Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host
Joanne Lockwood: for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I
Joanne Lockwood: will be interviewing a number of amazing people and simply having a conversation
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Joanne Lockwood: going. Today is episode
Joanne Lockwood: 16 with the title why isn't our
Joanne Lockwood: public transport network accessible for all? And I have
Joanne Lockwood: the absolute honour and privilege to be joined by Andy Barrow.
Joanne Lockwood: Andy and I are both members of the Professional Speaking
Joanne Lockwood: association and have met virtually a number of times over the past few
Joanne Lockwood: years. Andy describes himself as an accessibility
Joanne Lockwood: consultant for Southeastern Railway. He uses its
Joanne Lockwood: expertise in teams and from his previous career as an
Joanne Lockwood: international athlete and his experience as a world
Joanne Lockwood: traveller to improve the processes and culture around
Joanne Lockwood: assisted travel. I asked Andy to
Joanne Lockwood: describe his superpower and he said, getting
Joanne Lockwood: groups of individuals to recognise each other's
Joanne Lockwood: superpowers and to work together to maximise their
Joanne Lockwood: combined powers. Sounds interesting.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Andy. Welcome to the show. Hi, Joanne.
Andy Barrow: Fantastic to be here. It's very hot out. So looking
Andy Barrow: forward to getting out in the sun after we've chatted. Oh, yeah. It's
Joanne Lockwood: a record breaking few days, middle of early August, isn't it? Well, yeah, early August.
Joanne Lockwood: Still early August. Yeah, it's lovely. It's been a beautiful
Andy Barrow: summer all round, especially with the COVID backdrop. The weather we've had has given us
Andy Barrow: the opportunity to be out and about if we're
Andy Barrow: responsible and enjoy that, I
Andy Barrow: agree completely. So tell me,
Joanne Lockwood: why don't you feel that our public transport network is accessible
Joanne Lockwood: for all and what can we do? It's an interesting
Andy Barrow: question. I think, firstly, I want to answer it by kind of splitting
Andy Barrow: or at least caveatting sort of public transport. I
Andy Barrow: think as a wheelchair user, as a person who's used a
Andy Barrow: wheelchair for a long time now, well over 20 years, I've been
Andy Barrow: very lucky to sort of travel all over the place and sort of understand the
Andy Barrow: landscape a little bit. And there's certain aspects of the
Andy Barrow: public transport system that are going to be very hard to make
Andy Barrow: physically accessible. If you take something like the
Andy Barrow: tube, for example, is a victorian invention,
Andy Barrow: it's going to be almost impossible to drop lift
Andy Barrow: shafts into the kind of. If you imagine the tunnels under
Andy Barrow: London as a ball of wall, if you're going to thread that needle with lift
Andy Barrow: shafts, that's going to be very difficult. So what we're having to
Andy Barrow: look at is accessibility through assistance.
Andy Barrow: So to answer your question through that prism at the moment,
Andy Barrow: there's two reasons, and that is that the
Andy Barrow: processes don't always give the staff trying to assist the
Andy Barrow: passengers the best possible chance of giving each
Andy Barrow: passenger the assistance they need. And the second
Andy Barrow: part is the culture. And that's basically the crux of
Andy Barrow: that is perhaps the organisations or the staff not
Andy Barrow: fully understanding the importance of
Andy Barrow: people being able to have these assistance measures in order to
Andy Barrow: travel and navigate the world independently.
Joanne Lockwood: Completely agree. I had an epiphany probably
Joanne Lockwood: a couple of years ago, because when we got onto the trains, when we got
Joanne Lockwood: on the underground, there's always accessible seats near the entrance
Joanne Lockwood: just by the doors, isn't there? So they're either embroidered into the seat so you
Joanne Lockwood: can tell it's accessible on the tube or the stickers. Certainly. My train
Joanne Lockwood: company is southwestern and it's very easy
Joanne Lockwood: to see which ones are the assistance chairs. And it
Joanne Lockwood: always frustrates me to see people just sitting in
Joanne Lockwood: those by default, because it's the easiest chair. Okay, I'm not for 1 minute
Joanne Lockwood: saying I'm judging people because they may have a hidden disability. There may be a
Joanne Lockwood: valid reason for sitting there, but we know often the person
Joanne Lockwood: sitting there probably could sit somewhere else if they
Joanne Lockwood: wished. They have options, and that puts the
Joanne Lockwood: burden of responsibility onto someone with an accessibility need
Joanne Lockwood: to have to ask them to move, doesn't it? And I always find that
Joanne Lockwood: creates this awkwardness. It's a full train, and suddenly
Joanne Lockwood: the person with an accessibility need is having to do all of the hard work
Joanne Lockwood: and confront and ask, and
Joanne Lockwood: why can't we? As a culture, I think in Japan they have a culture
Joanne Lockwood: where those seats are never occupied by people
Joanne Lockwood: who don't need them. Is a cultural thing. They wouldn't dare. We don't always have
Joanne Lockwood: that culture in the UK. Do sort of. There's a certain
Andy Barrow: politeness in other parts of the world that does dictate that.
