‘Inclusive Barbies are a major step in my life’

“It’s a major step in the toy industry and in my life. It made me feel proud of who I was.”

James Stewart is among those celebrating the new Barbie dolls that are being released today.

Mattel, the company that makes them, has released a range of more diverse dolls.

For the first time, Barbie is seen with a hearing aid, a prosthetic limb and a wheelchair, while a Ken doll has the skin condition vitiligo.

James, who has the skin condition, says it “felt quite surreal” to hold. More

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – August 2022

International Youth Day is on 12 August and with that in mind we have chosen Meghan Willis as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Meghan, at 14 years old, is the youngest member of Wales’ para swimming squad for this year’s Commonwealth Games being held in Birmingham.

Meghan will race the SM10 200 metre individual medley for swimmers with upper limb deficiencies and has risen rapidly in the last year, qualifying as one of the top eight swimmers in the Commonwealth in her event.

She helps other young people with upper limb deficiencies through her work with the charity Reach and is determined to inspire others to become active through sport and live their lives without limits. 

She is also a young water safety ambassador for the Swimming Teachers Association (STA) promoting ability over disability.

To find out more about Reach see here

https://reach.org.uk/ .

To find out more about Para Swimming and the Commonwealth Games see here

https://www.birmingham2022.com/sports/swimming

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – July 2022

Disability Awareness Day is on 17 July and with that in mind we have chosen Francesca Martinez as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.

Francesca is a comedian and disability campaigner.  As a comedian, she has toured internationally, including sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Festival, the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.

As a campaigner, she spent a year getting the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a debate in Parliament on welfare reform and its effect on disabled people. Using her award-winning humour, Francesca, who has cerebral palsy, talks passionately about facing fear, the profound power of positive thinking, gaining the right perspective and questioning society’s values in her critically acclaimed memoir, What the **** is Normal?!, which was nominated for The Bread and Roses Radical Publishing Award.

As a youngster she was a regular in the BBC children’s drama Grange Hill, becoming one of the first disabled actors to have a significant role on a popular TV programme. In November 2016, she was the guest curator at Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival of Words, which featured a day of inspirational talks and events. She also teamed up with Network Rail to launch a new campaign to improve disabled passengers’ experiences of travelling by rail. Another recent highlight for was supporting Frankie Boyle on tour.

For International Women’s Day Able Magazine published their top 10 most influential women with a disability which included Francesca.  She is patron of a number of charity including the Misfits Theatre Company.

To find out more about Francesca see here https://www.francescamartinez.com/bio

To find out more about Disability Awareness Day see here

https://www.disabilityawarenessday.org.uk/show/

April Ashley: Transgender pioneer’s ‘spectacular legacy’ to be celebrated

The friends of transgender pioneer April Ashley are to celebrate her “spectacular” legacy in her home city.

Liverpool-born Ashley, who died in 2021, was one of the first people to undergo surgery and went on to become a famous model, restaurateur and actress.

Her personal papers document everything from dinners with David Hockney to correspondence with Elizabeth Taylor.

Her friends Lou Muddle and Bev Ayre said a new archive would show who she really was and “not just the myth”.

The pair, who are both from Liverpool, were tasked by Ashley to sort through her belongings after discovering she “kept absolutely everything”.

Ms Ayre said Ashley had been “truly spectacular” and was “family to us”, though she admits that closeness came with more than a touch of stardust. More

Windrush Day: Queen praises pioneers as Waterloo statue unveiled

The Queen has praised the Windrush “pioneers” for their “profound contribution” to British life as a statue to them was unveiled.

The monument, at Waterloo Station, pays tribute to the thousands of people who arrived in the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 and 1971.

It depicts a man, woman and child standing on top of suitcases and was revealed to mark Windrush Day.

The government gave £1m to fund the statue, designed by Basil Watson.

In a message to mark the occasion, signed Elizabeth R, the Queen said she hoped the statue would “inspire present and future generations” as she sent her “warmest good wishes on this historic occasion”.

Windrush Day marks the arrival of Caribbean immigrants to the shores of Britain on 22 June each year – the day HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in 1948. More

New LGBT+ Podcast

Spill the Tea

Ayomide Oluyemi and Panagiotis Pentaris have finished the production of the pilot episode of the very new LGBT+ Podcast that has launched on transistor.fm and is available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Podcast Addict, Player FM, and Deezer, and soon on Apple podcasts as well.

This podcast show focuses on matters pertinent to LGBT+ Culture. The show hosts guests who share their lived experience and through conversations help us understand further issues that this population is facing or has faced, raising thus awareness and providing a creative educational platform.

