Tine Buffel Achievements and Background profiled on National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement website

Tine Buffels Researching Age-Friendly Communities project won the NCCPE Engage Award 2016 in the Working in Partnership category.

The NCCPE cites this amongst Tines accomplishments in a “Pen Portrait” of her featured on their website.

The project was instrumental in restoring the 85A bus service between Chorlton and Manchester which had previously been cut due to funding pressures and was a valuable means of getting into town for many older people. The interview with Tine shows how this is a small part of her wider vision which is for older people to feel more secure, more connected and more physically active in their city homes.

Tines work uses an innovative methodology of co-production involving older people as co-researchers to develop age-friendly communities. A group of eighteen older adults were recruited and trained as co-researchers to take a leading role in a study aimed at developing ‘age-friendly’ communities in the Manchester area. The NCCPE feature quotes Tine as saying: “I’ve always had a very strong interest in working with and not on communities. There are a lot of top-down initiatives where experts look down on things – to improve housing, transport etc. I’m interested in how you can create rights for the citizen…hearing them as loudly when they’re older, as we did when they were younger”.

The feature also recognises how Tines work has brought a great deal of recognition both for her and MICRA. Dr Buffel was invited to speak at a United Nations Conference in New York, and her project was commended by the World Health Organisation…as well as winning an NCCPE award and the University of Manchester’s own Making a Difference award.

• Tine Buffel Pen Portrait 
• Case Study