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You and Yours - Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 11.05.07 - Disabled Children in the Picture PRESENTER: JOHN WAITE |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WAITE Now every year in the summertime I sit in Roald Dahl's garden at his family's home in Buckinghamshire and read out some of his stories and poems to children who come from all parts of the world for this once a year opportunity to visit the place where all Roald's famous tales were dreamed up and which is opened up for charity by his widow Liccy. And when I hold up the illustrations - Quentin's here - illustration - Quentin Blake's - they literally cheer sometimes at plucky Charlie Bucket or the amazing Matilda and you can see them take delight in the fun and the positive images of youngsters like themselves with which they clearly identify and which will stay with them for the rest of their lives, I'm sure, rather as Ernest Shepherd's illustrations of Pooh and Christopher Robin have stayed with me in mine. But even in today's fabulously diverse world of children's literature there are still very few stories about, or indeed pictures of, disabled children. Well a big lottery project is aiming to change that led by Scope, the charity for people with cerebral palsy. And Quentin you've drawn three pictures for this project, how did you become involved? BLAKE Well I was invited to take part and I've actually also talked to children who've done one of the Scope projects where we redrew some illustrations and one of my illustrations introducing some children with disabilities into them. It's interesting to me in two ways. One is that one wants to do something about it, I mean it's a natural feeling about it. The other is that it's interesting, as it were, professionally because if you're an illustrator you operate with - in a sense with signals, you know in the old days, long after schoolmasters had stopped wearing gowns and they always wore gowns in pictures because that's how you knew they were schoolmasters. So you have a set of almost clichés or signals anyway and of course they get out of date. And I've had that experience over time, I mean I'll break down and confess that many years ago I did a book about children in school being doctors and nurses and the doctors were all little boys and the nurses were all little girls and the teacher said we just had to put them in the cupboard, we couldn't use them. Well I share the blame with the publisher there. But I mean one has - these are things you have to learn. So a little consciousness helps. WAITE Well Tracie Linehan is also with us, she's head of early years at Scope and your project In the Picture is about sending messages isn't it. LINEHAN It is about sending messages, it's also about all children being able to recognise themselves in interesting, fun, literature, right from the very beginning, as early as possible, and for them to be able to recognise themselves in the characters that are written about. WAITE So what kind of images are you hoping to have and are there any that you would rule out? LINEHAN I don't think we'd rule any out, children are children and we'd like disabled children to be depicted as such. WAITE Even if they're sad? LINEHAN Oh absolutely, disabled children get very sad, they're also naughty and get cross and angry and like anybody else. There is actually no difference in the personalities and I think that's what we'd like to come across is that children's personalities are the strength of children's books and that's one of the things the illustrations really need to depict in a very positive way. WAITE Well nine-year-old Seline Matthews is really the inspiration for all this. Seline has cerebral palsy and her mum Jean's on the phone to us now from East Goscote in Leicestershire. It all started, Jean, as I understand it, when Seline was just a toddler and you went to a Red Cross coffee morning. JEAN We did yes and Scope were there, a lady called Susan Crow brought a book and the book was called Two Left Feet and it's about a little boy that has cerebral palsy and Seline just thought it was absolutely fantastic because she thought she was the only child that had CP at the time and use a K walker. And she was over the moon to see this little boy in the book that had got cerebral palsy. WAITE And I mean her sister, her twin sister, doesn't have cerebral palsy... JEAN She doesn't no. WAITE You've two other daughters as well, they don't have it, so has it been helpful for them too to see images like this? JEAN Very much so. We, as a family we have to do everything around Seline, so that Seline can fit into what everybody classes as normal life. And we all help her in every way and she's quite a positive little girl and she'll say I can do that, she'll have a go. WAITE Tracie what kind of difference does it make to have books that include characters with disabilities for children with disabilities? LINEHAN I think it makes them visible, it makes them part of society, it makes them part of the activities, the fiction and the day-to-day stuff that goes on. It doesn't exclude them. And it is very much about equality and being recognised for who you are, whoever that is, whether you're a child who's going to be a truant - yes even a child with disabilities can be a truant - you know those images should be there for you to recognise within children's stories. WAITE And Quentin how explicit did you feel the depiction of the disability itself should be? BLAKE Well I think you need to know it's there but you don't need to be very specific I think, I mean one of the good things about illustrations is you can control the way you do it. And so you can have one kind of illustration which shows exactly how this equipment could help children to walk works but if you're drawing them as a character - and that's what I was trying to do - it's there but you don't have to insist it. What you're thinking about is what that child's doing, whether it's enjoying it, what the expression on its face is, in fact the elements which it has in common with everybody else. WAITE So the equipment doesn't define them - it's their character that defines them. BLAKE Exactly yes. WAITE And Tracie I mean how difficult is this idea to get more illustrations like this, how difficult is it to get publishers on board with it? LINEHAN I think that's been the sort of more challenging part of the project because obviously it's about is it saleable, are people interested in it. But I think with the huge drive nationally for all children to be included throughout our communities then these books need to be available and they need to be easily accessible for everybody, regardless of whether or not you have a disability. And I think the important thing I'd want to state is that it's not a separate strand of literature, that is stories about disabled children, it's about disabled children being part of the make up of a story and in which case hopefully be in the background of an illustration or just happen to be in the swimming pool or playground or whatever. WAITE Tracie Linehan from Scope and Jean Matthews and Quentin, thank you all. And that Roald Dahl open day that I mentioned at the beginning, that I take part in, may as well give it a plug: It's on Saturday July 27th, Saturday July 27th this year in Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, hope to see some of you there. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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