‘Games Through Our Eyes’
The Media Team at Heart n Soul have created ‘Games Through Our Eyes’, a website on the London 2012 Paralympic Games. The project forms part of the Media Team’s training in creative production skills provided by Heart n Soul, a leading arts organisation that gives a voice to learning disability culture.
In 2009, the PHF Arts programme awarded a grant of £46,000 to build on a pilot project to recruit and train the Media Team, as a key part of Heart n Soul’s creative development programme for young people with learning difficulties.
Lilly Cook, a member of the Media Team, has written about the project:
Games Through Our Eyes is a website that was made by the Media Team at Heart n Soul.
We wanted to make the website because we knew that the Olympics and Paralympics are in London this year and we wanted to tell everyone about it! There are only three sports in the Paralympics that are open to athletes with a learning disability: athletics, swimming and table tennis. Each member of the Media Team found out more about each of the three sports.
During this project we were lucky enough to be able to meet Paul Morgan, the editor of the Rugby World magazine. We interviewed him about his love for Rugby. After Paul’s visit to us at Heart n Soul we decided we also wanted to add a page about wheelchair rugby to our website. You can read the interview on our website.
As part of our research for the website we went on some really good trips. We visited the International Paralympic Committee to talk to them about finding a name for our website. We also went on a tour of the Olympic park where we saw a close up of the Olympic stadium and all the other venues. It was cool to see how the Olympic park was coming along. The last trip we went on for this project was the International Paralympic Day in Trafalgar Square. We got to interview legends like David Weir the wheelchair athlete and Will Bayley the world’s number one table tennis player.
After working with Chris from Salt Design to make the website, we launched it at Heart n Soul’s Squidz Club to an audience of over 150 people. While we were at the club we interviewed people to see what they thought of the website. We are all really excited about the Olympics and Paralympics coming to London and we’ll be backing everyone we interviewed and the whole Great Britain Team all the way!
