Briefing

‘Our Voice’ Project

‘Our Voice’ is a Covid-19 national participation project, to amplify Disabled Young people’s voices, and address erasure of their education experiences.

Visual minutes from the workshop: Making Things Happen - how to better engage Young Disabled peopleALLFIE feels that Disabled Young people’s voices have been ignored, especially during COVID-19.

Support for Independent living needs and control over what support remains has decreased during the pandemic. ALLFIE feels that this has increased the levels of Disabled Young people’s isolation. So, in response to this, ALLFIE has created a project called ‘Our Voice’ to make Disabled Young people’s opinions heard and put them out there.

What is the ‘Our Voice’ project? 

The aim of the project is to enable Disabled Young people to have a say on what matters to them, and to address the isolation and intersectional exclusion of Disabled Young people during the pandemic. We have recruited 9 Young people, aged between 16 and 25, to share their experiences on:

  • Intersectionality
  • Independent Living
  • Isolation
  • Impact of COVID-19

The participants are also bringing topics of their own for us all to discuss, so that we don’t miss the things that are important to Disabled Young people.

How it works

The participants meet with some of the ALLFIE team via video-conference for about 90 minutes every few weeks to have conversations and share their experiences. Additionally, ALLFIE are providing training sessions, so our participants increase their knowledge and experience on disability rights and inclusive education.

What will come out of Our Voice project?

From the conversations we have, participants will write blogs, articles and other resources, that will be posted on ALLFIE’s webpage and in other publications. This will cover their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other things they want you to know about.

In June 2021, we plan to hold a panel conversation to conclude the project, highlighting what has been discussed and learned, and at the end of the project, we will have a wealth of evidence and information.

We are also wanting to develop our participants’ skills, and through increased knowledge and experience on disability rights and inclusive education, they can go on to further leadership opportunities with the disability rights movement. ALLFIE will be creating leadership opportunities and are working with other organisations to see if similar roles can be created.

Look out for articles with the #OurVoice and if you want to know more, please contact project lead Armineh Soorenian

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Resources

  1. Samuel Bartley has created ‘Song About P.A.s’ for the Our Voice project. This instrumental music soundtrack is:

“A happy song, because when P.A.’s (Personal Assistants) are working with me we do fun things together and play games and activities which make me happy. So this piece of sound music is what I have created for being privileged to have supportive P.A’s working with me. I hope you like it!” (Samuel Bartley, Our Voice Project, April 2021)

Music composed by Samuel Bartley especially for the Our Voice Panel Event ‘Disabled Lives, Young Voices’.

Blogs

  1. Turns out, being a disabled young person in lockdown isn’t great, by Remmington
  2. Our voice on intersectionality, by Melody Powell (she/her)
  3. Disability and Happiness, by Matt Smith

Other posts