 Please welcome Jan Verlinden with IMPROF combats ageism. Hello everybody. Thanks for coming to the talk. So I will have 10 minutes at the latest 50 minutes talk about ageism. I will not take anything on the slide so I will keep to my time of 10 minutes or 15 minutes. So what is ageism? In short it is discrimination on basis of age. It can be younger people, but I will focus on older people. The causes of that discrimination are stereotypes and prejudices that are internalized personally, individually and socially. Those stereotypes and prejudices are invalid and very thorough scientific studies prove that. I will refer often to studies, to books, to very famous psychiatrists. They focus on the mental growing, the mental state of older people. So I will very little, I will refer to my own experience because I want to refer to very professionally executed studies. So how big is the problem? I just cite the World Health Organization that say 50% of the population is agist against other people. So it's a huge problem. Number of stereotypes, I will cite again Beka Levy, a very famous profession and psychiatrist. So what are the stereotypes? I mention here the 14, I'm not going into every 14, but older people are unable to learn, are bad drivers, lack creativity, suffer from mental illnesses that can't be treated, aren't effective in workplace, don't benefit from healthy behaviors and so on. And those prejudices live in our society, especially in our Western society, so Western Europe, USA. It doesn't need to be like that. For example, in Japan they have a complete other attitude to older people. They have now about 37,000 centennials, so people that are older than 100 years old and they are treated like movie stars there. When is their birthday, the mayor comes, they come on television, they get a present of the federal government, so it doesn't need to be like this, this is Western. So what are the areas where their discrimination on ages older people is manifesting? I'm not going into all of them, for example, advertisement. We are, the Western world is concentrated on younger people being young, that's for the Western world beautiful, but that's a stereotype. Mental health care, I'll give you one problem. Ashton Applewhite is an activist in the USA on ageism. She wrote a fantastic book, a fantastic website where she explains everything and how thorough the problem is. On health care she says ageism, that means less treatment, worse treatment, or often no treatment at all. And this is not fiction, this is real now. So what does ageism provoke in Jews? So I cite here again the World Health Organization, because I want to refer as often as I can to official studies not to my own experience, but because I suppose the worst case scenario that even you will have internalized some of the stereotypes mentioned. That's why I do not want to refer often to my experience, but to really scientific studies, or as in this case the World Health Organization. What cited here? If you individually or in your culture socially internalize and all those stereotypes, your behavior will give damage to the older people. And it is in all those areas I mentioned. So if everybody has those stereotypes and those prejudices, the older people they feel not incorporated anymore in society. They feel like being cast away, they believe in the productive society. So they feel not accepted anymore because they are not productive, which is not true. So the older people who really, because of that, get a low syllabus team by study and again it's thoroughly examined. They live seven and a half years less older than other when you have a positive attitude. It erodes solidarity between generations. Of course if you have the stereotypes that older people are like disposable waste than the younger people, and sure when you have those stereotypes already in education it happens that when you, the teachers, when they talk about older people it's often or always in a negative sense. They say, yeah, they are not creative, they cannot think anymore, they are often sick, they have mental illnesses that can't be cured, which is not true. But that has an enormous effect on the behavior from young to middle age. When you do not use the capacity and all the qualities that the elders still have that's even the most regrettable damage that ages and provokes. Now we start on the good news. So the good news is Dr. Koh is a famous psychiatrist and geriatrician. So he dedicated his life to studying the mental growth and what happens when people get older, with their brain, with their energy, with their creativity. And he concluded, I just cite him, I just quote him. He says there is an untapped wealth of creativity and intellectual potential for older people, I mean older than 60 years old, even older than 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 years old. The brain does not degrade. He says, yeah, one of the reasons of that is that people who are older, older than 60, they say, yeah, I retire so now I do what I like to do. So otherwise when should I do it? And I don't care if anybody laughs at me. And that's exactly the mindset that is very nice to have when you train them in improvisation. Duke University did also very thorough investigation and they came to the