Who are the experts?

JW was asked to deliver a 5 minute presentation for Friday 16th February at the Ordinary Arts Festival Seminar.  The seminar speakers were all asked to focus their presentation on addressing 2 questions:

• What barriers does your organisation present in offering access to disabled young people?
• What barriers do you face form other organisations or society when designing your offer for disabled young people?

Here’s a transcription JW’s presentation ;

‘Hi  I’m Jane Williams, Director of The Turning Tides Project. We aim to make equal access to music, the arts and life a reality for people with ‘learning disability’ or ‘autism’ labels.  

We only have 2 rules:

• Everything we do seeks to demonstrate the Social Model Approach , in action
• We don’t do anything unless we think it will be fun.

I was struggling with preparing this presentation . When I asked myself why I found I had 2 issues :

• Even if you talk fast, you can’t say much in 5 minutes: How will I make sure I say the things that matter?
• I’m not sure that making seminar presentations is fun

Then it occurred to me, I just needed to be who am and demonstrate what The Turning Tides Project is. A 5 minute presentation might not be long but 3 1/2 minutes is the perfect length for a hit song.
So here’s ours. It’s called  ‘Who are the Experts?' and we wrote it for you - enjoy and do feel free to join in.'

Is an approach to inclusion organisational progress?
Or a statement of a fall-back position to exclude?
Who invented our indicators and outcome jargon?
Did disabled young people write our rules?
 
Who are the experts?
 
Self-appointed inclusion experts
Our reaching out makes us hard to reach
Equal access makes us all redundant
That’s the position we need to preach
 
Who are the experts?
Who are the experts?
 
Hugo, instrumental break
 
Who are the experts?
Who are the experts?
 
The detail that matters is not our detail
Is anyone really hard to reach
If it was fun, cool and useful it wouldn’t be me
Standing here making this speech
 
Who are the experts?
Who are the experts?
Who are the experts?

Once we’ve recorded it, you’ll be able to download ‘Who are The Experts’ and hear some of the other original music of The Tuning Tides Project at: https://soundcloud.com/tttp-1