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Summary

Under the direction of creative writers, Becky Cherriman and Sandra Ikin, aspiring disabled writers alongside parents of disabled children were challenged to use their imagination and experiences to come up with page-turning plots.

The stories that emerged via the people of Bootle, The Wirral and Liverpool come from the heart of real experiences. The stories have been enhanced by the involvement of art and design and multimedia students, who met the writers, offering valuable “live brief” experience and, it is hoped, a new life long desire to include disabled children in their future work. Read how one participant viewed this process.

From the start the workshop participants and the students were introduced to the social model of disability and this has informed their attempts to add to the visual and auditory components.

About the story workshops and the participants
Story writing participants, along with professional story writing facilitators, were recruited to three writing workshops, held in Wirral, Bootle and West Derby in Merseyside during autumn and winter of 2005/6. A further one off workshop was hosted in Liverpool as part of an arts festival. Two participants were recruited after hearing about the project through local BBC radio interview, while others heard about the workshop through personal contacts or existing information networks and newsletters. Workshop groups were composed of a mixture of disabled people, parents and grandparents of disabled children, with the latter group predominating. Most parents recruited had children of school age.

Most participants were committed to raising awareness about disabled children’s experiences amongst those who had no experience of disablement. One disabled participant on his motives for attending:
“First of all it wasn’t because I have dyslexia, it was because
I’m interested in improving people’s lives in general”.

One theme that emerged was the importance of inclusive children’s stories in promoting integrated education. One parent of a disabled child reflected:

”Inclusion in my daughter’s school in particular, will work with
the support but the school themselves have got to re-educate
themselves and the teaching staff, and its an ongoing battle
for me as a parent…it would be more acceptable within
society if children with mixed abilities were represented in the
likes of books… or within films” (GF, parent of disabled child)

Other motives for participation included wanting to encourage
more diverse and empowering representations of disabled people in the media, and making sure that disabled people in minority communities were not overlooked.
“If you put the disability things into the mainstream – if you
can get it into mainstream books, right, it hits home to the
parents and they pass it onto the children.” (disabled
participant)
“writing that story was…trying to get the kids and adults aware of what dyslexia is like” (disabled participant)
“there needs to be a balance. You don’t want to go over the top with it [representing disability] but you don’t want it to
disappear” (disabled participant)
“let’s not just do an ethnic children’s book and let’s not just do
a disabled children’s book … within that community – the
gypsy community there’s going be disabled kids … if you’re
just going to look at differences you can’t still compartmentalise” (parent of disabled child)

Impact of participation on writers
All interviewees reported attendance at the workshops as a
positive experience identifying them as an opportunity to share experiences, develop new skills, see others’ perspectives and develop confidence.
“it was just seeing the way [other participants] have developed the confidence which they didn’t have before, to do this. They said, we’ll never do this. And I said, but you will. “
(grandparent of a disabled child)
“… this has just been a fantastic experience, because I’ve
learned so much from other people” (parent of disabled
children)
One workshop facilitator identified a positive shift in the way in
which parents in the workshops talked about their disabled
children:
“ a lot of the women … initially … were focussing on what they
saw was wrong with their child and the focus changed in the
way they were speaking about autism and their own
children… We were trying to bring out the positives for the
stories so that shifted”
One workshop participant, a parent of three disabled children,
commented that as a result of attending the workshops:
“I’ve started writing just for my own personal use again… it is
a good way of coping, of taking some of that stress off. It’s a
release isn’t it?”
A number of participants involved children within their families in the process of writing stories, soliciting ideas for stories and
reading draft stories to children. In some cases, participation in
the workshops provided a springboard for participants to promote greater interest in books and literacy in their disabled children.

Impact on student participants
Approximately 70 second and third year graphics, illustration and multimedia arts students at the Liverpool School of Art and Design were briefed on the project, thus encountering the Social Model of Disability. Students presented with the opportunity to work with writers to illustrate and animate stories. 20 students played an active part in the project, completing 7 illustrated stories, 2 interactive books and 7 short computer animations, as well as a number of standalone images.

Graphic arts lecturers supervising the students viewed the project and the idea of the social model of disability as having had a significant impact on the group:
“they took on board the principles and the society model quite
quickly and they focussed on that all the way through – that
influenced everything they did”
Student participants viewed the project as having played an
important role in shifting their attitudes towards disability and their engagement with access and inclusion in their work.
“I hadn’t thought about drawing anybody with a disability
before this I guess. So I suppose it has made me think about
including them in things in the future” (illustration student)
“speaking to the parents of the autistic kids… that was a real
eye opener…That was really interesting because maybe I was
a bit ignorant before and it was really interesting to pick up
their stories” (graphics student)
“an amazing experience for a student” (illustration student)

One student noted that in the months following participation in the project she had already incorporated casual representations of disabled children in her unrelated project work. A number of respondents indicated their intention to promote inclusive representations in further professional work as illustrators and designers.
“Participating in this project has made me think about
accessibility issues. I will in the future, make my work
accessible to people with limited sight/hearing and to people
with cognitive impairments.” (multimedia student)
“as new illustrators move into the world of illustration, they’re
going to have an influence. And it’ll have that knock on
effect”(illustration student)

Responses to the stories
Before being added to the website the completed stories and animations, around 140 adults and 85 school children saw or read the stories through classroom presentations and conferences. A focus group with Merseyside Bookstart and library staff identified a positive response to the stories, with children’s literacy workers taking copies to use in story reading sessions in libraries around Merseyside. Evaluations of the impact of stories on primary school students’ ideas about disability have indicated that stories and animations can be used to effectively prompt young people’s learning about disability.

Later developments
Interest generated by the website and dissemination of the project through conferences led to two university graphic arts
programmes enabling their students to take part in the extension of the project during 2006/7 with input from disabled people and sessions on the Social Model of Disability. More stories from the original workshops were uploaded and also an alphabet poster created in printed format from this work.

The Department of Employment and Learning funded MEDAL project, focussing on literacy for childhood studies published a case study based on the project for inclusion in its best practice in university teaching database: Using Picture Books to discuss the Social Model of Disability http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/academicwork1.htm

In The Picture is grateful for the involvement of:
Lois Keith who has had professional editorial and social model input, and the donated expertise of various Liverpool John Moores staff including Dr Nicole Matthews for her involvement and for the above interview material:, the late Surya Shaffi, Disability Welfare Officer and Ruth Gould, Creative Director, North West Disability Arts Forum

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