Unspoken Taking Centre Stage

Session

2.1

Personal Experience

    • Katie Caryer
    • Wendy Greenwell
    • Paul Mooney

Summary

To introduce Communication Matters to the world of the Unspoken project and to report on the first year of the Unspoken project.

Note: This presentation contains dark material and goes beyond what is normally considered to be politically correct.

Method/Activities/Techniques

We will talk about our activities over the past year, which include: developing a play about the coming of age of a girl with cerebral palsy and no speech (a main aspect of the story is her getting her first communication aid: her voice); establishing inclusive variety nights that were set up to raise funds funds for our project; and starting to work with different kinds of people on our project, including theatre professionals and AAC users.

Results/Findings

We will discuss what worked and what challenges we faced on the way. We would like to share with you our approach towards the subject matter which might challenge people’s attitudes towards disability. We will talk about the reasons why we chose to play with dark humor and why sometimes we chose to go miles beyond what is considered ‘pc’ (you have been warned!!).

Conclusions

It has been a very interesting year for the Unspoken project and we would like to share what we have done with the wider AAC community and give you some ideas about our plans for the future.

Level of Session

General

Age Group

Adolescent

Interest

Further/Higher Ed.
Adult
Transitions