As part of the Uncover Media Project we aim to put all the people involved on to a placement with something that is media based. We don't try to find placements that result in jobs, the idea is to give the team a chance to experience some aspect of the media that we can't offer.
Zoe had a 6 day placement with the communication team working for Coventry City Council. She learnt how they manage press cuttings, which has helped our team manage our cuttings. She also got involved in editing the Citivision newsletter, which goes out to all households in the city. Zoe was also featured in the issue she helped edit.
Peter is currently doing a placement with the photographer at Coventry University. He shadows the photography picking up tips to help improve his skills. He has taken photographs of the flight simulator and been involved in recapturing images that were taken of Coventry 40 years ago. Hopefully he will be doing some studio portraits so that he can then update the Grapevine staff photographs.
Lynne is looking forward to a 2 week placement with BBC Coventry and Warwickshire starting early in March. Rosie is hoping to repeat the placement that Zoe had.
For later this year some of the team will spend some time at the National Press Office for the charity Mencap and Suryabala would like to spend time with the Asian Network, so we have to talk to the BBC.
One final bit of good news is that Dee-anne is starting work next week, sadly though this means she is leaving the team.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
Spastic King
Just before Christmas Channel 4 (Nov 22nd) showed a short film called The Spastic King, made by IWC Media; directed by Peter Mackie Burns and starring With Andrew Stafford as Toby - a man with learning disabilities fearful of being evicted from the family home after the death of his mother.
Our group watched this and found it both insulting and confusing. The programme was listed as showing the struggles faced by the character Toby after his mother dies. However, our group were insulted by the use of the term spastic, as Toby self-titles himself throughout the programme. The team know that people can call themselves whatever they want but using spastic seems to undo lots of good work in using terms that people are happy with, this programme seems to say it's ok to call someone a spastic, and teh team don't think it is. The team felt that the character was shown to be a horrible man and that anyone who doesn't know about learning disability watching would get a bad idea about people with learning disabilities. We know that some people think that people with learning disabilities are loving and always nice or shouldn't be interested in sex, and this programme challenged that, which was a good. As part of our project we hope to show that these ideas are stereotypes and that people with learning disabilities are just as diverse as other people but we felt that the Spastic King only sent out negative images and the way the people around Toby talked about him was patronising, he wasn't a nice man but no one was honest enough to say that.
The team didn't like the way Toby was shown to live in a fantasy world, they thought people would think that people with learning disabilities are all like him. Our main problem with the programme was that it was unbalanced and we are glad that it was on very late so that not many people are likely to have watched it.
These are the views of people with learning disabilities who work on the Uncover Media Project.
Our group watched this and found it both insulting and confusing. The programme was listed as showing the struggles faced by the character Toby after his mother dies. However, our group were insulted by the use of the term spastic, as Toby self-titles himself throughout the programme. The team know that people can call themselves whatever they want but using spastic seems to undo lots of good work in using terms that people are happy with, this programme seems to say it's ok to call someone a spastic, and teh team don't think it is. The team felt that the character was shown to be a horrible man and that anyone who doesn't know about learning disability watching would get a bad idea about people with learning disabilities. We know that some people think that people with learning disabilities are loving and always nice or shouldn't be interested in sex, and this programme challenged that, which was a good. As part of our project we hope to show that these ideas are stereotypes and that people with learning disabilities are just as diverse as other people but we felt that the Spastic King only sent out negative images and the way the people around Toby talked about him was patronising, he wasn't a nice man but no one was honest enough to say that.
The team didn't like the way Toby was shown to live in a fantasy world, they thought people would think that people with learning disabilities are all like him. Our main problem with the programme was that it was unbalanced and we are glad that it was on very late so that not many people are likely to have watched it.
These are the views of people with learning disabilities who work on the Uncover Media Project.
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