stories
Quad biking and story writing: How Ability Today built a journalism school and more
Quad biking and story writing: How Ability Today built a journalism school and more
Written by
Ruth Coustick-Deal
External Affairs Lead
Grant Logan founded Ability Today, a Surrey-based social business that provides news and opportunities for disabled people, in 2014. Back then he says, ""it was just me, and a computer, pushing news out to the wider community"" but now he is opening academies for disabled journalists and has ambitious plans on the horizon.
The founding story of Ability Today begins with adventure:
""You know over the years since my accident in 2003 I have been very fortunate to do lots of great things like climb Ben Nevis with charities, I've been rally driving, quad biking, flying, gliding, all of these great adventures.""
Yet when Grant came back from these trips he would hear from other disabled people ""oh I wish I'd known about that"". Those comments inspired him to start sharing new of opportunities that they might be missing out on -""there are many people within my community that live behind closed doors or curtains, they very often don't know about the support that is available to them and the great organisations out there that can help and support them"".
And then it grew. Firstly, into a directory of information, but by 2017 into a social enterprise.
Once Disability Today (as it was then called) was registered as a Community Interest Company, he began recruiting volunteers from the local community and disabled-led organisations in Surrey. Whilst support roles were initially in administration, the journalism team they became followed swiftly. Grant now had a team of willing volunteers to take up water skiing and flying and gliding, and take over from where he started.
From there it became a matter of 'roving reporters' out on assignments, creating videos of all these exciting events. Through their coverage, organisations like the Disabled Water Ski Association or Aerobility got more support. As Grant puts it, ""It was a win-win for all of us really.""
UnLtd support
Run in partnership with the disability equality charity Scope, UnLtd's Closing the Disability Employment Gap programme, provided funding and support for social entrepreneurs with strong ideas to support disabled people into jobs and training.
Grant received a £5000 Do It Award which helped put the building blocks in place. He also took advantage of the workshops and mentoring that are offered through our support, including pro bono legal helped with privacy policies, terms and conditions and trademarking, and he also had a marketing mentor. Like many award winners he concludes that although the funding has been very important,""the mentoring and the support that we have received… is just as valuable in a lot of respects"".
Throughout this time the social venture had been called Disability Today, but in 2019 as he oversaw this growth it was time for a rebrand - ""drop the dis and put a big red X through it, and relaunch with the slogan lets focus on what we can do, not what we can't do.""
The academy, and COVID-19, arrives
Inspiration struck for the next step for the business; a partnership with the National Council for the Training of Journalists for Ability Today's reporters, ""I picked up the phone... I said I have this idea about giving them a qualification which they loved, and fast forward to this time last year and we launched our first academy"".
The academy concept was initially for a group of students and a teacher coming to the office in Surrey. Yet when COVID-19 hit and the world adapted to working online, it gave them the opportunity to be much bigger than expected.
By the beginning of May 2020 the Academy for Disabled Journalists was up and running and taking advantage of the change to digital, not only expanding out of the county, but out of the country: ""We had students in Scotland, Manchester, Norfolk, London, Luton, which was amazing because we hadn't thought of doing that before…we took on three international students because they were very heavily involved in advocacy for disability within their local communities…one from Kenya, one from the Philippines, and one from Romania""
Of course, like many the lack of face-to-face has held them back in some ways and the absence of volunteers in the office for over a year has been felt. But despite the set-backs, Grant is adamant that the switch to online has changed the scope of success. He says that the last year's shift in working styles, ""has provided us with more opportunities, more ideas, and more ways to develop what we are doing because we are now no longer just concentrated on my local community"".
For Ability Today, having a workforce with lived experience is really important, a way of supporting the community. Grant has invested in Assistive Technologies for his team, specialist mice and keyboards, and braille machines. They also employed a stenographer to Live Caption each of the classes.
These adjustments enable talent to shine and are available through government's Access to Work scheme. Grant points out that, ""those were really simple things to do, I didn't really have to do much more than that to be honest to make my environment accessible.""
However, it shouldn't just be up to social ventures, or people with lived experience to be creating inclusive workplaces.
Ability Today's impressive pivot and growth in response to COVID-19, and accessible work support, are lessons for many other businesses to respond to. As a social leader, Grant's message to the world is,
""we've all been forced to work from home, so let's make the disabled community thrive from that as well.""
Still growing
The next big plan is more academies and courses. They're looking to form similar partnerships to the ones set up with NCTJ, but not just for journalism training. They hope to launch an academy for disabled website developers, for disabled bookkeepers, and one for disabled gaming programmers, ""anything that you can now do to train from home and perhaps earn a living without having to leave your front door.""
Ability Today's work is increasingly recognised – Grant is a member of the Power 100 2021 and they were nominated for the National Diversity Awards 2021. They've had meetings with the government's Chief Disability Advisor to Boris Johnson about their academy plans. With all these opportunities, the biggest challenge is simply finding enough hours in the day to achieve it all.
If you are, or know, anyone with a disability that would like to learn a new skill and work from home then get in touch with Ability Today. They would love to hear from you.