As referenced in a recent blog post, I have not been so prolific with my article writing of late. In all honesty my efforts have been on grasping self employment, reflecting on our progress in changing the world for disabled people and planning the coming months. Enough of the excuses though because I am now excitedly writing to launch not one, but two pieces of big news!
Disability Horizons has been running for almost 6 months. The new design looks amazing, the top quality articles, writers and topics are improving weekly and your feedback as readers becomes more enthusiastic by the day. As co-editors, Srin and I try to lead by example with our world travels and adventurous exploits, but also we want to encourage the Disability Horizons community to step up to the plate. The first piece of news throws down the gauntlet to you guys, and the second piece illustrates our personal zest for life.
So without further ado, I now introduce to you – Disability Horizons meet-ups!
Our vision is to choose a day, a time, an accessible location and sometimes a theme (sport, art, music etc). It is then up to you to come along, meet other Disability Horizons socialites and benefit from chatting with like minded people. We also want to recruit ambassadors who can run meet-ups in their local area. We already have a couple on board!
As you can imagine, we want these meet-ups to be about living life, socialising, leisure activities and travel. Of course, barriers and challenges will be discussed, and you can learn from each other on various solutions, but every meet-up will celebrate disability, personal achievement and having pure fun.
From the experience of running a physical meet-up last year, with 20 disabled people attending, the feedback was unanimous that this should occur more.
Onto news piece number two. It seems ages since I travelled to Cyprus in April. My summers are normally spent in the UK carrying out plans I made during the winter. This is as a result of bad health (although I tend to manage the odd trip somewhere warm too). In the winter of 09/10 I planned to fly a plane (which I did last August), whilst last winter I planned to attend some music festivals, which I most certainly did this year (attending 5 altogether, here’s my review of Lovebox in June). It is also coming up to a year since Srin and I met Jack Black on our California and Vegas road trip.
With the right conditions set, we have booked our next travel adventure – to New York!!! I cannot tell you how excited we are. Our good friend Toby is joining us having now recovered from his coma and ill health last year. Our general plans are as you would imagine: good food, drink, company, visit statue of liberty, empire state building and so on. We leave on Monday 26th September and return on Sunday 2nd October. Brace yourselves for the articles!
Our first meet-up is therefore going to be in New York. We will follow this with a London meet-up in late October, and then the sky is the limit.
Please get in touch with your thoughts and if you are interested in becoming an ambassador for the Disability Horizons meet-up group – you know the drill: editor@disabilityhorizons.com…
By Martyn Sibley
Brilliant idea; I’m in! Plus, great new pictures guys.
Meetups in Mumbai?