Speaking at The MHCLG
Digital Away Day

ageable
2 min readSep 6, 2024

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I’m not sure quite how this happened — but somehow I ended up speaking at the MHCLCG Digital Away Day at the Library space in Birmingham. All those letters stand for Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government digital teams — a tongue twister — but an important ones, they were hosting an event to share together how best they can come together for a day nationally to be together and make collective plans together in a time of what is constant flux and change.

A big thanks to Ben, who linked me up for this opportunity, as well as Matt who helped me have insightful and provocative slides and questions. Whenever I stand up on a stage I’m always a little flustered as to why I’m on any stage — as I hate that inherent dynamic of person on the stage as the person who knows things, and everyone else doesn’t which is never the case. No one really knows what they are doing, we’re all learning together and this is a critical thing to be starting from.

I spoke about why we exist and what type of radical and universal care we’re working towards, as well as talked through the Open Age project we worked on last.

“Universal care is the idea of a society where care is front and centre at every scale of life, and in which we are all jointly responsible. For hands on care work as well as the care work necessary for the maintenance of communities and the world itself.”
The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence by The Care Collective

I met some very kind and supportive people I had the pleasure of connecting with there especially: ZeShaan Shamsi, Greg Winfield, Lee Murray, Kate Harries, Noor Taha, Not to mention a big lot of thanks to Katy Armstrong, Agniezka Murdoch for helping organise and run the day!

I loved it- if you’d like me to speak at your event I’d love to speak — please drop me an email and we can explore how I can share and inspire and share the work we’re committed to doing — moving towards this world of a world focused on care and people off all ages at the centre of everything.

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ageable

We use imagination & creativity to re-design the way we live, age & care. www.ageable.org