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.

team progress

We have just recruited a new member to the team- Geraldine which evens the sides up a little as Christine was a bit lonely as the only other woman apart from the media team staff.
Alan is fast becoming the new team photography, and Peter is buddying him to learn how to use our cameras and how to look for exciting pictures. We will put some up next week.
Zoe has been leading the training and doing a great job, next week she is going to be observed leading the group.
We are going to get the new team to start blogging soon so keep a look out for lots of new faces & stories. This afternoon we are visiting Nick to talk to him about starting a blog about his new photography course.

training team 3

We are now into the 4th week of training with the latest recruits. There are 6 new members who are being buddied by Peter & Hobbow from team 1. We also have the help of a new volunteer called Steve. Everyone is really keen to learn about the media and are full of ideas and skills that we can use.

Michael has campaigning experience having been a member of HAVOC for 3 years and involved in many successful campaigns.

Alan is a very good photographer, he is currently exhibiting his work at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry and in the summer he had his own book called Alan's Coventry: a photographic record of Alan's favourite parts of the City.

Christine is chair of Birmingham People First and brings lots of experience of campaigning, she is an accomplished photographer and she has already recruited someone else to join next week.

Edward is really interested in the news and current affairs. He will always be ready to challenge and get more information so will make an excellent interviewer if we need one.

Scott is a keen fan of soaps and has just started a drama course, he is also very keen to do extra work outside of the training time.

Philip has wanted to be in the team since the project started so is full of enthusiasm as he has finally managed to fit us in. Philip has lots of confidence and is always happy.

The project staff are looking forward to working with the new team members and getting to know them.

parents with learning disabilities

We are shortly about to go public with a campaign about parents with learning disabilities having their children taken away. The team have conducted some research and are working with a feature reporter for the Coventry Telegraph. One of our team is willing to be a case story and her personal story will be central to the feature. Once we are ready to go live with the story I will post the link here. If you know of any similar articles or cases please do contact us.

exhibiting our photographs

5 young people are displaying their photographs at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry alongside a Victoria & Albert Museum touring exhibition, from 16th September until 21st October.
None of the photographers had used a SLR camera before the project and only had one month to get their photographs taken. They then had to sort through the 100's of images to pick the best 30 to be exhibited. Once this was done we had to quickly learn how to mount and frame and curate, we had less than a week to do this.
On the 18th September the Herbert held a private viewing event, attended by lots of people as well as our photographers. The reception for our part of the show was very positive. We have set up a flickr website for those that can't physically visit the Herbert.
www.flickr.com/photos/something_that_i_never_really_see

Life as a young person with downs syndrome Louise O'farrell

The following was an article written by Louise O'Farrell and appeared in Coventry Telegraph 20/06/08 for part of learning disability week:

Having Down's syndrome is a hateful condition because I do not like my size, my weight or my looks.

Some people stare at me when I go out on my own. Sometime I get people asking me how old I am and when I tell them they don't believe me. I also find it hard to express my feelings and thoughts to other people when in turn they aren't prepared to listen to me. They nearly always speak over me which leaves me frustrated and angry that I can't get my views across.

I feel that I have a full life and have achieved a lot. My best achievement was getting a distinction in my history OCT Certificate Achievement Award. The certificate and prize were presented by HRH Duke of Edinburgh at a ceremony in London.

I enjoy reading Harry Potter books and could tell you the story by heart. I go to the cinema sometimes; some of the films like Harry Potter are good, although there are some I'm not so fond of. I also like going out with friends around Coventry and going for pub, Indian and Chinese meals.

I attend the Grapevine drop in centre where I have joined the Healthy Living Team. They go to hospitals and do presentations on how to have a healthy lifestyle.

I also do DJing. I have done scratching, beating and cross fading and made a CD of different songs. I am part of D:Vine a group that runs monthly club nights at Taylor John's in the canal basin. I play pop music which makes people want to dance. My DJ name is DJ Wizard, because I put on wizard music.

I have been a dancer since I was eight years old. I have danced for my grade work and really enjoy it. Every year we put on a show and I like practising for the shows. This year I did a tap number to 'Puttin on the Ritz'. A ballet number for 'Nobody does it better' Goldfinger from James Bond and 'One' from a Chorus Line. It was a difficult dance to learn and at the end of the final performance my dance teacher congratulated me on how well I did. My sister Alice cried when she saw me doing the dress rehearsal because she had never seen me dance before. She was always in the performance dancing on the opposite side to me. She said I did it perfectly and kept in time with everyone.

