+ Influencing the agenda: what matters to older people in Greater Manchester 

On 20 February 2020, we held our event 'influencing the agenda: what matters to older people in Greater Manchester'. What a fantastic day! As indicated in our event title, the day was all about influencing and we know one of the best ways to influence is to bring people together to have conversations and to share ideas. We were therefore overjoyed by how many of our network members came along to share their views and to engage with organisations and decision-makers. 

 

We wanted to make sure that our members had an opportunity to engage with decision makers on a local and national level, so we were thrilled that the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham came along for the afternoon to give an update and to officially launch our new Age Proud photography competition.

 

We also got to hear some fantastic presentations from our own network members, Warren Heppolette from the Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership, James Baldwin from Transport for Greater Manchester, Councillor Jude Wells who is the Assistant Portfolio Holder for Age Friendly Greater Manchester, Suzanne Hilton from Bolton Age UK and Oliver Steadman from Independent Age. Our network members had the opportunity to share their views with all of our speakers and to ask questions.

If you weren't able to attend on the day and would like to hear the presentations given by our speakers, you can watch the recordings on Youtube.

 

Over lunchtime we were treated to a performance by ‘The Cheeky Charlies’ who had our attendees tapping their feet and clapping along to the music! Watch this video to put a guaranteed smile on your face! We also had a marketplace over lunchtime, where our attendees could find out more about local services available for older people. 

 

We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our fantastic speakers, stall holders, facilitators and attendees for ensuring that we had a positive and successful day together. We also want to give a special mention to our steering group who from the early stages of planning right through to presenting on the day, played a vital role in making the event a huge success.

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The full agenda for the day can be found here.

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All the photos taken during the event can be found here.

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Not only did we have excellent conversations taking place in the room during the event, we also had a great online discussion on Twitter. All of our tweets from the day can be viewed online.