Our Story

Celebrate Ageing was established in 2013 by Dr Catherine Barrett, and became a not for profit in 2019. Our mission is to build a grass roots movement focused on combating ageism and building respect for older Australians. 

Values

  • Integrity: to ensure our work communicates out genuine valuing of older people 
  • Authenticity: to live the valuing of ageing and older people in our work and in our own lives 
  • Creativity: to utilise art and narrative based approaches that engage people in wanting to be part of change
  • Inclusion: to ensure diverse older people are celebrated and included
  • Partnership: to seek meaningful partnerships the promote change 
  • Voice: to amplify the voices of older people, particularly those who are marginalised
  • Co-leadership: to create spaces for older people to co lead change
  • Empowerment: to share power and support a national network of leaders
  • Culture change: to ensure our work creates sustainable culture change.  

Our approach

The unique approach involves bridging the evidence-to-culture gap through art and narrative based approaches. At the heart of our work is the Elder Leadership Academy, which recognises older people's capacity to co-lead change. 

Evidence-Culture Gap
For over a decade Celebrate Ageing has been working to understand what it takes to bridge the gap between what we know (the evidence) about ageism and the (culture) change needed. We know this
significant task requires a critical mass of people. We also know that working with Early Adopters is a powerful way to kick start change and that engaging the Majority to want to be part of change works best with art and narrative based approaches. These approaches draw people in and open their hearts and minds. These approaches enable us to build a national networks of champions for change - a critical component of sustainable culture change. 

Empowering older people 
The Elder Leadership Academy is at the heart of Celebrate Ageing. The Academy offers Fellowships to older people to co-lead projects combatting ageism and building respect for older people. 
​We believe consultation, representation, co-design and co-production all have a place - but older people have the skills to co-lead and should be given every opportunity to do so. The outputs and outcomes achieved by the Fellows demonstrate the wisdom of this approach. We greatly value the opportunity to work in meaningful partnership with older people. Check out the Academy webpage to read more about the Fellowships here
The work we do
The work of Celebrate Ageing includes programs, partnerships and events. Our programs include the Elder Leadership Academy, the Centre for Intergenerational Power, The Kindness Pandemic and Celebrate Ageing School. Our programs are our major activities that happen all year round. To help design, produce and lead our programs we have formed partnerships with groups of older people who are marginalised. These partnerships have been critical to Alice's Garage (older LGBTIQ+ people), the Museum of Love (people living with dementia), the Opal Institute (preventing sexual assault of older women) and the Polio Papers (Polio survivors). We also host campaigns and events, see our Calendar.

Awards and achievements

  • 2022 Most Uplifting Facebook Group in the World
  • 2022 Probono Australia Impact 25 Award (Dr Catherine Barrett)
  • 2020 Globe LGBTIQ Person of the Year (Dr Catherine Barrett) 
  • 2019 GLOBE Award for Promoting Healthy Communities 
  • 2019 Australian Association of Gerontology Glenda Powell Travelling Fellow (Dr Catherine Barrett)
  • 2018 Australian Human Rights Medal Finalist (Dr Catherine Barrett)