Disability Equality Author Training

Scottish Book Trust aims to make our website, projects and campaigns accessible to all. We have therefore implemented an Equalities scheme across the organisation and begun work around the area of disability equality.

This work has taken many shapes and incuded a training day for those authors on our Live Literature register. One sunny autumn day in 2010 we organised three sessions each with a different focus and each participant was asked to look at what disability equality meant to them and in particular in regards to their own work.

Caroline Bowditch (pictured right) began the day with a general overview of Disability Equality. This included a quiz on disability stats and a good look at how disability is represented – in books, films and in the media - and we learnt about the social model of disability Vs the medical model. 

The afternoon saw two workshops, one led by Helen Boden which focussed on creative writing within a mental health setting and another led by Julie Ward, that centred on creative writing and learning disability.

Click on the pictures or titles to read Helen and Julie's accounts of the day, giving an overview of the day and the subject at hand.

About the Workshop Leaders:

Caroline Bowditch is Scottish Dance Theatre’s Dance Agent for Change and has been in the post since 2008. Caroline's background is as a dancer, performance artist and choreographer. She has worked extensively in the UK and Australia performing and as a facilitator for disability equality in the arts. 

Dr Helen Boden is a freelance writer, editor and facilitator based in Edinburgh. Her writing includes poetry and fiction about landscape and identity. She is an experienced leader of courses and workshops on subjects including writing for wellbeing, writing and walking and writing and visual art in a wide variety of artistic, community, healthcare and environmental settings. She has won an engage Scotland award for her work with a mental health group. 

Julie Ward is a drama worker, writer, editor, storyteller, performer, director, workshop facilitator, trainer and event animateur. She is the founder/director of Jack Drum Arts, a workers co-operative based in County Durham since 1986. Her first professional job as a writer was a Yorkshire Arts funded residency at the Swarthmore Education Centre in Leeds in 1987, working with people with learning disabilities. More recently she has been a writer in residence for the National Year of Reading in Sunderland, for the Children’s Services of Hull and East Riding Health Authority and for Good for the Soul.