Together, the Toronto Seniors’ Forum and Care Watch carried out a project entitled “Still Acting Out” to address age-based discrimination in Toronto.

Over the course of a year the “Still Acting Out” Age Positive Project reached out to seniors’ groups, inviting them to explore the impact of ageism and to develop strategies to address it on a personal level and within their communities. Using seniors’ experiences and ideas, the Age Positive Project constructed four dramatic vignettes that depict ageism, and used these dramatic scenes to initiate discussions about ageism with seniors’ groups across the city.

The Still Acting Out Age Positive Project experiences and products are combined into a “learning module” intended to help other seniors’ groups explore ageism through discussion, improvisation, role-playing and advocacy. The material provided here can be customized and used according to the needs and resources of each organization. Download the learning module.

April 2016

Four dramatic vignettes were produced as part of the learning module; you are invited to re-create these dramas to explore how ageism is played out in our daily lives. Watch the video

Neysmith, S. (2018). Using ageism as a lens for challenging inequities in home care. Social Work and Policy Studies: Social Justice, Practice and Theory, 1,(1), 1-16.

This paper argues that ageism is a social structural dimension that riddles Canadian society but has yet to be challenged in the same ways that sexism and racism are critiqued. However, how the effects of ageism are experienced, and how these effects impact the quality of life of individual elderly persons, depends on their social location. Thus, developing an intersectional analysis is essential for resisting ageism.

Stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination are examined in this paper, and we are invited to consider: Why is population ageing seen as an unexpected and expensive problem? Why are we not prepared to address the needs of an ageing population after decades of time to plan? Why do we continue to allow the notion of “aging as individual failure” as an excuse to deny societal responsibility for providing necessary supports and services that many of today’s elders previously fought for and now rely upon? Download article.