GOALD is run collaboratively by the University of Stirling’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport and the SPARKLE research group, as well as Stirling’s Centre for Environment, Dementia and Ageing Research in partnership with the University of Plymouth’s Centre for Health Technology (CHT). Funding comes from UK Research and Innovation’s Healthy Ageing Challenge via the Economic and Social Research Council’s Social Behavioural and Design Research Programme.
GOALD have partnered with three national strategic partners: ukactive, Sporting Heritage, Generations Working Together and seven local community groups: Sports Heritage Scotland, Active Stirling; Cornwall Rural Community Charity, Devon and Cornwall South Asian Society, Hearing Loss Cornwall, iSight Cornwall and Nudge. We are also working with 12 care homes, four in Scotland and eight in the South West. You can find a list of the GOALD partners on our partners page. Over the course of the three-year project, the research team will record the different groups’ experiences of digital resources and assistive technologies and then share their findings with business partners – small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – to develop new technologies, product ideas and test design concepts.
The work is aligned to the University of Plymouth's existing EPIC project and the University of Stirling’s The Stirling 1000 Elders and will expand on the networks within them both.