Staff and students from Bournemouth University’s Media School have been helping people with disabilities develop the skills needed to become citizen journalists.

Journalism academics and students have run a number of workshops with volunteers from charity Access Dorset, which is establishing a citizen journalism project.

The charity – which supports older people, people with learning disabilities and their carers – wants to enable volunteers to create films for their website and share the stories of their members through their Access Dorset TV project.

Dave Thompson, Development Manager for Access Dorset, said: “In order to have it very much led by disabled people and carers themselves, we wanted to be able to skill up people to do it themselves. So not only are they sharing the stories and issues affecting disabled people, but they are also telling the stories themselves.

“We are on a huge learning curve at the moment and we are really grateful for the support that we are getting from the Media School to help us to develop that skill base, enabling us to move forward quickly.”

Dr Ann Luce, Lecturer in Journalism and Communication, has been running weekly workshops in the Media School with the volunteer citizen journalists – covering everything from how to use the cameras, to interview techniques and how to create sequences of different shots.

She said: “The purpose of this project is to empower disabled people to use their voices and become a part of the media and tell their stories, but also, more importantly, give them the skills to go on and empower other disabled people.

“My hope is that we can stop marginalisation, stigmatisation and sensationalism of disabled voices and stories in the media – this is just the first step.”

Third year BA (Hons) Multimedia Journalism student Nicolas Williams has been assisting in the workshops.

He said: “I’m helping out with the technical skills, like how to use the camera and editing equipment. I’ve also been showing them some of my work as well as going through it with them.

“It’s not easy, but it’s nice to see them going through it and trying their hardest, learning and doing really well.”

The workshops have been funded by BU’s Fusion Investment Fund and the BU team will continue to work with the citizen journalists throughout the first year of the project, before helping to produce a report of its progress.

Kelvin Trevett, of Poole, was one of the volunteer citizen journalists taking part in the workshop.

He said: “I was looking for some voluntary work and this looked really interesting and exciting.

“It’s been really good and very informative, and I think I will be more confident to actually go out there and do it now.

“I’m looking forward to putting everything we’ve learnt so far into practice.”