ABSTRACT
Similar to other European metropolitan peripheries, Cascais—a municipality in Lisbon's metropolitan area—is facing unprecedented demographic change that poses unparalleled challenges to public administration. A co-creation approach with action-oriented research project was undertaken to produce a diagnostic, a strategy, and an action plan for ageing, old-age, and social policies. Through the lenses of critical gerontology and the World Health Organization (WHO) age-friendly cities framework, this paper aims to describe and critically reflect on the research protocol applied in Cascais. The protocol involved five different methods: a desk review; semi-structured interviews with diverse specialist groups; three workshops with six reference groups; a survey; and street interviews based on the social dreaming matrix. Two basic assumptions guided the research design. First, real participation involves time and space for reflection, exchange, and change. Second, ageism is pervasive in most contemporary societies and influences community perspectives when reflecting on public policy design. This chapter will describe the research protocol developed to be applied in Cascais with a particular focus on the workshops. Data was collected from 18 workshops conducted with six reference groups, between February and June 2022, using three main data sources: a paper-based survey, distributed before each session, notes from the research team, and a transcription of the audio recording. The main topics for workshops 1 and 2 were ageism and the age-friendly framework in the Cascais context. During the 3rd workshop, participants were asked to pinpoint places where people could and could not age well. Despite a general acknowledgement of diversity in ageing and a disapproval of ableism, most participants continued to negatively associate ageing with disability and dependence. The Cascais Protocol proved to be useful to expand the boundaries of ageing policies and counter such beliefs. However, its potential to be replicated remains unclear.
