Conference Day 3: Gender, Age, Intergenerationality (3A)

Bridge Research with Older People and in Schools

Dr Marek Malysa, Bridge to the People Foundation, Poland

The Bridge to the People Foundation, together with scientists from Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń, carried out pilot research with older residents of nursing homes in 2019 and 2020.

Besides standard activities, we offered them a bridge course and later regular play of the game. Both before intervention and after 20 weeks of bridge, residents were checked with a series of various tests. Results showed much lower depression and significant growth of wellbeing. The main research will commence later this year once the COVID lockdown is over.

The same team is studying the effects of a year-long bridge course we applied to pupils in 38 schools in Poland. Data are still coming in so the conclusions and the main research plan for the period 2021-2022 will be presented during the conference.

Between Loneliness and Connection: Older Adults’ Leisure during a Pandemic

Dr Miriam Snellgrove, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling; Professor Samantha Punch, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling

From the end of March 2020, a national lockdown was announced in the UK. All businesses, schools and hospitality venues shut down, with only a category of ‘essential worker’ allowed to continue operating in a face-to-face capacity. With the majority of people sequestered indoors, digital spaces for work, socialising and leisure became part of the ‘new normal’. Through diary data collected during the first lockdown and beyond, this paper explores how older adults’ leisure was impacted due to the pandemic. Using the case study of bridge, we show how the move to online bridge was a social lifeline for many older people, cut off from regular contact with family, friends, and their local bridge club. For other participants, the move online was difficult, fraught with issues around using a new technology and fundamentally, no substitute for face-to-face bridge play. Despite these issues, online bridge has boomed during the various lockdowns, and national bridge organisations recognise that online bridge is here to stay in a (post) Covid world. This paper shows the ways in which online bridge is interconnected with other aspects of participants lives, thereby eschewing any easy distinction between online and offline worlds. Alongside this, we demonstrate how participants articulate online bridge as enabling connections across the globe, region and neighbourhood whilst also missing the feel of cards, the smell of bridge clubs and the chatter before and after games. This paper reveals the processes, practices and narratives older adults engage in to maintain a much-loved leisure activity during a pandemic. It further reveals the important role technology plays in enabling leisure activities to be continued and developed in a time of serious health risk to older generations.

Keywords: bridge, pandemic, online/offline, older people, diary data