What inspired me to write a series of children picture books, Better Places?
As I’m sure you would have seen if you follow any of my social media channels, I’ve signed with Tiny Tree to release a series of children’s books, Better Places, to help children think about how places can be made better for disabled people.
Better Places won’t be released until 2022 but I did in my recent announcement post and video that I’d be keeping you all update on all things book related and wanted to kick that off with what inspired me to write the books in the first place for part one of my (number to be confirmed) series Inspiration for Better Places.
Adults
Now I drew inspiration for the books from all sorts of different places but one thing that come to me straight away was adults. Surprisingly adults inspired me to write a series of children’s picture books.
I say that because for the past 12-years I’ve been working with adults, a range of individuals, teams, and organisations to work with them towards a more accessible and inclusive offer for disabled people.
“I’d just never thought of that.”
One thing that stands out as something I often hear when we’re looking at how things could work better to enable disabled people to do what they want to do is “I’d just never thought about that.” “I’d never thought about the barriers we’re creating”; “I’d never thought about the simple changes we could make” and “I’d never thought about how what we’re doing might be impacting disabled people in this way.”
And that’s what I hope to change with Better Places. By exposing children to the barriers disabled people face and providing the opportunity for them to put things right, that children will grow up being more aware of how to work in an accessible and inclusive way and hopefully to the point where they don’t have to think about inclusion and access because it’s just part of our day-to-day, it’s what we do and it’s how we work as a society — it’s all we’ve ever know (or at least from a very young age).
So very much big aspirations and intentions for influencing the next generation but in terms of inspiration the first bit of inspiration I wanted to share is from adults themselves so thank you to all adults out there for that.
And thanks for reading this post. If you’d like to keep updated on everything else book related and other topics and issues relating to disabled people, access and inclusion, make sure you follow and subscribe to me on all good social media channels @BenAndrewsINC.
Until next time, take care.
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