Please take a quick look at the disability history blog I am developing with the assistance of volunteers at Birmingham Disability Resource Centre at Bierton Road in Yardley. The project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and will record the history of the centre and it's early origins in the 1980s with the campaigning group Birmingham Disability Rights Group. Both of these organisations were set up and run by disabled people themselves and represented a historic departure where disabled people began to question always being the beneficiaries of services whilst never being consulted or included in the management and delivery of those services.
Our online blog has started to archive some of the documents and publications of these groups and in the near future there will be extracts from recorded interviews with people who have worked at, founded, managed or received services from the BDRC.
I am keen to add other extracts relating to earlier developments in the West Midlands in order to create the wider historical context from which modern user led organisations emerged. A recent post on the blog is from a history document concerning the Coventry Enterprise Club, a user led group which began life as the Coventry Cripples Social Club in 1938. One of it's three founder members, the remarkable Len Tasker who is now in his 90s and is still, would you believe it, involved in organising sporting activities for disabled people in Coventry. A couple of years ago I recorded a two hour interview with Len and his wife Peggy, along with Barbara Gibbs who is well known for her own work with disability organisations in Coventry and Birmingham.
They had some great tales to tell such as the time when one of their members was the lady who used to play piano with her son in the Coventry bad Lieutenant Pigeon (remember Mouldy Old Dough?) On one occasion all of the Enterprise Club members were invited down to London to do backing vocals on one of their songs.
The extract I have put on the blog recalls how the Coventry Cripples Social Club was set up by three young disabled people and survived three episodes of the heavy Blitz on Coventry to continue to grow as one of the UK's first groups run by disabled people.
Please take a look at the developing history blog and send me your memories and contributions.
Here is the blog link followed by my email address at BDRC:
Blog: http://www.disability.co.uk/blog
Email: pmillington@disability.co.uk
Our online blog has started to archive some of the documents and publications of these groups and in the near future there will be extracts from recorded interviews with people who have worked at, founded, managed or received services from the BDRC.
I am keen to add other extracts relating to earlier developments in the West Midlands in order to create the wider historical context from which modern user led organisations emerged. A recent post on the blog is from a history document concerning the Coventry Enterprise Club, a user led group which began life as the Coventry Cripples Social Club in 1938. One of it's three founder members, the remarkable Len Tasker who is now in his 90s and is still, would you believe it, involved in organising sporting activities for disabled people in Coventry. A couple of years ago I recorded a two hour interview with Len and his wife Peggy, along with Barbara Gibbs who is well known for her own work with disability organisations in Coventry and Birmingham.
They had some great tales to tell such as the time when one of their members was the lady who used to play piano with her son in the Coventry bad Lieutenant Pigeon (remember Mouldy Old Dough?) On one occasion all of the Enterprise Club members were invited down to London to do backing vocals on one of their songs.
The extract I have put on the blog recalls how the Coventry Cripples Social Club was set up by three young disabled people and survived three episodes of the heavy Blitz on Coventry to continue to grow as one of the UK's first groups run by disabled people.
Please take a look at the developing history blog and send me your memories and contributions.
Here is the blog link followed by my email address at BDRC:
Blog: http://www.disability.co.uk/blog
Email: pmillington@disability.co.uk
Spaghetti Gazetti, 25th March 2009
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