Singing Along the Road of Life

With Hong Kong’s elderly projected to rise to 36% of the population by 2046 (Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong SAR 2023), ageing and creative wellness emerge as a timely topic. Age-related hearing impairment (ARHI), meanwhile, is one of the most prevalent problems among the city’s elderly, affecting their daily lives as well as their physical, psychological, and social wellbeing (Elderly Health Service, Department of Health, Hong Kong SAR 2025). To date, elderly research in Hong Kong has focused primarily on therapy-based interventions (e.g. Tung Wah Group of Hospitals 2016). Exploring another direction, I hope to outline and unpack the ways in which communal elderly singing may contribute to creative wellness among Hong Kong’s elderly. Specifically, I will explore my idea of co-creating creative durée in elderly choral rehearsals-as-performance. My project draws initially on my experience of leading elderly singers in a performance of Chinese golden oldies, in association with the Hong Kong Women Foundation Limited Ho Kwok Pui Chun Neighbourhood Elderly Centre and the Social Welfare Department. Building critically on that experience, and drawing on research from performance studies, community music, and creative ageing, in tandem with related work on age‑related hearing changes, multisensory listening, and action-based singing, I will write about developing an elderly pedagogical language—a roadmap for choral practitioners—through which practitioners may craft an accessible specialist vocabulary around ARHI and augment elderly vocal participation through rehearsals curated as performance. Consisting of six interlocking elements, namely Workshop Format, Exchange, Environment, Multimodal Cues, Adaptation, and Pacing, this roadmap (WE-MAP) aims to foster shared creative wellness for elderly people with varied hearing. Overall, my project focuses on cultivating creative wellness and a non-therapy-based route toward positive and creative ageing. My fieldwork includes rehearsal-based ethnography, as well as interviews and focus groups with choral practitioners and elderly singers.