conclusion that older people use their right brain which is the brain of intuition, creativity. They use it more in a synchronized way with the left brain which is the brain, half of the brain of mathematical and the ratio. And Dr. Cohen says about that, for me older people they move to all wheel drive with their brain. Because they have a lot of experience and we will see that the brain grows. The stereotype that the brain should degrade is a stereotype, it's not true. So he says everything, every activity that uses the both sides of the brain is chocolate to the brain. Art is like that, improvisation is like that. That's the next link to improvisation. So I like the expression chocolate to the brain because I'm from Belgium. So, in pro, pride in pro is chocolate to the brain. Keep that in mind. So, as the Nepal white also mentions in their book, especially in emotional realm older brains are more resilient because they have a lot of experience. So the aging brain and emotional maturity, they adapt better which is surprising but it's based on studies, not just on feeling or working with them and thinking that they can adapt better. No, no, they studied it. And they have a better, the aging brain search for a better level of well-being. She also talks about the cognitive reserve, that's the fact that the neurons can grow and they connect better. So from left to right and right to left. And you can attend that on the condition that they do something challenging. They maintain a social network and they do regularly exercises on that. And again, that for me it's a very compliment for me the definition of doing improvisation. So that's the real, even a former link to the applied improvisation. That the brain grows if they do something challenging, if they do that in a group, like in improvisation sessions and training. And they exercise regularly, not one time but every week, one hour, that's already enough, I think. More is better. So here we come to the link with improvisation, applied improvisation. I cite again Viola Spaulding. She talks about if you go, if you do her exercises like she instructs us in her books to do. And she says, yeah, you come into your intuition state of mind. She calls it X area and there in that state of mind, the culture, the race, the education, psychology and age doesn't exist anymore. So I again quote her to say already she think because one of her other saying this improvisation is meditation in action, which I think really it's true. And in meditation you get out of your, you push out your prejudices and your stereotypes. So here, even if you follow exercises or the Spaulding for Johnstone, they are different. They use different words or expressions, but ultimately they work on the state of mind of intuition and your own self. So my message from this talk is as an applied improvisation practitioner you are in a very privileged position because you have the tools or from Johnstone or from Viola Spaulding. Those are just a number of examples, but you are in a privileged position to do something about ageism. If you are interested in it, it can be on the side of the people who have contact who are working with older people to do something about their prejudices and stereotypes. Or you work with themselves, with the older selves to get rid of their low self esteem as they, the stereotypes, they internalize it and they partly or that I've seen in my sessions with older people I can see the damage really done by ageism and they, but you can, you have the tools. So you are in a privileged position. My final thoughts is first, examine your own stereotypes. I will give the references in my last slide. It was for me astonishing to see how much I was still inherited by the stereotypes and prejudices about older people. Older population is at least 25% or more of the society. If you count then the people who work with older people, then you come to 35-40% of the population, so it's a huge market. Working with them is easier and more satisfying because of the reasons I gave or the experts gave. In my opinion, art quality is not age-related, so go for performances. They can do it, even if they are 70, 80, 90 years old and they are eager to do it. These are some books. Ashton Applewhite is on the list of 100 most influential women, so she's excellent. Her website, the books, if you are interested in working with older people, then you should at least read one book. It will give you a great insight on how much stereotypes and prejudices we have in our culture and in our education. Okay, if you have questions, I'll stay here on the conference until the last day. Here are two pictures of two beautiful people. I, in McKellen, is 82 years old. Her and Mirren is 78 years old. And look at that. If you ask somebody what you think of her and Mirren, the moment he says, yeah, she looks really beautiful for her age. Well, that's ageism because beauty doesn't, it's not connected with age, how old you are. You are just, that's the number on your passport and everybody is beautiful, young baby, middle age, and if you're 90 years old, you have the physical construction of somebody from 90 years old, but that's beautiful also. That doesn't need to be compared with somebody of 30 years old. That's ageism. Okay, thank you.