I have lots of good friends and family who like to look after me and help me do things that I'm not so good at. I make everyone laugh when I say funny things. My laugh is always a happy laugh, which makes people want to smile.

Coventry Team's photography session

We were lucky to have a photographer come and work with the team, to help us understand what makes a good image and how to take a decent picture. After we had learnt about how a camera works and some of the technical stuff. We looked at a variety of pictures and then went out in between the April showers to take photographs of Coventry. We only had time to walk around Spon End and medieval Spon Street but the team managed to get some great images. We have opened a flickr.com website called grapevinemedia67 and have also posted lots of pictures to the BBC's record breaking attempt project called the Big Picture 2008.
Why not visit our flickr website and have a look. Peter has also opened his own flickr website and will be adding some of his pictures next week.

Visit to the BBC Mailbox, Birmingham

Recently the team visited the BBC at the home in the Mailbox. We had a chance to do a weather forecast and a news reading. There were exhibitions about the history of the BBC and a chance to see into the production office. Unfortunately we didn't get to see anyone famous.
After we had done all this we took a long walk around Gas Street Canal Basin to Centenary Square. Everyone had a good time but there were lots of aching feet.

survey results

Thanks to everyone who took the time to take part in our survey. 53% of you thought that people with learning disabilities hardly got a mention in the media. So how do we change this?

press attention- just like busses

Isn't it funny how you try to get some attention from someone and just when you think no one is listening you find out that they are. Last week we managed to get 2 stories in the media. The first was an article about this very blogging project and appears in Learnign Disability Practice. the second was a story about our photography competition and appeared in our local paper the Coventry Telegraph.
We also had some more good news today, BBC Coventry and Warwickshire are willing to give us some live interview slots during learning disability week June 15th-22nd; which is great for our planned positive image campaign running from now until learning disability week.
Now how do we get to appear on TV? we had a practice run last week when the team visited BBC Birmingham at the MAilbox, where we got the chance to do weather forecasts and read the news. But it would be great for the team to do it for real- any ideas?

photography competition

If you live in Coventry or Warwickshire and have a learning disability why not enter our photography competition? You can enter up to 3 pictures, they need to be at least 20cm x 25cm and can be in any of the following groups:My home town, my friends or family, my job, my life or wildlife.The closing date is 30th May and we will be having a public exhibition of all the pictures sent to us. If you are interested let us know and we can send you the enter form. Go on give it a go!

Media team grows

The media team has grown by 8 new members. We have taken the project into Warwickshire and now have our new members. All have been recruited through Aim4, in Nuneaton and will be taking part in an open day at Aim4, Nuneaton on Thursday 20th March. They will be hosting a Big Brother Style Diary Room for visitors, we want to find out what people think about media representation of learning disability. The team will also be encouraging people to look t our 2 blog sites, hopefully we will get more people talking to us. Finally, we will have a display stand and get people involved in a bit of myth busting.

Does the media treat people with learning disabilities with respect?

we want to know what you think about how the media shows people with learning disabilities-

is it with respect?

do you see people with learning disabilities on TV or in the papers enough?

should there be more actors with learning disabilities in soaps and dramas?

is it OK for actors to(act) pretend to have learning disabilities like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman?

What do you think of the language used by the media?

If you have anything to say about this why not do our quick survey?

How the project works

The Uncover Media Project, funded by The Big Lottery Fund, is aiming to change the way that the media portrays people with learning disabilities - including increasing coverage and hopefully changing public perceptions. As project co-ordinator my role is to support the two project workers and the volunteers we recruit to the team.
Along with the project workers, I have been adapting a University level media training course, to make it fully accessible and interactive to people with learning disabilities. Together we are learning how to be media savvy. I have to admit to having had a limited knowledge of the media and being very wary of how it all worked before starting the project. Mainly, this is based on previous experiences of how earlier projects had been dealt with.
Over the next few weeks I will share with you how the training is going and how, as a team ,we are getting ready to take on the media. We would love to hear from people working within the media, organisations that support people with learning disabilities, and of course most importantly people who have a learning disability. We would like to hear about your experiences from both sides of the issue. We would also like to hear about any positive coverage in local media, that we might otherwise miss.

Thanks, Denise