By David Gledhill, Marketing & Communications Lead

The Ageing Well Torbay @Home Festival finally went ahead on Friday – both live streaming from our website and on Riviera FM

It was the culmination of months of planning which started earlier this year after we realised that bringing thousands of people together under one roof would be out of the question.

We would have preferred to see you all in person at the Riviera Centre in Torquay as we did way back in 2019, but you have to make the most of what you have got in these interesting and uncertain times.

Instead, we prepared more than four hours of videos with the cream of the Bay’s talent and showed them from the home page of our website and via the community radio station, Riviera FM.

If you missed the celebration on the World Health Organisations International Day of Older People, the whole thing has been archived and is available to watch on www.ageingwelltorbay.com

We have also included some bonus bits for you to enjoy that we could not fit in on the day and many of the videos are longer than we showed originally, so please do take a look.

We did have a few technical issues at the start of the live stream for which we apologise, but the sound has now been fixed and if you missed anything because of the low volume you can watch it again.

Putting together an online festival is no mean feat and it is all down to a small group of volunteers who work throughout the year to make sure that each successive festival is better than the last.

They are supported by the AWT communications team comprising myself and the talented Matt Saunders, but it is to the latter that most of the thanks must be given. He worked weekends and late into the night on so many occasions to ensure the material was ready in time.

He not only filmed many of the videos, but he also edited them and put on backing music often before editing them again to ensure that only the best was available on the day.

Our thanks also go to the many organisations who contributed their own videos and clips from the NHS Healthy Lifestyles team to the Devon and Cornwall police, the Edge in Brixham and the South Devon Players to name but a few.

After all that preparation – organising, filming, editing and finally putting it out into the world, it seems hard to believe that we are now turning out attention to the eighth and possibly final festival next March.

We are determined the Ageing Well Torbay programme which ends at the end of March 2022, will go out with a bang, and we are optimistically looking forward to another in-person event, again at the Riviera Centre on the 19^th.

But we need your help – what would you like to see? It might be acts or speakers that have appeared before and you want to see again, or it might be fresh material; it is down to you

In addition, the Festival organising committee would welcome help in pulling the next one together – and all it takes is a bit of time, imagination and determination to produce the best festival we can.

The committee generally meets monthly to discuss progress and not even COVID stopped the meetings as when things were at their peak, they moved seamlessly onto zoom to ensure the show goes on.

With only five months to go before the next one, we will have to hit the ground running, whilst also monitoring coronavirus case numbers in the Bay in case we are forced to go online again. We hope not. But who really knows what this winter will bring? We have to cover all bases.

If you want to get involved, please drop us an email to davidgledhill@torbaycdt.org.uk or give us a call on 01803 212638 or use the same contact details to share your ideas and we will endeavour to incorporate them. And if you have pre-prepared videos, no longer than 10 minutes long preferably, let us know soonest, just in case.