The perils and potential of an ageing society, with Julia Unwin, Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Before the Ageing Debate there will be a performance by England-based Canadian tenor John Bacon, as an illustration of the work of Live Music Now on health and wellbeing - how live music can effect positive improvements in mental and physical health.

The Ageing Debate will take place with a panel of experts:

Julia Unwin is Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust.

Richard Cookson is a Reader at the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York. Richard has research interests in equity in health and health care, the measurement of health and wellbeing, public health, competition, and pay for performance. 

Lewis Wolpert is emeritus biologist and author of major new book on ageing, You’re looking very well. Through his research Lewis has worked on the mechanics of cytokinesis, morphogenesis of the sea urchin embryo, regeneration in hydra, left right asymmetry, and has focussed on pattern formation in limb development. In addition to his scientific and research publications, he has written about his own experience of clinical depression in Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression (1999). He presented three television programmes based on the book and entitled A Living Hell on BBC2.

David Bainbridge specialises in the changing perceptions about ‘middle age’. Bainbridge is a science writer, reproductive biologist and veterinary anatomist at the University of Cambridge. His research work has centred on several aspects of pregnancy, including maternal recognition of pregnancy, in vitro fertilization and the immunology of pregnancy in animals and humans. He has also published a variety of books on pregnancy, the X chromosome, the evolution of the brain and teenagers.

Sarah Derbyshire is the Executive Director for Live Music Now, the largest provider of live music to the UK's welfare, educational, justice and health sectors, with a unique resource of specially trained musicians.

John Bacon is an England-based Canadian tenor who is rapidly establishing himself as a singer of exceptional musicianship, style and diverse range of repertoire. Recently, he completed a tour of France and England performing Handel’s Acis and Galatea with New European Opera, Bach’s St. John Passion with Gerald Van Wyck and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with critically acclaimed Opera Erratica in Toronto.  Winner of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Two Début Series for Young Performers, Mr Bacon is also the recipient of a Koerner Foundation Artist Award and funding fellowship from the COB Foundation of Canada. Through this generous support, he recently completed the Postgraduate Opera program at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama under the tutelage of Rudolf Piernay. Prior to this he sang with the Juno award-nominated vocal ensemble musica intima and completed a Bachelor of Music at the University British Columbia.

Harmonise    John Bacon (tenor) and Sarah Derbyshire (Executive Director, Live Music Now) use musical illustrations, film footage and direct experience to demonstrate the profound impact of music on care home residents. Over the course of LMN’s innovative 10 week project, independent evaluators have observed emotional, social and physical benefits for participants, contributing to the care home’s good practice within AgeUK’s ‘My Home Life’ initiative (partners City University, Dementia UK & Joseph Rowntree Foundation).