Ageing Well Swansea: Connecting people, building relationships, changing lives

Swansea’s “Ageing Well Engagement Programme” is an initiative devised to combat loneliness and isolation and to positively impact on the physical and mental well-being of the city’s senior residents.

By actively seeking input and suggestions from community members, we have tried to ensure that all sessions are not only relevant but also meaningful and enriching for those in attendance.

The programme started back in August 2021, under Welsh Government’s Age Friendly Wales: Strategy for an Ageing Society. There are four main aims and objectives which shape our work, these are:

• Enhancing well-being of our older community members
• Improving local services and environments
• Building and retaining people’s own capabilities
• Tackling age related poverty 

How have we implemented these aims and objectives?
We started with the creation of an Ageing Well Steering Group, designed to bring together individuals and organisations who work with or support older people. The aim was to create a space for networking, collaboration, and the development of new working relationships. Today, the Steering Group includes over 80 organisations and charities from the private, community, and public sectors. We meet bi-monthly to shape our collective efforts in the community and support Swansea’s ambition to become a WHO-recognised Age Friendly City.

As a result of this collaborative approach, our team has established ongoing partnerships with a wide range of local businesses, organisations, and charities. These relationships have enabled us to deliver a diverse weekly engagement programme, offering activities that span physical fitness, mental stimulation, creative expression, and opportunities for social interaction. These sessions help individuals build confidence, form new connections and engage more with community life, services, and projects.

Weekly Engagement Sessions
Alongside our regular, long-standing sessions advertised on the flyer included, some of the other engagement sessions available on either a weekly or fortnightly basis to our older community members include:

• Tai Chi
• Reminiscing & Ancestry Group – Local History
• Cuppa with a Copper
• Tech Tuesday with Gower College – Combating Digital Exclusion
• Dance to Health
• Ageing Well Choir @ Swansea Arena
• Aches & Lanes Bowling
• Disability Social
• Purls of Wisdom Knitting Group
• 60+ Dance 
• Upcycling Clothes Group with Gower College
• Boules on the Beach

We work very closely in partnership with Swansea Council’s Sport and Health team. Colleagues within this team co-ordinate the 60+ Active Leisure Scheme. Some of the activities available to older people through this scheme include:

• Nordic Walking
• Trampoline Exercise
• Aerobics
• Paddle Boarding
• Mountain Biking
• Rock Climbing
• Pickleball
• Canoeing/Kayaking

All of these sessions are fully booked on a regular basis and there is a huge demand for more!

How do we promote these opportunities and increase public engagement?
Our Ageing Well newsletter is distributed every Friday via email and serves as a key tool for sharing information with the community. It highlights not only Swansea Council’s Ageing Well engagement sessions but also a wide range of activities for older people taking place across the city. Many of these opportunities are submitted by partners from the Ageing Well Steering Group. With nearly 3,000 subscribers, the newsletter consistently generates strong community interest and uptake in the events and initiatives it promotes.

We also manage an Ageing Well WhatsApp Group, which now includes over 700 members. The group is set to “admin only,” meaning only staff can post updates, making it an effective method of sharing timely and accurate information. It has proven especially useful for notifying community members about changes to session times, venues, or, on rare occasions, cancellations. As a team, we regularly inform older community members about both the newsletter and the WhatsApp Group, and we’re always happy to support anyone interested in signing up to either.

We recognise that not all older community members are active online - for a variety of reasons. Some may lack access to technology, others may not feel confident using it and some simply prefer not to. As a result, we continue to rely heavily on printed flyers and perhaps most effectively, good old-fashioned word of mouth!

Every week, we meet and speak with new people, many of whom tell us they heard about our work through a friend who already attends. This reinforces that word of mouth remains a powerful tool for community engagement, working hand in hand with our digital communication efforts.

Visible, Approachable and Accessible!
A key factor in our success is that a team member is always present at our engagement sessions. This consistent presence helps build trust, familiarity, and strong relationships with community members. As a result, conversations are more meaningful, and we’re often approached for advice or support on other issues. Thanks to our collaborative approach, even when we can’t help directly, we’re usually able to connect individuals with organisations that can.

To enhance our visibility, approachability and accessibility further, in August 2023 we opened a small office space inside the National Waterfront Museum. Located in a high-footfall area of this beautiful and accessible venue, the space offers a welcoming environment where community members can drop in for advice, or as often happens, simply for a cup of tea and a chat. The space was named by members of the Ageing Well Community, and so, the Collaboration Station was born.

Building on the success of our space at the Waterfront Museum, we opened a second, significantly larger venue in the city centre in November 2024 - The Collaboration Station @ St David’s. This new space gives us the opportunity to host engagement sessions in our own dedicated venue, marking an exciting step forward. Designed with the entire community in mind, it aims to provide a safe, welcoming, and relaxing environment for people of all ages.

Since opening, the space has hosted over 50 events, delivered by both internal Council teams and external partners. Several of these have been dedicated to the Ageing Well initiative, all of which have been warmly received. The most recent, a Mid-Summer Party, welcomed 150 attendees, making it one of our most successful events to date!

The Future?
We currently welcome between 500 and 600 community members to our engagement sessions each week. Our hope is not only to maintain this strong level of participation but also to expand our reach and continue welcoming new faces in the months ahead.

Whilst the Ageing Well initiative is facilitated by staff, it has always been led and developed in close collaboration with people aged 50 and over in Swansea. Listening to and learning from those who attend our engagement sessions has been central to its success. We remain committed to a “do with, not for” approach, and we look forward to continuing this journey together for many years to come.

Rhys presented at the APSE online equality, diversity and inclusion seminar, his presentation and others can be viewed on the APSE website here.