Spirit Horse Radio EP17: Adam Duncan, Life-Stage Project

Shivam catches up with an old friend and discusses old times, old age and the often uncomfortable topic of death and our mortality.

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Adam trained in Drama and Education at Goldsmiths before writing scripts for the BBC and many other organisations. He ran a media company for twenty years and designed training programmes for large organisations such as Amnesty International.

For the last ten years, Adam put a lot of energy into working with a charity called A Band of Brothers (ABOB), doing rites-of-passage weekends for young men involved in the Criminal Justice System in order to help them move on from adolescent behaviour to healthy masculinity.

But at the age of 70 came a new question, what did growing old mean to him?

As luck would have it, he was offered a place on a brilliant course in supporting people at the end of their lives. Through being alongside people who worked with the dying, Adam started to come to terms with mortality, being able to let go of some of the old attachments and this gave him a new lease of life and a surge of creative energy that he hadn’t felt for decades.

In 2018, Adam wrote and rehearsed a show called The Seven Ages of the Dance of Life and Death with a community of actors, dancers and musicians. The show attracted an appreciative audience.

In isolation, he was able to publish The Power of Ageing. It sold around a hundred copies, but more importantly, it brought together a small group of like-minded people who felt passionately about the subject matter. Starting a monthly discussion forum from which the Life-Stage Project was formed.

You can find links to Adams work and projects in the episode description.

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