The Story That Started It 

Katherine’s mum loved to shop, smart, sociable, and always well-groomed. But as dementia progressed, everyday trips became unpredictable. Toilets were hard to find, queues piled on pressure, and strangers’ sighs stung. Even with all the preparations in the world, anything could happen. “I was trying to be with my mum while managing the world around her. People weren’t nasty, just not kind. Eventually, I stopped taking her out.” 

Out of that experience came a question, “Is there space for a different approach?” In 2015, three years after Jo died, Katherine began to build one. Every Tuesday for a year, she sat quietly in her local Sainsbury’s, observing what helped and what hindered. Slowly, a pattern began to emerge. 

What “Slow” Really Means 

Slow Shopping^TM  borrows from the slow food movement, valuing quality over speed. It’s not a special service for a select few, but an environment that welcomes everyone’s changing needs. 

Small, thoughtful changes can transform the experience: quiet hours on calmer weekdays, no background music or unnecessary announcements, paired seating for rest and conversation, clear signage, good lighting, accessible toilets, and brief staff training focused on patience and dignity. 

When Katherine began working directly with towns and retailers, these low-cost ideas proved powerful in practice. In Braintree, Essex, she helped coordinate a full high-street trial where even the council car park joined in, waiving charges during Slow Shopping^TM  sessions. Cranleigh followed, turning England’s largest village into a community-wide experiment in kindness. “It works best as a community initiative. When the whole place softens, people relax.”  

Then came Bath College, where Katherine worked with the university to study the model in depth. By the time Stirling was preparing to launch the first city-wide initiative, Slow Shopping^TM  had become a movement, until the pandemic pressed pause.  

Setback, Then a Turning Point 

The lockdowns halted progress, the funding dried up and Katherine’s confidence waned. She was on the verge of closing the charity when two calls changed everything. 

The first came from Miho Tanaka, a Japanese social-impact engineer and her company is Cocore: “Lots of people write about inclusion but no one’s actually doing it. You are.” The second came from us at the National Innovation Centre for Ageing, who recognised Slow Shopping^TM  as a tangible way to support longer, better lives and a key element of the City of Longevity framework.

That encouragement reignited her purpose and Katherine decided to shift from running projects to building evidence and, working with Voice, our global citizen network of future innovators, she launched new research in Newcastle’s historic Grainger Market. 

Listening, Properly 

When Katherine began her research in Newcastle’s Grainger Market, she wanted to hear from people with real life experience, not abstract consumers, but those living the everyday challenges that had inspired her idea in the first place. 

That’s where Voice came in. “Voice gave me the confidence to keep going,” she says. “People had strong views and great stories but what struck me most was how thoughtful and constructive they were. They wanted this to work.” 

The Voice process was a revelation. Participants came from different ages and backgrounds — carers, parents, people with disabilities, and those who simply disliked shopping because it felt stressful or unwelcoming. Their candour surfaced new perspectives Katherine hadn’t considered. 

A woman in her fifties, recovering from a broken arm, described how she suddenly couldn’t carry bags or reach shelves. “That was the moment I realised,” Katherine says, “that Slow Shopping^TM  isn’t just for older people or those with dementia. It’s for everyone who occasionally needs life to slow down.” 

Voice also gave the research structure and credibility and a safe, regulated framework that encouraged openness. “People trusted the process,” Katherine explains. “They weren’t nervous about how their views would be used. That meant we got real insight, not surface opinions.” 

The workshops confirmed what she had long felt, that people don’t want to be singled out or labelled. They just want shops, and cities, designed for the natural ebb and flow of human life. “Voice helped me understand that inclusion isn’t about designing for ‘special needs’,” she says. “It’s about designing for our needs, because we all have them.” 

Why It Matters 

Beyond compassion, there’s a clear commercial case. After a dementia diagnosis, discretionary spending often drops sharply, not because people lose interest, but because friction, fatigue and fear rise. Retailers lose trade; people lose connection. 

And the numbers tell their own story. Twenty-three percent of people living with dementia say they no longer go shopping at all, while one in ten have stopped doing everything they once enjoyed because of inaccessible or stressful environments. Meanwhile, 83 percent of people with memory problems have already switched their shopping habits to places that feel more supportive, a powerful message about loyalty, inclusion and lost opportunity. 

For retailers and cities alike, the takeaway is simple: accessibility isn’t just ethical, it’s economical. When we design for ease, we invite everyone back in.  

Tenacity, Not Tech 

Katherine’s path has been anything but straight. There were headlines, setbacks and long quiet patches when the idea nearly faded. What kept her going was persistence and purpose. 

She’s now piloting a three-month trial  Cramlington with Manor Walks Shopping Centre, Concordia Leisure and Sport Centre and the Hub, in the North East of the UK, while a project in Setagaya, Tokyo explores the first Slow Shopping^TM  in Japan. Her next goal is a self-sustaining model with toolkits, training and a simple licence so communities can adopt it anywhere. “It can be scary, people may say, ‘this is terrible.’ But honest feedback is how you make something better.” 

The Bigger Idea 

If we design places for the moments when life slows us down, we’re not just helping a few, we’re preparing the world we’ll all one day need. In longer lives, inclusion isn’t charity or compromise, it’s common sense. It’s how we keep connection, dignity and joy within reach, whatever age or stage we’re in. 

So next time you’re in a shop, look for one small thing that could make life a little easier for someone else, a seat, a smile, a slower queue. Because those small gestures, repeated across streets and cities, grow into something bigger, a culture of kindness built into the everyday. 

When our places slow down, we don’t lose momentum. We find meaning. And that’s how communities, and all of us within them, truly thrive.