The Better Birthdays campaign was launched in the summer of 2022 by Changing the Narrative, Canopy and Age Friendly Vibes

We held a webinar on Tuesday 31st October to celebrate the highlights of the first year, to share what we have learnt about humour and internalised ageism and to launch our #notafraidofmybirthday campaign. See the webinar recording here

Over a hundred people registered mainly from the US and the UK.

Better Birthdays Campaign - Highlights of the first year

Canopy in the UK - As well as running a number of workshops with age organisations and networks using Birthdays cards to discuss ageing and ageism, we also focused upon making contact with a range of senior executives in the UK Greeting Card industry, including card makers & retailers as well as the Greeting Card Association itself. This was to raise awareness of the impact of ageism on people’s health, wellbeing and life expectancy. As a result of these meetings ageism has been added to the agenda for the UK Greeting Card Association’s diversity and inclusion committee and an explanatory blog post about the Better Birthdays campaign included on the Association’s website.

Age-Friendly Vibes - It was the second year of business for Age Friendly Vibes and delighted to be named as one of 10 Designers to Watch by Stationery Trends , also Barnes & Noble / Paper Source now stock Age Friendly Vibes cards. Jan has been working on a variety of collaborations most recently producing care giver and dementia awareness cards.

Changing the Narrative (CTN) - The first Anti-Ageist card competition took place in 2020 which produced 20 designs and in January 2023 CTN selected 10 designers to create Anti-Ageist Birthday Cards. These campaigns have been very successful in eliciting responses, both positive and negative; they’ve been featured in the NY Times and had national television coverage as a result.

Why Birthday Cards?

Some people think there may be other more important topics, but here are some reasons:

• Birthdays are a logical time to think about age. And birthday cards are how many cultures celebrate birthdays.

• Birthday card messages reflect and reinforce our cultural beliefs about age and ageing. (it’s troubling that so many older people buy ageist cards for their peers).

• Ageism doesn’t just impact older people; it impacts us throughout the lifecourse.

• Birthday cards are an easy to understand example of ageism in our culture.

• Most of all, birthday cards are a great way to reinforce positive age beliefs.

• We wanted to create everyday conversations about how we feel about our ageing; birthdays and birthday cards provide opportunities with family, friends and colleagues to challenge and change our attitudes.

• Birthday cards publicly reflect the stereotypical attitudes and views about ageing – they are the cultural posters of our society’s story of ageing.

• Birthdays get to core of our feeling towards ageing – ours and of others. If we are to challenge ageism – we need to examine and own our attitudes; ageist birthday cards don’t get a pass because they are exchanged between older people and are “harmless fun!”

• By promoting pro-ageing/age friendly cards we show a positive perspective for celebrating ageing not lamenting and denigrating it.

Humor is a complicated subject. CTN has a lot of experience with multiple years of running campaigns and it’s the Anti-Ageist card campaign that gets the most attention, both positive & negative.

Two objections CTN get are

1. why birthday cards? (something so frivolous) and

2. people enjoy the humor

Being able to laugh about things that are difficult is helpful. It’s a way we bond with friends and peers. But we are also reinforcing the ageist story/stereotypes and we stay stuck in the negativity. We may mean it well, but we are reinforcing age bias.

Ageist humor is not an inside joke between two people. Cards are displayed publicly. They add to the ageist messages that over 90% of people over 50 report seeing every day.

Sometimes messages can hide when they are in the form of a joke.

Can’t you take a joke? That kind of question shames the offended person into not questioning the message. So, maybe we just shouldn’t take a joke.

Overall this is complicated, but it’s worth thinking about the stories we are accepting and what stories we want to spread.

Better Birthdays Survey

With the UK Silver Marketing Association, we created a consumer survey on giving and receiving “jokey” birthday cards, here’s some extracts and findings.

The webinar concluded with focusing upon what we can do to combat ageism and promote positive age beliefs.

What can we do?

• Birthdays are a great way to reinforce positive age-beliefs

• Buy, give and ask for different cards.

• Address your internalized ageism. Until we get a grip on our own internalized ageism, stand up and own it.

Start by owning your birthday - We launched the #NotAfraidofMyBirthday campaign.

During the month of November, we asked people to take a stand on social media, to show pride in being their age, choosing to celebrate everything another birthday means. We asked people to share a picture on social media with the hashtag #NotAfraidofMyBirthday which would

o Let their friends, family, and colleagues know they are not afraid of aging or birthdays

o To use birthdays as a way to spread age-positive beliefs

o To take action against #ageism and join the pro-age movement!