The first episode hosts Peter McGraith, a long-standing activist of LGBT+ rights in the UK, and half of the very first same-sex couple to get married in England once it was legalised, in 2014. Peter is having a conversation with us about Pride and Pride month, its meaning, significance and future. This is to celebrate Pride Month and increase inclusivity.

We hope you all enjoy and share with colleagues in and outside of the University. It seems that before we even announced its release, the episode has been accessed generously and internationally!

Access the episode here Spill the Tea (transistor.fm)

(https://spill-the-tea.transistor.fm)

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – June 2022

This year Diabetes Week runs from 13 – 19 June and with this in mind we have chosen Muhammad Ali as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Muhammad is a professional boxer and on 19 May 2018 he made boxing history after becoming World’s first type1 diabetic to be granted a professional licence by the British Boxing Board of Control.

As an amateur Muhammad boxed at the 2016 Olympics, 2015 World Championships and the 2014 World Youth Championships where he won a silver medal.  His ambition is to become the first diabetic boxing world champion.

Muhammad says this about his diabetes:

“Diabetes is a condition, not an illness; I’m just like any other ordinary person. Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass by but learning to weather the storm. One day I’d love to say I lived by diabetes”.

Muhammad is an ambassador for Diabetes UK, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the International Diabetes Federation.

To find out more about Muhammad see here https://www.muhammadaliboxing.com/

To find out more about Diabetes Week see here https://www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-week

Save Venice: The forgotten female artists being rediscovered

Who decides which artists are remembered and which are forgotten? With only a small fraction of the art in museums by women, efforts are being made, at the Venice Biennale and further afield, to change long-standing narratives.

Inside the Church of San Marziale, beside a canal in central Venice, specialist art handlers are high up on scaffolding above one of the church’s second altars, trying to tease out two canvases that have been nailed to the wall of the church for several hundred years.

The paintings, which are believed to date from the late 1720s or early 1730s, are by a woman artist called Giulia Lama. She may have been the first female artist in Venice to produce major commissions for churches. The daughter of an artist, she never married and was a mathematician and a published poet.

At the time she was dismissed by some of her male contemporaries. So much so that in 1728, an abbot and man of science, Antonio Conti, wrote: “The poor girl is persecuted by painters, but her virtues triumph over her enemies.”

According to some reports, the other artists and critics at the time focused on what they decided were her unremarkable, almost unappealing physical attributes – they asked how a woman of such prosaic appearance could produce such sophisticated paintings. More

Jacky Hunt-Broersma: The cancer survivor who ran 104 marathons in 104 days

A woman who took up running after she lost her left leg to cancer has passed the Guinness World Record for most consecutive marathons.

Jacky Hunt-Broersma, 46, has run 26.2-miles every day since mid-January, normally taking around five hours.

On Saturday, she completed her 104th consecutive marathon in as many days – an achievement she expects to be certified by Guinness World Records.

A spokesperson said certifying the record would take around three months.

Waking up on Sunday – a day off at long last – was a bizarre experience for Jacky.

“Part of me was really happy to be done,” she tells the BBC from her home in Arizona. “And the other part kept thinking I need to go running.”

Her body is also recovering from the record-chasing effort, despite having stopped. “I feel tighter than I have the whole 104 marathons,” she admits.

But Jacky – who was born and raised in South Africa, and has also lived in England and the Netherlands – is grateful. Because running has given her the confidence she was afraid she would never regain. More

Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month – May 2022

Mental Health Awareness Week takes place from 9 – 15 May and this year’s theme is loneliness.  With this in mind we have chosen Frankie Bridge as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Frankie is a singer, songwriter and TV personality.  She is a former member of groups S Club Juniors and The Saturdays and has appeared in various TV shows including Strictly Come Dancing, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and The Saturdays 24/7 and is a regular panellist on Loose Women.

Frankie is an ambassador for the mental health charity Mind and chose to support them after opening up about her experiences of anxiety, depression and panic attacks back in May 2012. Having initially dealt with these issues in silence, Frankie is keen to support Mind in making sure no one has to face a mental health problem alone.

Frankie has leant her support to a number of Mind’s campaigns including Time to Talk Day and Move for Mind. During Mental Health Awareness Week 2021, Frankie guest-edited the Lifestyle section of Metro Online and penned an opinion piece highlighting Mind’s ‘Join the Fight’ campaign and sharing her reasons for supporting Mind’s work.

To find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week see here

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week/resources

Find out more about Frankie here

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1421678/

Just another University of Greenwich blog