{"id":15135,"date":"2020-10-04T18:15:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-04T18:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stg-rixresearch-dev.kinsta.cloud\/?p=15135"},"modified":"2020-12-15T20:21:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T20:21:46","slug":"surviving-through-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-rixresearch-dev.kinsta.cloud\/ru\/surviving-through-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Surviving Through Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Close on 100 people attended the ZOOM event on Thursday 24 September to celebrate the launch of the new Surviving Through Story<\/a> website. The event was hosted by Nicola Grove from the Tizard Centre, University of Kent, and featured several keynote speakers including Baroness Sheila Hollins, founder of Beyond Words<\/a>, and learning disability champion Pat Charlesworth.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her opening words, Nicola reflected on the sea of information that we\u2019ve all had to navigate over the past several months, including accessible information, and how the voices of people with learning disabilities have been largely absent.<\/p>\n

In her keynote speech, Baroness Sheila Hollins reminded us that the Government has been slow to understand and respond to the needs of people with learning disabilities – routines and friendships had been disrupted and there was no-one talking to them about this. This informed the work of Beyond Words who produced a steady stream of new picture books<\/a>, all free to download, with the aim of reducing anxiety and keeping people safe.<\/p>\n

Stories are one of the best ways to help raise awareness about people\u2019s lives<\/p>\n

Baroness Sheila Hollins<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pat Charlesworth told us that the Surviving Through Story project is a way of people being part of something and that stories are a way of talking about what is happening to us.<\/p>\n

Jan Walmsley, researcher and historian, reminded us that the voices of people with learning disabilities are not just missing today, they\u2019ve been missing throughout history. Looking back through time, we usually only see them through a medical lens. As a society, we started to listen about 30 years ago with the publicatiion of \u2018Secret Lives\u2019 and \u2018Know Me as I am<\/a>\u2019 and the Surviving Through Story website is building on this tradition of hearing the voices of people with learning disabilities.<\/p>\n

Dr Simon Jarrett, editor of Community Living<\/a>, made a powerful analogy with ZOOM, that our job is to unmute people\u2019s microphones so we can hear their voices. You couldn\u2019t hear everyone agree with this because we were all on mute!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all historians because we all tell stories and we all listen to other people\u2019s stories\u2026it\u2019s a really important part of being a human being<\/p>\n

Dr Simon Jarrett<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Liz Tilley, a researcher at the Open University, walked us through the new website where people can read, listen to and watch stories as well as see these represented through art and the celebration of lives remembered. The Surviving Through Story website was co-produced with lots of different people. The highlight of the event for many of us was the video story shared by Ajay Choksi, Rix team member and an inspiration to so many people.<\/p>\n