Giving parents a chance

A while ago we mentioned that we were working on a campaign to investigate the problems faced by parents with learning disabilities and issues around not being given a chance to be parents. One of our team has had the sad experience of having both her children removed from her when they were babies. She has decided to be the face of our campaign and a 2 page feature appeared in the Coventry Telegraph yesterday. As well as the interview with Christine, there is an interview with 2 advocates who have supported a number of people through the courts, trying to keep their children. To keep the feature balanced there is a response from the Director of Coventry City Council Children services. to read this feature please follow the link. We would welcome your comments, or examples of practice in your area.
http://snipurl.com/f2eg6

Taking blogging a bit further

As part of the press office work we offer other groups support and help in getting their voices heard by the media. We have been talking to different groups in the West Midlands about how we can help them. One thing people seem interested in is learning how to blog and so we have begun to visit people and give them chance to see just how easy it can be.

Today we visited a group based at Curriers Enterprise in Coventry and worked with 6 people. Some had used the internet before, others had never used a computer before. By the end of the session everyone had checked out our chattervine.blogspot.com site and four people felt OK about leaving comments.

Over the next few weeks we will help the group look for other blogs that interest them and also set up a blog for people based at Curriers to share all their exciting news.

Over the next few weeks we will be visiting other groups but if your group would like to hear how the media team can support you please get in touch.

Quick catch up

It has been very busy in the media office recently, we are getting ready for our first big PR campaign and have lots of things planned for the next few weeks. The team have also had a training day at BBC Coventry and Warwickshire and they are going to talk about that on their chattervine.blogspot.com site. I thought the BBC training day was very good we were given chance to look at using the internet, learnt about how to catch the attention of editors with our press releases- who would have thought it is common for an editor to get 500 emails a day! We also had a go in the radio studio doing interviews with each other- great practice for the ones we have planned for the next few weeks.

We have just held a photography competition for people with learning disabilities living in Coventry or Warwickshire and had over 90 entries, with many very good photographs sent to us- there is lots of talent out there. I'm just glad that I was only organising the competition not doing the judging! Still after a couple of hours on Monday our 4 judges finally chose the winners and we have launched a website with all the entries on it: www.flickr.com/photos/grapevinecomp2008

All the photos are going on public display from 16th-30th June in Coventry Council House and the Lord Mayor is presenting the trophies on Tuesday 17th, hopefully with our local press in force. The competition is just a small part of the things we have planned for Learning Disability week starting 15th June.

The team have designed some hanging expression walls which are going in public spaces in Coventry & Nuneaton. The idea is for people to come along and write comments about what learning disability means to them. The biggest wall is going in the BBC open centre in Coventry and we are hoping that as well as it being featured on the morning show of 16th June that the TV cameras might be around.

The BBC have really championed our cause and are giving us live interviews during the week covering a wide variety of stories. We also have a live interview on Hillz FM radio, a Coventry based community radio who are celebrating their live FM licence at the same time. They have offered Paul his own show during the 1st week of their FM month and perhaps he might get to do shows for the other 3 weeks.
As things happen we will keep this blog updated so please do visit often, and tell us what you think. Denise

Media Placements

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.