We need to find creative ways to celebrate Disability Pride and protest ableism at every opportunity

Susan Dennehy is an award winning Independent Radio Producer and Disability advocate. Most recently she produced ‘Last One On The Train’ a six part RTÉ Radio docu-series that reveals the real life experience of six wheelchair users in Ireland. We invited her for a chat on The DFI blog: 

Q: Where did the idea for the Radio series Last One On The Train come from?

Susan: I had been thinking about a series like this for a long time. My youngest daughter, who is 20 years old now, is a full-time wheelchair user, so I witness up close what life is like for her. I find the poor quality and ad-hoc nature of wheelchair access frustrating and I never fail to be shocked at how complacent we are about this as a society. I mean if somebody from any other minority group was regularly denied access to services and venues the way wheelchair users are it would not be tolerated. So, I felt compelled to use my skills to reveal this inequality to as wide an audience as possible.

Q: Where did the title come from?

Susan: Every time I travel with my daughter, whether it is by bus, plane or train, she is inevitably the last to board or disembark. She does a lot of waiting. I could also see from my social media accounts that this is very common experience for wheelchair users. I even came across posts from people who had been left on a train or a plane and forgotten about! So it’s a reference to that but it is also a metaphor for the disabled community being the last minority to have access to equality and their rights.

Q: Tell us more about the series?

Susan: So, there are six programmes, each one is 26 minutes long. They are documentary format, so a mixture of interviews and scenes from real life events as well as narration. Each features a different person and a different topic like work, transport, services, the great outdoors, the built environment and disability Pride. I began recording at the Disability Pride March in Dublin in July last year and scheduled the recording around events in people’s lives. For example, I recorded at the graduation of Leesa Flynn, who features in the first programme – Leesa is the first wheelchair user to graduate as a primary school teacher in Ireland.

Q: How did you choose the participants?

Susan: I spoke to a lot of people and it was really hard to narrow it down to six - to be honest I could have made many more – but I developed a criteria and kept to that. I needed six stories that were different from each other,  as well as people who had a particular issue they wanted to highlight. I also wanted a mix of genders, geographical location and different types of disabilities – some acquired, some lifelong. And finally, I deliberately chose to feature younger people in this series as I was interested in the perspective and experience of a new generation of wheelchair users.

Q: What do you want listeners to take away from the series?

Susan: For the disabled listener, my aim was to reflect back and validate their experience and maybe introduce some new ideas like disability pride, and for the non-disabled audience, I wanted to open their eyes to the ableism that is all around us in society, be that in our built environment or our attitudes, even when they are well meaning. I hope the series contributes in some small way to the shift that Irish society badly needs for our disabled citizens to live full and equal lives.

Q: Where can people listen to the series?

The series has just been aired on RTÉ Radio One but it is available to listen back on the RTÉ website at this linkhttps://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/last-one-on-the-train/

It is also available on Spotify.

Ends

Thanks to Susan for chatting to us on The DFI Blog. She will also feature on the next episode of the DFI Podcast speaking about disability in the arts and in media.