Neighbourhood natter

Facilitating local conversations to counter loneliness and social isolation.

Overview

Loneliness is a growing problem for older adults, with two million over 50s in the UK expected to experience loneliness by 2025/26. In a previous ESRC project we have explored the reasons underlying loneliness in a retirement community, listened to residents wishes for addressing it, and co-designed a new type of social media system for facilitating structured face-to-face conversations within a neighbourhood. With our company partner, Play Well for Life, we are now trialling a working prototype called Neighbourhood Natter with residents of Whiteley Village retirement community. This trial will deliver market data, user feedback and implementation insights on this concept to support commercialisation and impact.

The project is funded by the University of Surrey ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) at a cost of £19,972. The project will run from 14 November 2022 to 28 February 2023.

    Older people playing games round a table

    Research project team

    David Frohlich profile image

    Professor David Frohlich

    Principal investigator

    Daniel Benn

    Research Associate

    Dr Sarah Campbell

    CEO, Play Well for Life

    Publications

    Frohlich, D. M., Campbell, S., Benn, D., Booker-Price, T., & Benzimra, A. (2024, June). Neighbourhood Natter: A post-pandemic response to addressing social isolation and connection in a retirement village. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 327-344). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.