Ruth Malkin at the Trafford Centre for Independent Living made a successful application through BBC Outreach’s Community Doorway scheme. The resulting project provided Trafford CIL with a fresh bank of photographic images of disabled people for its website, and a masterclass called Disability Matters To Us, for BBC staff.
‘I hope that this project has at least caused a small ripple, inspiring one or two people to look beyond stereotypes’
I decided to do a project about images of disabled people including those of us who don't necessarily 'look' disabled, who are sometimes overlooked by the media.
I thought, I have to change this, starting with the images we use on our own website and supply to the media on request. So I applied through BBC Outreach’s Community Doorway scheme to help us – after all, the BBC composes hundreds of shots every day.
Ruth Malkin next to a photograph of herself, taken by BBC Outreach volunteer Kieran Jones
Our project asked for a BBC volunteer to photograph our customers and our staff at Trafford CIL, showing the positivity of their lives and of themselves as people.
It became much more than that; we exhibited the images at the BBC in Salford – a very proud moment for me. We worked with BBC Outreach to run masterclasses there for BBC staff to analyse and discuss how disabled people are featured and portrayed.
We celebrated the positives – hearing how departments like BBC Children’s make the portrayal and the participation of disabled people inclusive in its output of both programmes and online games.
We brought together the outside world of assistive technology for BBC staff to see and learn how organisations are making computing and technology accessible to everyone. And we gave staff an introduction to British Sign Language and lip-reading.
For the photography project, I was very impressed with the dedication of the photographer Kieran Jones, a BBC staff volunteer. He did his research diligently and thoroughly. He met all aspects of our brief brilliantly. Outreach Manager Naseem Akhtar was impressive, too. She was dedicated and professional at all times and had a very clear understanding of the third sector. She went out of her way to accommodate us all and bring what we had achieved to a wider audience of BBC staff.
It was sometimes challenging - working across departments in my organisation as well as with external organisations did feel a bit like herding cats at times.
But the rewards were worth it. Getting to work with Kieran the photographer; and the launch at the BBC was such a great opportunity for both BBC staff and our customers. Above all, the photographs were the most rewarding!
I wish I could say I learned how to take brilliant photographs but instead, I learnt what it feels like to work with a brilliant photographer.
Now, I want to bring attention to the amazing work that takes place at organisations like Trafford CIL where a number of mainly part time and low paid workers and volunteers provide interventions to improve the lives of disabled people and their supporters.
Headlines are often made when disabled people kill themselves because of hate crime incidents or benefit problems, and yet the work of front-line organisations like ours in preventing it from getting to that stage for many other disabled people has felt largely ignored.
I hope that this project has at least caused a small ripple in the space-time continuum that will continue to reverberate, inspiring one or two people to look beyond stereotypes, statistics and spin.
I hope the fresh images and the awareness we’ve raised will change the portrayal of people with disabilities.
BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility brings the BBC closer to its audiences - particularly those audiences we have identified as harder to reach - with face-to-face activity, community support and staff volunteering.
