Exploring the Potential for the Development of Care Co-operatives to Support Older People to Age Well at Home (CO-AGE)

Dr. Carol Power, Cork University Business School & Centre for Co-operative Studies & Institute for Social Science in the 21^st Century (ISS21)

Impact: National

This research explores the co-operative as an alternative, inclusive organisational model to provide care services that support older people to age well in the community. It engages with stakeholders to assess the feasibility of developing care co-operatives in Ireland. Co-operatives are motivated by the need to provide a service rather than the desire to generate a profit. Where surpluses are generated, the priority is to reinvest in the business rather than delivering a profit to shareholders. Care co-operatives may be owned by service users and/or producers and/or other stakeholders. Their inclusive and democratic principles offer an opportunity for older people and their families to influence care service design and delivery. The model can empower care recipients and care workers. Most older people in Ireland prefer to remain in their own homes as they age. Those who suffer ill health and experience age-related frailty may need homecare supports to enable them to remain at home. Care may be accessed through the public system, delivered either by directly employed carers or contracted private companies, or through private procurement by care recipients/their families. Those receiving care often have little say in how support is provided. Furthermore, there is a shortage of homecare workers, which has been attributed to poor pay and conditions for those employed by for-profit companies.

This research is intended to stimulate awareness and discussion of the co-operative care model and to influence policy on care of the older person in Ireland.  It relates to SDG 3 by considering innovative models to support people to age well in the community; SDG 8 - by providing a model for democratic business ownership and promoting labour rights for care workers, including women, migrants and those in precarious employment; and SDG 10 - by empowering older people to have more influence over service design and a better experience as care recipients and empowering care workers, who are predominantly women, and often migrant women, whose work is undervalued because it is considered ‘domestic work’. Through engagement with care workers, family carers, people anticipating future care needs, the health services and other stakeholders, this research seeks to stimulate awareness and discussion of the co-operative model as an alternative way of providing and accessing care.  This approach to the research fits with SDG 17 Partnership for the Goals by involving a range of stakeholders in a deliberative inquiry approach.  The project is a collaboration with Age Action Ireland and is funded under the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations scheme.

“Older people have a right to the supports that they need to age well in their own homes and in the community. As a society, we are facing an increased demand for homecare as our population ages. We need to explore and identify innovative models of care that improve the experience of care recipients and that recognise the value of care work, and reward workers in the sector appropriately.  This is essential to the overall objective of the SDGs to ‘leave no-one behind’." 

– Dr. Carol Power

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being

SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

CIPHER: Hip Hop Interpellation (ERC CoG)

Professor J. Griffith Rollefson, Department of Music, School of Film, Music and Theatre

Impact: Local, National, International

CIPHER is investigating the international spread of hip hop culture and its attendant musical, lyrical, artistic, and performative forms on six continents.  It is building new infrastructure, ethnographic and digital methods, and socio-cultural theory for the interdisciplinary field of hip hop studies, leveraging hip hop's 'third space' of intercultural dialogue to build a more informed, equal, and just world. Through its focus on hip hop’s ‘third space’ of dialogue and transformation between young people of diverse backgrounds CIPHER addresses UN SDG goals including 4.) Quality Education, 10.) Reduced Inequalities, and 16.) Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.

CIPHER has raised both the scholarly standards and community impact of hip hop studies globally launching the first-of-its kind journal Global Hip Hop Studies, hosting major international conferences in collaboration with major cultural institutions like La Place and La Philharmonie de Paris, publishing its findings in scholarly journals and colloquia, and undertaking important community-engaged arts research work. As evidenced by reaction to the nationally televised feature on RTÉ's Change Makers series, CIPHER has already caught the imagination of the public. That primetime documentary followed CIPHER's community-engaged hip hop performance and knowledge project, 'Ubuntu: Local is Global', in collaboration with local youth arts NGOs, the Kabin Studio and Cork Migrant Centre, to explore the 'glocal' diversity of hip hop knowledge through performance, linking under-resourced youth from Cork’s North Side with migrant youth from Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.  The primetime television broadcast reached a national audience of 143,000+ and advanced the national conversation on immigration, belonging, and the future of Ireland. Its community-engaged research, scholarly publications, multimedia creative outputs, and international conferencing activities offer a new state of the art for the field and look to refigure the university knowledge trade to be more just, equal, responsive, and open.  CIPHER's findings indicate that hip hop's oral and performative "gems" of knowledge help local communities recognise global calls--for equality, justice, political voice, or simply to be allowed to live--and reterritorialise them through performance in their own local style and attending to their own local needs.