The campaign aimed to start a conversation about age on social media and let the world know that we don't buy into the narrative of fear of ageing.

(image extract from Out of the Box cards)

Art, activism and ageing.

We need as many strategies as possible to challenge and change our thinking about the implications of an ageing society, and in particular our own attitudes to our own ageing. Art activism and creative social action can contribute when it focuses on drawing attention to our inherent ageist tendencies and implicit fear of personal ageing; an outcome which is inextricably tied up with the “othering” or objectifying of older people! Creative social action can provide the jolt to our inner mindsets, disrupt the status quo and liberate our ageing.

Re-imagining (our) birthdays

This digital workshop took place on 24th May as part of the Age of Creativity Festival 2023. It was led by Meg LaPorte and Jordan Evans, co-founders of Art Against Ageism and Dave Martin, associate with Canopy and co-founder of Better Birthdays.

We all have birthdays. It's the one time when we’ll connect with the fact we are ageing; the session was a playful opportunity to creatively reflect upon ageing and ageism prompted by Birthdays.

So where did birthdays come from? Apparently it all began back around 3000 BC when ancient Egyptians started to celebrate birthdays, although the Romans were among the first people to celebrate birthdays as we know them today. The interesting thing about the origins of birthdays is that the time of a birthday was considered a time of change and people are vulnerable and anxious at times of change.

It seems these rituals – lighting candles, making lots of noise, offerings such as cake weren’t really about celebrating but rather friends and family gathering to ward off evil spirits and to support the birthday person. A kind of intervention if you will, perhaps with our ageist attitudes to our ageing we could do with such interventions to create more pro-aging birthday experiences?

The workshop included exercises and discussion highlighting our internalised ageism. If we aren’t careful, birthdays can become heart-sink moments. Here are some of the comments made in the workshop:-

“There is a song just released that has the words '20, how am I 20, how did I turn 20?' as though it's a death sentence…”

“I didn't want to look at any of my cards from my 30th. I kept them up for a day and then threw them in the bin.”

“I've seen a lot of struggles around turning 40- particularly women turning 40…”

“When I turned 40- I did not celebrate it really- I wouldn’t let my partner plan a party for me.”

“My mum said she felt like an invisibility cape covered her the day after her 60th birthday.”

“I'm often told that I don't look my age - as if that would be a bad thing. Whereas I am exactly the age that I am!”

“Even when you try to be age positive, people really want to make you feel bad about it on the day. Existential crisis coming from others!

How might we re-imagine birthdays to be pro-ageing?

Could birthdays be opportunities for everyday conversations about attitudes to ageing?

We considered ideas on how to be proactive and set the scene for pro-ageing birthday celebrations with family and friends, in the workplace and of course for ourselves.

These ideas included:-

Wearing badges and putting up birthday bunting which stated “Ageism free zone at this birthday” - “No ageism acceptable in celebrating this birthday!”

Maybe have handy “red cards” to call out any ageist remarks or moments of internalised ageism - like ” wow you look good for your age”, “you don’t look 60”, “She’s 70 years young.”

“We all have EDI policies at work- I think we should explore how we can make this more positive around ageing - birthdays in the workplace..raising awareness about ageism in workplaces ….Birthday Positive Packs for workplaces?”

“I think we should make age more visible and everyone wears a badge on their birthday with their age - if you make it a normative behaviour alongside something positive, it will change how we feel about it”.

“Action pledged to take – speak out at local shops selling ageist cards – to start the debate…..Print something to hand out to shop keepers about ageist cards.”

The workshop highlighted:-

How ageism subtly (and not so subtly) shows up around birthdays.

How we are still vulnerable to our change of age just like in ancient Greece and

How we might become more proactive with birthday arrangements to create positive ageing scenarios.

A call for – positive ageing/anti ageist birthday toolkits?

Although we may see birthday cards as just a bit of fun which shouldn’t be taken seriously, they are serious, for they express the social agreement that ageing is bad and all about loss.

In 2020 two organisations, Changing the Narrative in the USA, and Canopy in the UK began to play with the same idea.

How can birthday celebrations become a moment when we challenge our fear of ageing, and instead spread feelings of gratitude and hope?

To tackle ageism, we need to change how we think about aging. Birthdays are one of the major times that we think about our age and so are a prime time to challenge our beliefs about aging. In some cultures, birthday cards are an integral way that we mark this occasion, making birthday cards a great place to rewrite our beliefs about age.

5 Surprisingly Common Examples of Ageism in Greeting Cards