1.4 Pushing Research Boundaries

On the right is a timeline of CTC research activities. Our research design has evolved over the course of three years because we have taken an organic approach, with in-built flexibility, time and resource. This has allowed us to develop a range of innovative, creative and participatory methods, putting co-researchers’ lived experience centre stage. One example of our research practice is the ‘My Album’ activity from the beginning of the project. Co-researchers had a range of art and craft materials, and access to a small photo printer, which they used to create an album that documented the most important events, people and places in their lives past and present. We discussed their albums in a collaborative and exploratory sense-making process, to get to the relationships between their life experiences, knowledge and priorities and who they are now creatively and digitally. Our methods further down the line could then be responsive to what we had collectively learnt; and our understandings of the co-researchers’ experiences of minoritisation shaped both the prototype projects and also our policy work. This was all made possible by the flexibility of our research design and co-research principles. The ‘My Album’ activities were presented in 2022 at the Healthy Ageing Challenge conference, Canadian Association on Gerontology, and European Sociological Association.