Full article – extract was in The Philip Lawrence Awards Magazine 2007

Since winning the Philip Lawrence Award, SOUL and FAME have managed to gain a seat and voting rights on the learning disability partnership board in Sheffield for a young person. When we went to Inclusion North’s planning day we found this was very progressive comparatively.

In February, we won a SONY (Southey and Owlerton New Year) Award for challenging prejudice about disability in the local area. We also had a visit from David Blunkett, our constituency MP who came and did a question and answer session with the young people and continues to support us.

The group have continued to do good work with representatives at area wide youth parliament and Peoples parliament every month and this year one of our members stood for UKYP challenging prejudice against autism as part of his manifesto. This led to a change in approach to how manifestos were presented to young voters. For the first time in Sheffield candidates were filmed and the video was played in the town hall every day during the election period. They were also trained in disability awareness. We have taken part in a number of consultations including the GOJO campaign with the Disability Rights Commission.

Last year SOUL and FAME said they wanted to set up a nightclub for disabled people. This actually happened in April after partnership working with other organisations in the city and Gary and Ken were employed as Superstar Djs for “Under the Stars”, attended by over eight hundred people. The group’s animations were shown here and also at a film festival called Colours in a Rainbow in July. Alice sang live and unaccompanied at “Creatovate” in April.

We survived the June floods in Sheffield. Our youth club was closed temporarily as there was no electric but we only missed a couple of sessions.

The 3-year Comic Relief funding ran out in June but the young people wrote a successful bid to YOF allowing us a reprieve of 6 months until Jan 2008 so we are still going for the time being. This funding includes a residential in October, two intercultural days, a day out and core funding to continue our regular work as well as some capital. The young people evaluated the three years of the project and what was important to them about it in the process of applying.

The group have set up their own my space page www.myspace.com/soulandfame We have had to set the page to private but would be glad to accept any young people or groups as our friends if you send us a request.

Winning the Philip Lawrence Award added to the young people’s confidence and made them feel that their work was recognised. We have been able to talk about it to many people in our presentations and training, and use it to raise the profile and status of the group in the city as well as attract more funds. Fiona Mannion, SOUL and FAME project manager