How lovely to hear that an Oscar-tipped film features a 13 year old boy with Down’s Syndrome, Max Lewis. Zoe Heller’s disturbing but fabulous book Notes on a Scandal has been filmed and stars Judy dench and Cate Blanchett, with Max playing the son of Blanchett’s character. Max’s mother, Sandy, writes about this experience in the Mail on Sunday:

 http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=425534&in_page_id=1879

Don’t follow the link from the article above to watch the trailer unless you want to know the whole plot from start to finish!

There’s, quite rightly, a strong view that kids’ stuff should be avoided when working with adults with learning disabilities. And this is a theme, and a tension, that was covered in the previous post about creative communication.

So I’ve been very slow off the mark to check out the BBC’s kids’ website – CBBC. Sarah finally nudged me into having a look and…. it is of course really superb! For example, it’s got a great feature on how animations are made, based on their programme Animal School.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/cartoons/making/

There’s a small feature about the lovely lovely Gemma Hunt who was the presenter/interviewer/interviewee at the Mediazone last month:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/backstage/cbbc_stars/gemma.shtml

 Probably the most relevant part of the CBBC website is the news section – Newsround. Really wonderful. We know from the BBC’s research, Not Seen, Not Heard, that many adults with learning disabilities watch Newsround and it’s got all sorts of interesting and helpful features. For example, which of us can say hand on heart we really know what’s going on in Iraq, even if we have strong views about Britain’s involvement in the war. Here’s a manageable way of finding out! The main ‘guide’ has these sections:

Guide to Iraq

• Why is it in the news so much?
• History
• Who’s in charge of Iraq now?
• Why is there still violence?
• How many foreign soldiers are in Iraq?
• What was the war about?
• Did everyone agree with the war?
• Has the war finished?
• Who is Saddam Hussein?
• Saddam’s capture and trial
• Abuse of Iraqis
• Abuse allegations – what happened
• Did UK soldiers mistreat prisoners?
• Have only prisoners been mistreated?

There’s a photo gallery, wisely consisting of pictures of Iraqi kids. They all feature aspects of daily life in a war-torn country, but showing kids surviving, coping – and playing football. This seems perfect to illustrate both the gulf and commonality of experiences with UK kids.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4360000/newsid_4369800/4369887.stm

Predictably, I loved the feature on Animals at War, which includes the role of dophins and sealions!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_2888000/2888797.stm

But the most impressive feature is the one on what to do if the news upsets you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_2330000/newsid_2333800/2333893.stm

Kids (and adults…) can even get Newsround headlines delivered on their mobile phones. How cool is that??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_3580000/newsid_3584000/3584041.stm

I did a BILD course on creative communication last Monday. The media is itself very creative and we need to find lively ways for people to learn more about the media. The course gave us some great ideas for ways of communicating with people who use little or no speech, especially ideas about using music, dance and puppets.

People have different views to each other about using things with adults, like toys and puppets, which kids also use. My feeling is that we should always try to use the most adult thing but if that is something that kids also enjoy that’s no reason not to use it. To put that a bit more clearly (!), it seems fine to me to use stuff that kids also use as long as it is helpful to adults. The important thing is how can we best help people to make their views known to other people and how best can we help people to understand what we’re saying.

The puppet we were introduced had plenty of attitude! And not only arms, hands and a mouth that move, but even a tongue which can wiggle! We all certainly had a lot of fun with that. This puppet is from a website which also has lots of other fantastic puppets – www.puppetsbypost.com.

It was very interesting hearing about how puppets help people to express themselves, for example people with autism who can find it very difficult to talk directly to people.

We talked about puppets and cartoons being enjoyed by adults. One example of this is the Simpsons – www.thesimpsons.com

Another is Avenue Q which is a puppet musical on in the West End of London. It’s very much for adults, as some of it is about sex. The puppets are quite like those in Sesame Street, not the old fashioned sort with strings. http://www.avenueqthemusical.co.uk/

We’d welcome your views on using toys, puppets etc with adults.

What a fun day it was! We kicked off with a burst of film studies, taking apart the first 5 minutes of the comedy murder mystery film Murder by Death. Lots of people in the audience knew the famous actors, such as Peter Sellers (from the Pink Panther), Maggie Smith (Ladies in Lavender and lots of others), David Niven…. We paused the film at different points to look closely at what was on the screen and to discuss why the film-maker had chosen that scenery, lighting or whatever.

Next up was a BBC special. The CBBC presenter Gemma Hunt came with CBBC’s head of entertainment, Joe Godwin and a camera crew. 20 lucky people had the chance to interview Gemma and be interviewed by her. Some of this bunch had written about things they feel strongly about and the audience could see them being filmed. And they could watch this at the same time on a huge TV screen.

Lunchtime was 3DTV time. The chance for loads of people to join in with a TV programme – The Really Wild Show. I’m still being teased about the safari clothes I wore, but I stand by, or underneath, them. It was great to see lots and lots of people in Islington acting as buffalos and watching out for dangerous animals.

There’s no question that the part of the day that people were most excited about was the EastEnders’ special in the afternoon. Hundreds of fans squeezed into the Mediazone to see and chat with the actors who play Billy and Honey, Perry Fenwick and Emma Barton. In the storyline on EastEnders, Billy and Honey have a baby who has Down’s Syndrome, the adorable ‘Petal’. We were really lucky to have ‘Petal’ (whose real name is Grace) and her parents join Perry and Emma in the Mediazone. Kate Powell also came to talk about how the Down’s Syndrome Association have been working with EastEnders on this storyline. Kate is the editor of Down to Earth magazine for people with Down’s Syndrome.

People asked some really interesting questions and all the speakers gave very honest answers about how it has been for them to be involved with the Down’s Syndrome storyline. And one lucky woman won Honey’s maternity jacket for asking the most interesting question, which was to Grace’s parents, asking them how they felt about the storyline.

It’s really unusual for actors and the real life people they are pretending to be to meet with fans and we were very grateful that each of them had made time to meet with everyone. The storyline is very uncomfortable at the moment, as Honey is saying she can’t cope with having a baby who has Down’s Syndrome and wants to have the baby adopted. Billy adores Petal and is trying to help Honey to cope. But fans were clear that this is a story, not real life, and that the story may turn out to be that Honey comes round and sees how special and lovely Petal is.

Photos of all these different activities at LDT 06 are on this website in the picture gallery.

This wednesday visit us at the MEdia Zone at Learning Disability Today.

Click here to see a poster telling you what’s on.

We’ve added a new resource to the site: Broadcasters and their learning disabled audiences – beyond the Disability Discrimination Act.

You can download the report here

We’re making an exhibition of ourselves again this year at the Learning Disability Today exhibition at London. Come and see us! The event takes place on Wednesday 22nd November, 2006 at the Business Design Centre, London. More info here.

A very funny and entertaining movie which takes a fresh look at the government paper on Learning Disability, ‘Valuing People’.

Click here to watch the movie.

We’ll be adding news and information to this site. Look out for news of film, newspapers, radio and TV for people with learning difficulties. And you can even leave your own comments if you like!