In partnership with City of Adelaide’s Healthy Ageing team in mid-2024, The Plug-in designed and facilitated co-design workshops to explore what types of activities support social connections in the city.

The purpose of the 2024 project was to gather detailed insights to co-design a holistic new social program for older city residents. This expanded on an initial project run in 2023 to understand what is most important to support ageing in the city and how residents use public spaces and council facilities to support social connections.

City resident insights

Participants of the project shared it is most important that activities and events foster social connections – this theme should underpin the design of any new activity. Participants seek programs that:

  • support the continuation of special interests and easy to access programs for trying new activities that may have been missed opportunities of the past;
  • provide opportunity for lifelong learning to support personal development;
  • support emotional and spiritual activities to foster personal wellbeing; and
  • coordinate opportunities for physical activities, both structured and unstructured.

A succinct 1-page program design guide was developed to clearly portray resident insights into the factors critical to the success of any new social program that may be developed, ensuring it is accessible to all city residents.

The co-design process

Two co-design workshops were held in July 2024 with a series of activities enabled discovery of what is most important when considering the establishment of a social program in the city to meet the diverse needs of city residents.

To ensure the insights gathered in workshops that formed the principles needed to establish a strong social program, a final concept testing workshop was held with project participants to confirm what we had discovered in initial workshops and make changes based on feedback.

Next steps

A big thank you to everyone who participated in this process to help us understand the unique needs of older people.

A detailed key insights report was prepared in late 2024 for City of Adelaide’s Healthy Ageing team which has informed the next stage of their process to develop a new social program for city residents. City of Adelaide is considering the future of how services are delivered to people aged 50+ living in the city.

You can access a public version of The Plug-in’s key insights report here:

PUBLIC Report_Social program co-design consumer insights

The information you share with us helps COTA SA and The Plug-in to understand what is important to older people.  Through your participation and contribution, you are raising the voices of older people and supporting the important work of COTA SA.

Contact us

You can contact The Plug-in anytime to learn more about about this project and other opportunities:

08 8224 5526
email to: connect@theplugin.com.au
https://www.facebook.com/ThePluginAus