimension of resident centred care. Collectively, they form a broader picture of how pharmacy practice is embedded in everyday life. Conference participants are invited to assemble the puzzles collaboratively during breaks, engaging in a slow, tactile process that contrasts with the time pressured, task driven nature of care systems.
As pieces gradually come together, participants are encouraged to reflect on what is often fragmented or overlooked in medication related care, and how many small, relational elements must align to support flourishing in later life. In this way, the work positions participation as both method and message, contributing to The Ageing Revolution by valuing lived experience as essential knowledge for change.
 

Meaningful involvement of people with lived experience is increasingly recognised as essential in ageing and dementia research. This short film (~7-minutes) introduces you to members of the Venture Out Advisory Group. Established in 2024, the Venture Out Advisory Group brings together people living with mild cognitive impairment or dementia, alongside care-partners, who share a passion for nature and the outdoors. The group plays a central role in shaping the Venture Out Nature Hubs Project, which creates inclusive outdoor spaces and nature-based experiences to support the wellbeing of older adults, including those living with dementia and their care-partners.
In this film, each member reflects on their involvement, and shares what they gain from being in the group. This includes connection, learning, a sense of dignity, and the opportunity to contribute their lived experience to research that reflects their values and interests. The advisory group acts as a living example of the project’s values, modelling inclusion, enablement, and connection to nature. This showcase film demonstrates how research can be strengthened by lived experience, and how research design can contribute positively to life with cognitive change.

 Tricia King is a photographer and researcher whose work explores visual storytelling, ageing, and social connection. She leads the Picture Yourself project, a participatory photography initiative that challenges age-related stereotypes by positioning older adults as both image-makers and subjects. Her practice integrates creative methodologies with community engagement to foster inclusion, agency, and wellbeing.
Picture Yourself is a national project generating images of older adults created by older adults. Through training and mentoring, older photographers are equipped with the technical and conceptual skills to produce high-quality, contemporary imagery that reflects diverse lived experiences of ageing. This approach shifts authorship and control, enabling participants to represent themselves and their communities on their own terms.
The exhibition presents a curated selection of photographs created through this process, emphasising visibility, identity, and connection. The resulting body of work challenges dominant visual narratives of decline by offering nuanced, authentic representations of later life. Over 20 older photographers have contributed to a library which will launch with more than 500 images which are freely available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial library.

In 2021, members of the Rewire choir engaged in a collaborative, arts-based research project exploring our experiences of living with dementia, choir singing, and living through the COVID19 pandemic, including our innovative adaptation to online choir during lockdown periods. Through this project, we created an 18-part song cycle that delves into the lived experience of choir members, and reframes the dominant narrative of dementia from one of suffering to a multidimensional expression of joy, pain, adventure, challenge, and innovation.

Observing people living with dementia engage in nature-based art activities during my PhD research has provided a rare opportunity for me to experience personally the dynamism, joy and resilience of nature connection as it conveyed through art among older adults including people living with dementia I share my reflections of this experience as a participant observer during the 18 weeks spent across three case programs, using paintings inspired from the art activities. The paintings are referenced from images taken across each site, which I then integrate with found objects that represent the art activities specific to each study site. Two key early learnings from my reflections, as I continue to analyse the observational and reflective data, are (i) nature acts as a living canvas on which artistic activity thrives, with its diversity and functional beauty providing both inspiration and raw material for embodied and creative expression; and (ii) art functions as a relatable tool that conveys nature connection, serving as a timeless language transcending age, brain health status, race and culture.

Late life is a time of change and adaptation, loss and learning, decline and growth. Thriving through these transitions requires internal and external resources, problem solving, imagination, creativity, and an ability to make sense of your own story. This exhibition presents creativity as a ubiquitous human norm, and a late life superpower. Creativity has life course value, especially in later life, as the cumulation of a lifetime of experience, practice and evolution. In this exhibition participants will explore the very origins of human creativity, how creativity evolves with ageing and changes in senses, cognition and other intrinsic capacities; how it drives innovation, adaptation and growth, and enables expression and sense of identity. The exhibition will include visual displays to illustrate the history of human art from prehistory to modern expressionism, creative adaptations to changes in functional abilities, and the narrative between art and ageing. Hands on experiences will allow participants to “find their lines” through tactile engagement, modelling, collage and mark making. Conversations between participants will consider opportunities to expand and enable creativity through later life as a tool for self-expression and for opening up to new ideas and perspectives. Participants will receive a booklet “Finding your lines in later life” written by Julie and based on both her scientific studies of ageing and her creative learnings.