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.

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

training journalists

We went to Manchester to talk to a group of 16 journalist students, about the media and learning disability. We asked the students what they thought a learning disability might mean to them. We split into 2 groups then me and Lynne were interviewed by the students, it was really good to have the chance to get my point across and be listened too. I would go and do it again,

That is all for now
Zoë

Staying up late campaign

Heavy Load a punk rock band with have a single out called Stay up Late. They had noted that people were going home early from their concerts and this made them angry. We thought that it was happing in Coventry so Peter took photos of a D:vine night. The photos showed that early on the place was full, but after 9.00 it would empty. Some of the team have written a survey asking people if they stay up late. Some of the team are going out to day centres to get people to do the survey.
Please leave me a message with your E-mail if you want to do the survey, so that I can send to you.

you can find out more about Heavy Load on their website: http://www.myspace.com/heavyloaduk

The new team

The new team have been together for 7 weeks now and are really getting on well with each other. Last week Zoe ran the group training with Rob's help, she did really well. Next week Lynne will have her turn. We might even get Rob doing it!
Tomorrow we have some visitors from "We share stuff" they are going to show us how to get the best from the internet.

Positive images campaign

I'm starting this blog with an apology, sorry we haven't updated for a while. We were very busy with learning disability week, then I was on annual leave and now I have my arm in a sling as I have cracked my elbow. There enough excuses let's tell you how learning disability week went:
Paul got his dream of hosting his own radio show on Hillz FM. During June and early July HillzFM had an FM licence to broadcast live alongside their Internet broadcasts, Paul was given a weekly one hour show, so well done DJ HObbow. Lisa and Rosie were invited onto Hillz FM as guests (June 16th) to talk about learning disability week. They took along Denise for support and Adam a young man on work experience came along too.
As we said in an early posting we had expression walls around the city & in Nuneaton. On Tuesday 17th June the team were invited to launch the wall live on the Annie Otham show (BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.) Annie also interviewed 2 parents about their experiences. Mel & Donald gave fantastic interviews, talking about how it felt to find out your much wanted baby has Down Syndrome. They spoke about the highs and lows that their families have experienced since, and they spoke of their dreams for the future.(We are hoping to get a snap of this posted on this site and Grapevine's website).
Later the same day Paul, Alex, Denise & Adam went back to the BBC to do a live interview about the photography competition. " days after that we had some of the young people from the WATS project live on the breakfast show talking about their lives. We were very pleased to get so many radio interviews in one week.
During learning Disability week we were also featured twice in the Coventry telegraph and on the city council's news page. Couple of the stories were about the photography competition but the most exciting story was written by Louise O'Farrell about her life as a young person with Down's Syndrome (see the separate blog to read her story).