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.

The most striking thing (and what I feel defines the value of Outreach’s input), was realising my complete unawareness of disabled people’s portrayal in the media. What I found was, at best, portrayal can often be uninformed, and at worst it can be lazy or negative. The “medical model of disability” is all too common. It defines disabled people by their impairment, which in turn is viewed as the reason they cannot interact with daily life. Without talking (and more importantly listening) to those directly affected, it is difficult to appreciate their position, let alone anything that is nuanced.

Using this insight we were able to make an informed approach in depicting disability through photographs. Over two days we shot four activities organised by TCIL: a coffee morning, a vegetarian cookery class, a Tai Chi lesson, and an African drumming workshop. We were pleased with the shoots, and the images we photographed would be exhibited in a BBC Outreach workshop in February 2016. Almost 100 of these photographs could be used to promote the TCIL’s services digitally and in print.

However I believe that any power the photographs have comes from what we learnt from the people themselves and how we applied this to our representations. The people with disabilities neither show impairment for effect, nor try to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Disability should not be hidden, but equally should simply be recognised as a part of some people’s lives.

Personally I learnt how to approach a creative brief and through research and collaboration produce a tangible result. This experience was so valuable to be gained in this way, and it has given me confidence to pursue future projects.

The depth and variety of audiences is often much greater than you can imagine; there is no substitute for meeting, speaking and learning from others. Without this something is missing. BBC Outreach provides BBC staff opportunities to gain and develop skills through meaningful engagement with people, and always to positive effect.

 

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. Kieran volunteered with BBC Outreach when he was a member of staff; he has since moved abroad to work as a photo-journalist.