21-23 Sep: Communication Matters

I'll write up about our weekend with Communication Matters soon - getting some pics from the video took, for this post and some others I'm just making space for now.

3 Sep: I'm an MP!

I am an elected Member of on the County Durham Learning Disability Parliament. I am one of the MPs for the Sedgefield Locality. I was sworn in at the Parliament's first meeting for this term at County Durham Council Chambers on 3 September.


Some MPs will join the Partnership Board, some will serve on the Regional Forum, and others will become Ministers for the many issues that affect people with learning disabilities. We will discuss our roles at locality meetings later this month.


I am most interested in asking support from the Parliament to:

1. Persuade the UK government to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

2. Campaign for the right to literacy lessons for disabled people of all ages and ability levels.

3. Campaign for the right to meet an AAC Role Model for everyone with communication disabilities, their carers and the professionals who work with them.

4. Make sure that everyone who finds communicating by speech difficult gets a communication board with the everyday core words that we all use for most of what we say and write, and other AAC materials like a communication passport (a little book with essential information about the person) and talking mats (for consulting and decision making).

I have loads of special information on how to use the boards to facilitate language development, participation and inclusion. It's all on the video I brought home from the ISAAC Conference in Montreal in August.

22-24 Aug: Solfest

We had a wicked Bank Holiday weekend at Solfest. I will post a short video clip soon.

12-30 Aug: DADLG Fun

12 August: Snow Tubing at Whickham
13 August: Pirate BBQ on Prince Bishop Boat, Durham
19 August: Flamingo Land
30 August: Diggerland

These were all great days out with my friends from Durham Area Disability Leisure Group. My stills camera is broken but I do have video clips from each day that I can post or grab frames from when we can get to editing them.

9 Aug: Back Home

Been home a few days now - with 13 hours of video tape to make running lists for, so that we can match the footage from both cameras - and I've been on two days ot with DADLG in between - snow tubing at Whickham Falls, and on a Pirates BBQ on the Prince Bishop boat.

My stills camera broke on the first day at Montreal so all the pictures I have will have to be grabbed from the video footage. We have done Thursday to Monday so far and my PA, Craig is putting them on FaceBook with me tonight. We'll do a few each day.

I'm not sure how you will find my FaceBook, but my profile name is Michael Reed, and I'm in the Newcastle network.

1-9 August: ISAAC: Montreal

Here I am, in the Chinatown area of DownTown Montreal, a French-speaking Canadian City.

Our hotel is the Holiday Inn, right across the street from the Palais des Congres where the ISAAC Biennial Conference is on from Monday 4 August to Friday 7 August.  

Our taxi driver told us that just five minutes up the road from our hotel was a free music festival - there are stages set up on the streets for bands and DJs, and we had a great time there on Thursday night and Friday.

On Saturday we watched China's display for the International fireworks competition in Parc Jean-Drapeau.

Since Monday we are at the conference - we are filming it so we can share the highlights and make an AAC documentary. We are just back from the President's reception. We will be on a Canadian night out with ISAAC tomorrow night. We have filmed some of the workshops, and hope that some of AAC's leading lights will speak on camera for us the next two days.

Back soon...

28 July: DADLG: Batman

Met up with friends from Durham Area Disability Leisure Group at the Gala Theatre to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Thoroughly enjoyed it. And went for a meal at the Bishop's Mill after.

We were going to stay out all day and have a session at Clayport Library with our story writing team, but, with only a couple of days to go to my Montreal trip, we thought we'd better get home and work towards that.