A generation of stories too rarely heard
In the UK, women are expected to live until they’re around 80 years old. For women already approaching this age, or who have surpassed it, they were born into a world that looked and functioned very differently to today’s.
This generation has witnessed huge social and cultural change, yet their everyday stories are still rarely heard. Over a third of people aged over 65 in England rarely or never use social media, meaning there are millions of older women in the UK who aren’t able to easily share their perspectives and experiences with broader audiences.
And when older people are represented on screen, they’re too often depicted as out of touch, lonely or incapable.
So, how can we tell these stories differently?
The central idea was clear from the start: tell the true, everyday stories of real older women in their own voices, but do so in a way that makes audiences sit up and pay attention – because, all too often, their stories are overlooked. Other than this core premise, the narrative was up for grabs, and would be entirely steered by older women themselves.
Over a number of months, we found three incredible women who were happy to share their experiences with us:
• Gloria – who took up modelling in her sixties, despite historic hang-ups about her appearance, and is now enjoying her body and sexuality more than ever.
• Sue – who became a taxi driver later in life and takes great pride in working in a male-dominated profession well into her sixties.
• And Ann – who lost her husband far too young, but is living a joyfully independent life in her eighties on her own terms (with an increasing number of tattoos).
We recorded their stories in audio-only, then transformed what we learned into a storyboard that captured their wildly different narratives.
The people who need to hear these stories the most
Now for the unexpected part. We wanted their real stories to be performed by actors who represented the people who need to hear them most: young women taught to hate their bodies; men with fixed ideas about women’s roles; and little girls growing up believing there's nothing scarier than ending up alone. Because the old women we met all know otherwise.
We cast three actors to represent these groups and lip-sync the women’s real voices on set. A technical challenge, but one that brought the idea to life.
Something to hope for
None of these stories are particularly dramatic or unusual. But, when told together in a single film, their stories platform the regular experiences of this overlooked demographic in our society.
Old Women only features the stories of three individuals, but our hope is that it encourages viewers to speak to the older women in their lives, and learn more about their pasts, their presents and their futures. Because becoming an old woman shouldn’t be something to dread – it should be something to hope for.
A Nice Works project
Old Women is our latest ‘Nice Works’ project, which encourages the Nice and Serious team to explore creative solutions around social issues that we care about. These are self-initiated passion projects completed around client work.
