to the ability media awards yesterday, and the official launch of a stunning initiative from Leonard Cheshire to train young disadvantaged people in media skills. their training centre is fantastic, and all this from a charity whose core remit is not media at all. 

But the awards I wasn’t convinced by. They were celebrating inclusion, but the net was cast wide and the criteria were not clear. There was bafflement from the audience when the winners were, amongst others, a John Adams opera, a website about aids from a bank, and a local theatre project with no obvious inclusion in its production or portrayal; for me these are the best measures of any inclusion policy in the media. I couldn’t see what motivated some of these awards.

By the time we got to celebrating Frank Gardiner and Sue Townsend, and even better some of the students that they have been training, we could all agree on the benefits and the story that it told. But the awards were somewhat misjudged for me, and didn’t reflect the core fantastic work that ability media is driving, as their website says, “to the inclusion of disabled people in all aspects of life.”

the Aster Media website is live. Forgive the holding pages, more soon.

Nick