Scope’s pioneering oral history of people with cerebral palsy, Speaking for Ourselves, is launching monthly podcasts, thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

 

The podcasts, created by Effective Podcasting, are to support a free Citizenship teaching pack and DVD, which has already been requested by over 1,800 schools and colleges.

 

The broadcasts draw upon over 230 hours of recorded testimonies by people with cerebral palsy, aged 50 and over, which have been deposited for public access with the British Library Sound Archive and Wellcome Library.

 

The result is a fascinating insight for students into the lives of disabled people in the 20th Century and reveals the extent of the prejudice disabled people faced. In the first podcast, which focuses on disabled people as consumers, Alan Counsell recalls: “And when we went to the estate agent, to buy this house, he wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t speak to me, all his comments went to Katherine, and in the end I said to him, ‘Why are you speaking to my wife, and not to me?’ And he didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘Well, you need to be very careful because I have all the money. She’s got nothing.”

 

Alex White, the project manager for Speaking for Ourselves, said: “We hope that Speaking for Ourselves will enable disabled people’s voices to be heard by thousands of students and help to banish disablism from the classroom.”

 

Paul Campbell of Effective Podcasting said, “We wanted to work with a forward-looking charity like Scope because we admire the work they do. It is superb that Scope fully realises how powerful podcasting is as a communication tool and we look forward to a long-standing relationship with them.”

 

For more information on the project, visit www.speakingforourselves.org.uk or call 020 7619 7228.

 

For more information please contact Lucy Pogson, Scope Press Officer on: 020 7619 7201 or email: lucy.pogson@scope.org.uk