AGEment

Awareness of active ageing through the promotion of cultural heritage

The promotion of cultural heritage is an area in which older people can be actively involved, as their experiences and memories are an active and relevant source of information. However, older people are not fully aware of this. Therefore, it is important to promote a campaign of awareness towards them in this aspect, since this would also contribute to favor an active ageing, enhancing certain cognitive capacities. New technologies are an increasingly useful mean for this active ageing, with mobile phones, tablets and computers being used more and more commonly among the older population. The development of mobile applications for use with these devices is on the increase, solving the limitations that the elderly population would have towards the use of these new technologies. The aim of this app is the dissemination among the elderly of the awareness of active ageing linked to cultural heritage. A very simple app for Android platform has been designed for Smartphone devices through which they can access content corresponding to different cultural areas, mainly composed of videos in which elderly people promote cultural heritage. This app, which has an interface very simple with few buttons and easy menus, supposes an important means to promote active ageing using cultural heritage, involving them more and more in the use of new technologies. The app is the first one aimed at raise awareness about the importance of active ageing using the cultural heritage for older adults, as well as to incorporate the physical, cognitive and social activities during the daily life contests as a part of ageing well process. In order to increase the accessibility, acceptance and to facilitate the communication, the app has been translated from English into the 4 national languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian).