Four For Friday | July 7, 2023
LF61 | Dementia Prize Semi-Finalists, Old School, Longevity Ants and City of Longevity
Welcome to a Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
Semi-finalists announced in Longitude Prize on Dementia
24 impressive global projects were announced as semi-finalists in the UK’s £4m Longitude Prize on Dementia. The group includes avatars, music therapy, virtual reality, communities and digital prosthetics, all designed to help people live independently with dementia. An inspiring and upbeat collection of mission-driven innovators, and a well put together contest - Bravo!
Oldschool
Ageism campaigner Ashton Applewhite has developed a delightfully punny site called Old School that collects a bunch of resources, facts and figures related to ageism.
Old School curates, creates, commissions and disseminates free resources to educate people about ageism and how to end it; hosts and facilitates spaces where age advocates around the world can connect; collaborates with other pro-aging organizations; and shows up for other social-justice movements
Longevity ants and the price they pay
A fascinating piece in The Atlantic about long-lived ants. It’s tempting to try and draw human parallels to the story of a species of ants that gets infected by a tapeworm and in return is able to live a long, lazy, healthy life, but pays for it by losing its faculties and becoming easy prey for birds (that help propagate the tapeworms). But applying this to humans is a stretch, so just enjoy the fascinating longevity story about parasites and their hosts.
The UK’s ‘City of Longevity’
The UK’s National Innovation Centre on Ageing is raising the bar. They’ve just held an international conference, on the theme of ‘City of Longevity’:
The City of Longevity is a dynamic, evidence-based, open-source framework and a playful toolkit for cities to design and deliver practical actions to help residents and tourists live longer, healthier lives.
It is built on three foundations - the city as a partner in longevity, it’s measurable (and therefore lends itself to data analysis) and participation from citizens themselves - making it a joy, not a chore.
They attracted big name city innovators from Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Lisbon, Stanford and others and aim to create an open source framework and toolkit to help other cities innovate. Read more in their brochure here and look out for results from this week’s session.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen