November 2018, SPOKES #46 LUIS AZEVEDO RODRIGUES Executive Director Centro Ciência Viva de Lagos Email | Twitter | LinkedIn | Academia SARA MIRA Science communicator Bolseira Gestão Ciência e Tecnologia Conservation Genetics (PhD) Centro Ciência Viva de Lagos Email | LinkedIn New opportunities for old schoolers Senior citizens as a target audience: case studies and lessons learnt | Estimated reading time: 26 minutes Like many stories, this one starts around a coffee table. We are in Silves, an inland city in the Portuguese region of Algarve, very different from the typical sunny beaches you may know from holiday postcards. “We have many elderly people visiting this library. That is why we implemented a programme with several activities for them, but we didn’t come up with anything besides those standard library activities. We are not used to work on science and technology, as you do here with families”. These words belong to Maria José Mackaaij, at that time the head of the Municipal Library. When this conversation came up, Lagos Ciência Viva Science Centre (CCVL), the organisation we work for, had been working with Silves Municipal Library for a while, jointly organising science workshops for families at public libraries. “Unlike you, we have gathered experience communicating science to youngsters or families, but have no experience working with elderly groups,” we replied. Needless to say, from that moment on the idea of a joint venture was too self-evident to allow us to go on sipping our coffees absent-mindedly. CCVL was looking for new audiences and aiming to diversify its activities. Sharing our common needs, limitations and aspirations with our librarian colleagues brought us further. Science Has No Age, a programme in science communication that targets senior citizens, started immediately after this conversation. Initially, we based it on hands-on activities that CCVL already delivered externally, but, as you will learn below, we eventually had to adapt our practices and strategies to our new target audience. After this peculiar start, the project spread from Silves to its neighbouring town, Lagos. There, it acquired different features, as it is now included in a wider senior health and active ageing programme. In this article, we Drst outline the rationale for engaging seniors, before listing a series of examples and case studies from Portugal and beyond, showing the different ways this can be done. In a Dnal section, we share lessons learnt and recommendations. We hope that this article will serve as a source of ideas, examples, opportunities and, most important, good practices that science centres and museums should be aware of when considering the elderly as a target audience. BOOK OR ARTICLE November 2018, SPOKES #46 1