New Aged Citizens: New Definition, New Opportunity and New Challenges
24 FEBRUARY — 01 MAY 2016
Gallery 2, TCDC, Bangkok
Ageing is inevitable. Children in the future will live longer than adults today.
The best thing we can do now is to create the future that we are ready to age by ourselves.
Thailand Creative and Design Center (TCDC) organizes the exhibition “New Aged Citizens: New Definition, New Opportunity and New Challenges” to create understanding and disseminate knowledge, opportunities and challenges that come with the coming ageing society through learning of innovations, such as medical technology that slows the age decay, design fits with life in senior year and digital communication technology that connects the world help seniors being competent people with knowledge, experiences and potentials to drive society and economic.
In the next 34 years, numbering over 2.1 billion, the seniors of the future will comprise several generations with differing needs. The complexity of their needs means that tomorrow’s elderly will have diverse styles of aging and diverse attitudes about aging and youth. This will be a challenge for the seniors to interact and adapt to live in the society as a member who still drive society and economy. Today, cities and urban services are starting to do more to accommodate the lifestyles of the urban senior dwellers. This is the first step in design to prepare for the coming ageing society.
The modern history has showed us that creativity and design are important in expanding life expectancy and helping elderly to be independent longer, which is a basic human need. The ability to repair ageing body, daily life inventions, big data and social connectivity are factors to create new opportunities that can lead to business, product and service for seniors like never before.
The transition from retirement in the industrial capitalist system to the age full of skills, experience, and wisdom, the capital of post-industrial society, digital communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing between generations have created new workforce back to the market. The phenomenon gives rise to the new role of senior citizens in Thailand as they are not going to be just consumers, but also producers to be reckoned with. These new group of people have creative ecology as the foundation of efficient working performance. Skills, experience, and wisdom are the premium production cost that will turn the economic crisis into the opportunity to thrive again.