SNAP!

Last year I posted about the Mencap SNAP photography competition. Since then as part of my old job I have been working with a group of people to organise activities to raise awareness and promote the equal rights of people with learning disabilities in Stoke-on-Trent.

We have arranged to borrow the exhibition of the 2006 SNAP winners photographs. They are currently on show at Keele University. On Monday I will go and collect them and take them to 3 venues in the city - Burslem School of Art, Staffordshire University and The Observatory clubhouse. They will be there until mid April.

The press release is accompanied by a feedback form, designed by other group members, to encourage viewers to think about the impact of the images. I can tell you what I think of them.....

The photos place people with learning disabilities in the public eye - as people with value and dignity.

I have some reservations about some of the photos - well not so much the photos as the words that go with some of them. It is obvious that some of the words although written as though they are the words of the person with a learning disability, are actually the words of a carer/ supporter. I find this very patronising and disempowering. I wonder if someone does not speak, it is not better to have no words with the photo?

There is also a wider point about the photographs - if I cannot take my own photo and cannot tell you what I want a photograph taking of, or do not like my photo begin taken, then I cannot not take part in the competition. Not everyone can/ wants to take photos. I don’t think it is "equality" to pretend that everyone can do that - we are all different. I wonder if there is a debate here?

I am going to link the exhibition in with diversity month at Staffs Uni and set up a discussion event sometime in the next few weeks, to pick up some of these issues.

Nicola Smith....

is the new national Co-Director for Learning Disability in the Department of Health. Read an interview with her in the Guardian.

She is working with Rob Greig to challenge the social exlusion of people with learning disabilities.

This is the first time that anyone with a learning disability has ever held a senior government post!

One of the main reasons she feels qualified for the post is her experience of living in a hospital for some time. In her words "it was very grim". She is concerned to hasten the closure of all the last hospitals and "campus" NHS homes. Another aim of hers is to address the removal of children from learning disabled parents.

I am looking forward to finding out how she gets on - I also am interested in how the Co-Directors will work together - another first I think.

identity and conformism

I have read in the grauniad that a government advisor thinks that mental distress is more of a social problem than poverty or unemployment - seems odd he doesn't link them together! And of course it's a problem when the inequalities are so great. And when the prejudice against mental illness is so dramatic. We are taught to fear it and that means we behave in ways that inhibit our self-expression. We conform. And that makes us ill. We are all mad, it's when we keep our personality constrained and our distress withheld that we get ill. Seems so obvious to me.

My identity is something I have been thinking about a lot in recent days - especially since seeing Frida Kahlo's work and the sculpture of Alison Lapper. It seems necessary to keep myself safe, that I have at least 2 main identities. One at work and one at home/ with friends. There are many things I would like to say and do at work that I believe would alienate me from the organisation and most (not all) of my colleagues. Not least I feel compelled to pretend I am well when I am not.

I realised yesterday that I need to find a job that matches my values more closely. I feel very constrained in the workplace currently. Mostly that is due to organisational culture. So - I'm looking for work in the voluntary sector again I think - to do with rights, inclusion, anti-poverty, anti-discrimination....... let me know if you see anything......

parents with learning disabilities

Last week there was a lot in the news about the high numbers of parents with learning disabilities that have their children taken away from them. The guardian covered a particular story where a couple had their 2 children taken away by Essex social services.

There is a good article on Woman's Hour that you can listen to. It is an attempt to balance the views. There are those who think that we are too liberal if we say that it is everyone's right to be able to choose to parent and to have the support we need in that parenting. They are compared to those who think we do not treat people with learning disabilities fairly and that children and removed from their parents too readily.

It seems obvious to me that we are an intolerant society and even if we only consider the economics of the issue - it is far better to keep a child with it's parents and support the family as much as needed, than to split families up just because of the parents intellectual capacity. There is a big difference between parents who intentionally abuse or neglect their children and those who lack informationk, guidance and support to care safely. It is easy to provide people with support and appropriate guidance.....

Alison Lapper

I watched a programme on TV a couple of weeks ago about an amazing woman - Alison Lapper. She is an artist and campaigner for civil rights for disabled people. She is a single parent. And she is the model for the fourth plinth - the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square - the statue has been designed by Marc Quinn.

This statue is so beautiful - I am so impressed that it was the chosen design for such a prominent site in London - maybe things are changing ........


Alison Lapper - fourth plinth

Learning Disability awareness week

It is learning disability awareness week soon (20-25 June).

Mencap - the UK's leading learning disability charity ran a photography competition called Snap!. The winners for 2005 are exhibited here. They will be on show at the Link Gallery in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from the 18 June to 1 August.


"Sparkle" Kayleigh Dawson

Story behind the picture -
Because of my autistic spectrum disorder I think I can see the world differently to others around me. Small fragments of my world sometimes seem very important to me and I notice things that other people may not!I am very sensitive to things like touch and flickering lights! I always notice earrings my support worker wears and if she looks different in a slight way.I have taken photos of close-up objects in my school environment, which I see, mostly everyday.I took this photograph because I liked the sparkle of the water from the tap.