On hearing of CIPHER's shortlisting for the Times Higher Education (THE) Award for Research Project of the Year in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Rollefson explained - 

“On behalf of the CIPHER team, I want to thank the THE Awards Committee for recognising the importance of community-engaged social justice work in the university research ecosystem. We’re thrilled to have the spotlight focussed on hip hop’s organic intellectual world of art and ideas, especially in these challenging times when young people and marginalized communities are increasingly vulnerable.”

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

• Target 10.2 - Promote universal social, economic and political inclusion
• Target 10.3 - Ensure equal opportunities and end discrimination
• Target 10.a - Special and differential treatment for developing countries

SDG 4 - Quality Education

• Target 4.7 - Education for sustainable development and global citizenship

SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

• Target 16.3 - Promote the rule of law and ensure equal access to justice
• Target 16.b - Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies
  

Performing Political Memory as Hip Hop Knowledge in Mozambican Rap (POME-RAPMOZ)   

Dr. Janne Rantala, Department of Music, School of Film, Music and Theatre

Impact: Local, National, International

POME-RAPMOZ focuses on rap performance of historical knowledge in four cities in Mozambique (Maputo, Beira, Chimoio and Nampula) to examine public political memory in the country. The project builds on previous research on the ‘counter-remembering’ of Maputo rappers considering non-textual aspects of memory like intertextualities audible in sampling. POME-RAPMOZ uses the theoretical tools of the postcolonial theory, community-engaged ethnographic research, and musical analysis. The research bridges global Hip Hop studies with political memory studies in southern Africa to examine how rappers and producers as young and more-often marginalised citizens shape public memory through their art and performed histories. This project addresses UN SDG goals including decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), reduced inequalities (SDG 10), gender equality (SDG 5) and peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG 16).

The scheduled outputs include workshops where local artists and researchers share their knowledge and show their skills. Additionally, publications will be produced including about rap performances, which interrogate post-colonial wars in neo-colonial global context, demand social justice, equality and recognition; sampling a musical heritage, region and political memory co-authored with a local researcher and Hip Hop producer; and publications about efforts of local artists to challenge and revisit established historical narratives, which tend to marginalise younger generations and (globally and nationally) peripheric regions.  The policy contribution of this project is to recommend fair, effective and inclusive ways to promote creative industries and related civic rights (e.g. liberty of expression), especially in developing countries, using local artists’ and stakeholders’ experiences as a starting point. The project will contribute to further visibility of Mozambican Hip Hop, emphasising peripheric parts of the country, and is thus able to empower local artists, Hip Hop culture and industry, and through these micro-impacts can promote decent work opportunities, creativity, entrepreneurship and equality between regions, genders and social groups in local, national and global levels. The project's community-engaged research, a dialogue with other knowledges aiming to question scholarly hierarchies, scholarly and popular publications, conferencing and lecturing activities and media engagements all aim to change how academic knowledge producers recognise their non-academic sources and dialoging partners and research participants.  

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

• Target 10.2 - Promote universal social, economic and political inclusion

SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth

• Target 8.3 - Promote policies to support job creation and growing enterprises
• Target 8.5 - Full employment and decent work with equal pay

SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

• Target 16.1 - Reduce violence everywhere
  
• Target 16.b - Promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies
  

The Men’s Shed Movement and the Sustainable Development Goals: Local Responses to Global Challenges

Dr. Carol Power* and Dr. Ray O'Connor^, *Department of Food Business & Development & Centre for Co-operative Studies, Cork University Business School; ^Department of Geography Department, School of the Human Environment

Impact: Local, National, International

Irish men's sheds are part of a growing international movement and this research explores the role of Irish men’s sheds in 'living the SDGs' within their communities. Men’s sheds are particularly well-recognised for their positive impact on health and well-being. This research explores how they also support other SDGs related to environmental sustainability and provide related lifelong learning opportunities for older men. In 2019, the Irish Men’s Shed Association was designated one of twelve Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Champions - organisations that lead by example in achieving the SDGs.  While there has been a significant volume of research on men's sheds' impact on health and well-being, this research breaks new ground by highlighting the potential of men's sheds in Ireland, and internationally, to promote awareness and facilitate more sustainable behaviour within their communities.

The project is funded under the Irish Research Council's New Foundations scheme - Enhancing Civil Society strand - and is a collaboration with the Irish Men's Sheds Association. This research highlights the important role that men's sheds play in promoting environmental sustainability at local and community level in Ireland. This is the first time that men's sheds have been examined as agents of environmental sustainability.

Read the report here.

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

SDG 4 - Quality Education

SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production