Christine's story on BBC1

Christine's story went out on BBC 1 last night in the West Midlands. It is a very emotive subject and Christine felt the programme refelcted her story accurately.

Here's the link to watch it on iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nw2m4#synopsis

What do you think about the coverage?

Mothers with learning disabilities forced to have their children adopted

Hi

Christine Spooner, who works on the media project, is part of the InsideOut TV documentary on Monday, November 9 at 7.30pm, on BBC 1.

The programme looks at women with learning difficulties who are are forcedto give their babies up for adoption.

Christine tells her story.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nw2m4

It would be appreciated if you could forward this information on to people who would be interested in wathcing this.

Thanks

Street Aware

Is Coventry a safe place to be if you are different?

Come along to BBC Coventry & Warwickshire

Wednesday, October 21, 11 - 2pm

Or join the debate now

http://www.chattervine.blogspot.com/

www.twitter.com/grapevinemedia

Join the chat about being different

Hi


Grapvine's media team is asking people to take 5 minutes to think about why people with learning disabilities are treated badly by some members of the community.

This is called learning disability hate crime and it is when somebody is horrible and violent to you just beacuse you are different.

We want to hear from you.

Can you answer these questions?

What do you think is the best way to keep safe in Coventry?

Do people listen to you if you say you have experienced people being horrible or violent towards you?

Do you know how and where to report a hate crime?

Have you been to the police station and reported a hate crime?

Are you happy to talk about what you have had done to you?

Do you take someone with you to report hate crime?

Could you talk to a counsellor about it?

Looking forward to using the flip cameras at Street Aware

Grapvine's meedia media team really want to make Street Aware as accessible and powerful as possible so we are looking forward to using these flip cameras to record people's experiences.

The blog and event we are doing on October 21 will hopefully capture some of the views of people with learning disabilities in Coventry around the issue of hate crime.

Why are people with learning disabilities attacked verbally or physically because they are different?

Why Grapvine is doing Street Aware

Hi



I am Darren and I work with the media team at Grapevine. Sadly, we have been reminded recently of how learning disability hate crime can destroy lives. The Pilkington family case brings into focus exactly why we are setting up the Street Aware blog and event on Wednesday, October 21 at BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.

Here are a couple of links about the Pilkington case in Leicestershire.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/28/pilkington-inquest-ruling



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W0dUucm0Xw



The story of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francecca Hardwick is tragic.




What does this say about our society? What can we do to stop this in the future?

We want your views.

street aware

Who is bothered if people with learning disabilities are victims of crime?
Do you feel coventry is a safe place to be? Are you bothered? Got anything to say? Then grapevine's media team want to hear from you.
We are starting a blog called street aware to find out what people really think.
People will have the chance to put their views and stories on it using words, pictures,video and sound.
People with learning disabilities are invited to come along to the launch street aware on Wednesday, October 21st, at 11-2pm, at the BBC Coventry & Warwickshire's Open Centre, Priory Place.
Zoe

Using computers and their sites

Hi there, this time i am going to talk about using computers and their sites.

I have a laptop at home and i use it for facebook
bebo
emails
friends reunited
and most recently my space.

I went on friends reunited as i wanted to track down my school friends.


If you need to know more please blog back.

My Holiday in Greece

My Holiday in Greece

Hi my name is Zoë I have a learning disability and I went on holiday to Greece. My boyfriend came with me he also has a learning disability his name is Dale, We booked the whole of the holiday ourselves which include hotel flight, travel insurance etc. We had a brilliant time with no problems the weather was great and the people were friendly and helpful. It was also my birthday, so it just goes to show people with learning disability can go on holiday on their own

Zoë

My move to Coventry and how my life is now!

My name is Lynne Cooper and I have Downs Syndrome! I work for Grapevine, it is a charity that works with people with learning disabilities. I am a media project worker and I have been working at Grapevine for two years.

Here is my story!

I wanted to start a new life away from Motherwell in Scotland as my mum’s boyfriend would drink heavily and be aggressive. My sister lived here in Coventry so I decided to move here to begin my fresh start.

I lived with my sister for a year but things didn’t go to plan so I moved out of her house and moved in with a friend.

I was only supposed to stay for a couple of weeks but we got on so well that 10 years later we are still living in her house. We have a great friendship and we go out to the pub for meals and karaoke.

I love living in Coventry and I have been to catering college and done an NVQ to be a chef. I have a passion for singing and found out about Grapevine through meeting a friend called John who also liked doing karaoke.
I became a member of Grapevine for 4 years then I heard there was a job going as a media project worker so I had an interview and got the job. I job share with a girl called Zoë and it is a pleasure to work with her. I am chuffed that I have a paid job to go to as I haven’t had a job before. I have met some great people in Coventry who have helped me start a new life.

