ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the experiences of older women aged 60-85 who were participants in a collaborative research project called ‘Stories of Ageing’.1 This three-year longitudinal study was designed to counter the invisibility of older women and the purveying of ageist images about growing older. Using principles based on Haug’s (1987) memory work and Walkerdine’s (Lucey et al. 1996) video diary methodologies, forty women explored their own life stories by engaging in critical processes of writing, filming, talking and performance. The processes of producing visual and verbal texts had powerful effects on these older learners and challenged the idea that creativity and cognitive ability necessarily decline with age or that ageing itself is necessarily a ‘problem’. The project was successful both in documenting change in the lives of older women, and in developing a pedagogic model of lifelong learning which produced change.
