FYI
Colin
I am pleased to send you details of a speaker/seminar opportunity by Katharine Quarmby - Campaigning Author. Stephen Brookes.
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KATHARINE – Award winning Author of 'Scapegoat' says :-
Over the last four years I have campaigned for justice for disabled people in my role as a journalist/news editor and as a disability rights activist.
I believe that the campaigning journalism I have done, across multiple platforms, with a deep knowledge of media tools, has maximised the impact of my investigations and I would welcome the opportunity of speaking to students using this particular campaign as a template of how to use journalism as a campaigning tool for reform. I would intend to give students knowledge of how to combine the principles of traditional investigative journalism with the newest advances in communication technology – enhancing the narrative of the injustice of disability hate crime through deploying multi-media content, distributing stories across digital delivery platforms and, of course, using social media to engage with new and hard to reach audiences. I would combine theory and practice in this innovative approach to studying reactive communication in an exciting one day teaching module.
I came to this subject when I heard of a case of a young man with epilepsy, Kevin Davies, who was tortured and kept in a shed in 2006 until he died – by so-called friends. I did not feel that the short sentences the perpetrators received for assault covered what had been done to him.
Since then I have investigated the subject of disability hate crime for various newspapers and magazines, including Disability Now magazine, the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Guardian. I launched the first campaign against disability hate crime in the pages of Disability Now magazine, when I was news editor at the magazine.
The impact of my work has been far-reaching. I have been interviewed about my research by BBC Radio 4, Radio 5, BBC Ten O’clock News, as well as by the World Service and the Australian Broadcasting Association. I was commissioned to write the first investigative book about the subject Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people (Portobello, June 2011) and was asked to speak about it at the Edinburgh, Hay and Stoke Newington Literary Festivals. It also had reviews in the Sunday Times, the Scotsman, the Glasgow Heraldand the London Evening Standard and I also wrote publicity pieces about the book in the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday, the Times and Guardian Online, as well as being interviewed about it for BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme, Able magazine and the Big Issue.
I have also continued to campaign for change as one of the joint co-ordinators of the Disability Hate Crime Network, a 2000 member strong social media change organisation on Facebook, founded by Stephen Brookes MBE, who also lectures on the issues of communication at various HE establishments. Last year the network was honoured with Radar’s Stop Hate Award. I also serve as an advisor to the Equality and Human Rights Commission on its disability targeted inquiry.
And, to conclude, I can also look ahead to my next book, The Outcasts (One World, 2013), the first current affairs account of the plight of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in the UK, drawing on my five years of journalism (mainly for the Economist) about these communities, and specifically focussing on the meaning and aftermath of Dale Farm.
Please contact me on [log in to unmask]
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Stephen Brookes MBE
Disability and Equality Consultant
Coordinator - Disability Hate Crime Network
01253 594114
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