That’s all for now
Until next time

now we are the news

our bed push is now on central vision's news channel click here to watch the 2 minute clip http://tinyurl.com/l2vdcv
please tell us what you think.

solving problems

We wanted to post our radio interview on this website so you could all listen to it, but couldn't find out how to do it easily. We asked Stuart from www.wesharestuff.org if he could help. He gave us some ideas and explained that the reason it was difficult was to stop people adding music tracks they weren't supposed to use. Stuart suggested joining a hosting site and then making a link from this site. Then we had an idea...
We had the radio clip and we had some great photographs from the bed push, so why not put them together in moviemaker and then upload it as we do with other videos.
It worked a dream, please have a look at the posting below. What do you think?
Now Stuart suggested we link it back to our twitter site, ok Stu so how do we do that...
visit www.twitter.com/grapevinemedia

Learning Disability Week Bed Push Went really well

We met up outside the BBC Radio Station in Coventry to do our bed push in aid of people with learning disabilities having the rights to stay up/out late. We all wore Stay Up Late T-shirts which were sent to us by Heavy Load who started the campaign for Stay Up Late. The media coverage was Central vision, The BBC, Telegraph and Michelle Tennison who is a freelance photographer. We pushed the bed up through the City Centre and along the way we were getting people to sign our petition and giving out leaflets and badges we stopped by Lady Godiva statue and went round speaking to the public to get their support. We then made our way to the Coventry City Council House to meet up with councillors to hand in the report and the petitions we also gave them T-shirts. The report had 10 case studies of people with learning disabilities not being able stay up/out late. Dave Musson has put a story about heavy Load & us on the daily dust. http://bit.ly/WlU1N
Below is a link to our radio interview with Annie Othan BBC Coventry & Warwickshire

Learning Disability Week football match was a great success

We met up at the Alan Higgs Centre to watch a football match between a team from Grapevine and Some ex Coventry City players. The match came about because the health buddies had started training session with Paul Reynolds, the disability coach Coventry city football club. It was then decided to have the match in Learning Disability Week some of us were cheerleaders. The team wore Big Lottery T-shirts as they are the ones who funded the Media and Health projects. We drew 6-6, every body enjoyed the match it was good fun. Photos by dave. www.davemussonphotography.com Here is a short video clip

more daily dust stories

We had a great week for learning disability stories in the media. The latest story on the Daily Dust is about our football match against a side representing Coventry City FC. to read it link here: http://bit.ly/46SLhl
We will be putting all the photos and videos online in the next couple of days.

learning disability media success stories

We had a great day yesterday, lots of support from the public; 2 live radio interviews, photographers & reporters following us, and Centralvision camera man following us. Give us the weekend to sort the pictures and they will be posted next week.

Our 3rd rights video is now available click here:http://tinyurl.com/mvhxlb this is our stay up late video please be careful if you have seizures there is a lot of flickering, we have asked for it to be toned down. Still it is a great video. THANKS TO HEAVY LOAD for letting us use their music and good luck at Glastonbury guys.

We have been working with a reporter who has done 4 learning disability stories for learning disability week you can see them at: http://bit.ly/lKmln
http://bit.ly/WlU1N http://bit.ly/gwZZq and http://bit.ly/10gUYu The daily dust website gets 35,000 reader each day and 1.5million a month so lits of people will hear about us- THANKS to DAVE MUSSON.

We played the football match this morning and again we need a few days to sort out photographs and video clips.

Game on

Football Match

Hi everyone just to let you know Grapevine are having a 6 a side football match against ex Coventry City players and coaching staff on Friday 26th June 10:30am at the Alan Higgs Centre. The Grapevine team will be wearing shirts porvided by The Big Lottery Fund.

daily dust good news stories

We have a young journalist working with us and Mencap for learning disability week. So far he has got 2 stories on the online newspage please follow the links:
davemussonhttp://bit.ly/gwZZq

davemussonhttp://bit.ly/10gUYu

videos about rights

We have had the first of our rights videos posted on Central vision for learning disability week; hopefully we will have the other 2 by tomorrow. You can watch them by clicking on the following sites.
Christisne's story is at http://tinyurl.com/n2felf

Rishard's story is at http://tinyurl.com/mf72mm
Wewant to say a big thank you to Christine, Rishard, Mel and Nicolad for doing such a grand job.

As soon as we can we will have them on this site. Please have a look and tell us what you think.

WATS!

Our young person's project WATS (We are all the same) funded by Camelot Foundation had their end of year evaluation event at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry on Friday. There was music from Soulful Choir and lots of short videos showing lots about what the project has done.

For more photos visit this website: :__ http://tiny.cc/fq7Yf