Andy Barrow: But then also if you look culturally at the other parts of the world, there
Andy Barrow: are differences in attitudes toward disability there. Some of that
Andy Barrow: is actually because people will be thinking, well, I don't want people
Andy Barrow: to think I'm disabled, not for the right reasons, maybe for
Andy Barrow: the wrong reasons, because in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with having an
Andy Barrow: impairment or disability. I'm not going to get into the whole.
Andy Barrow: Some people don't like the term disability because they say it's the physical world
Andy Barrow: that disables us. I'm impaired. Disability implies I'm less than.
Andy Barrow: For me, that's semantic, but some people don't like the idea
Andy Barrow: that they might be seen as having a disability for that reason.
Andy Barrow: So I think it's a difficult one.
Andy Barrow: But I totally get your point of having to be the
Andy Barrow: person, to have the confrontation, to have the awkward conversation.
Andy Barrow: That's a really difficult one. An easy example as well
Andy Barrow: would be something. I don't take the bus as often,
Andy Barrow: but I do take the bus. And if you have ever got on a bus,
Andy Barrow: you will see the signs that say there's normally one space for a
Andy Barrow: wheelchair and it's wheelchairs or
Andy Barrow: buggies, and the sign just says, wheelchairs take precedent
Andy Barrow: over buggies, essentially, and you're expected to
Andy Barrow: have that fight. So, in theory, if I got on a
Andy Barrow: bus and there was a young single
Andy Barrow: parent there, and she or he had,
Andy Barrow: say, two young kids in a buggy, a further
Andy Barrow: baby in arms, I could actually get there and go, move, get out of the
Andy Barrow: way, sort that out, fold the buggy up, do something. And for me,
Andy Barrow: that's kind of not right.
Andy Barrow: So we're expected to have that argument. And sometimes the rules are so
Andy Barrow: rigid that it will be one or the other. I've seen people have to get
Andy Barrow: off the bus for that, rather than just kind of sorting it
Andy Barrow: out with the driver's help. And sometimes the driver
Andy Barrow: abdicates responsibility. That's for a whole other set of reasons.
Andy Barrow: I'm sure the driver, he or she is kind of
Andy Barrow: pilloried all day, every day with
Andy Barrow: that thing. But the point is, it's left in the middle for people to sort
Andy Barrow: out, and we don't really yet have those
Andy Barrow: tools to do that. And part of the reason I do this is so that
Andy Barrow: we can all talk to each other and not be scared about saying the
Andy Barrow: wrong thing or asking why people
Andy Barrow: need certain things. Yeah, I think that's important
Joanne Lockwood: to remember that the. The driver, the
Joanne Lockwood: passenger safety representative, however they're described, they get a lot
Joanne Lockwood: of stick by a lot of people and a lot of conflicting priorities. So
Joanne Lockwood: I certainly wouldn't want to cast any doubt in their
Joanne Lockwood: professionalism. But I've travelled with a
Joanne Lockwood: friend of mine who uses a wheelchair, it's a powered
Joanne Lockwood: wheelchair on London buses all
Joanne Lockwood: around London, and I've seen the challenges she
Joanne Lockwood: experiences, one getting the driver's attention.
Joanne Lockwood: She's had bites. Just drive off, leave them on the curb without spotting
Joanne Lockwood: her. Then there's the often she'll end up with
Joanne Lockwood: this driver who
Joanne Lockwood: I was going to say, grumpy kind of. You feel there's a big grudging. This
Joanne Lockwood: is impacting his schedule, putting behind time,
Joanne Lockwood: having to get out the bus, lower the ramp, allow my
Joanne Lockwood: friend to get on, and then when she's on, she has to fight her way
Joanne Lockwood: between the people who are there. It's quite crowded. And then sometimes the driver
Joanne Lockwood: will say, next time, would you mind reversing in because it's easier then,
Joanne Lockwood: or easier for who? Often we're
Joanne Lockwood: designing these things for easier for everybody else, not easier for the person who has
Joanne Lockwood: the disability or the accessibility needs. And just having spent
Joanne Lockwood: many, many journeys with her using public transport, I've
Joanne Lockwood: got a lot more empathy for the needs of accessible
Joanne Lockwood: transport for people. And
Joanne Lockwood: not everybody has the luxury of a powered wheelchair. We've got
Joanne Lockwood: people using manual driven wheelchairs or
Joanne Lockwood: manual push with their arms and not everybody has a
Joanne Lockwood: personal assistant or a carer with them. And there's always this assumption that if
Joanne Lockwood: you have a disability, you're going to have someone with
Joanne Lockwood: you to help. But that's not the case, is it? No, it certainly isn't the
Andy Barrow: case. And this whole idea of public
Andy Barrow: confidence in travelling, a lot of the reason I
Andy Barrow: do what I do is I've been very lucky, I've been very privileged to
Andy Barrow: have. Just the way the chips fell for me. I had an accident that changed
Andy Barrow: my life at 17, but then I got into
Andy Barrow: sport and sport took me all over the place and it gave me a lot
Andy Barrow: of confidence. And to use the word epiphany is a good word,
Andy Barrow: I sort of realised a few years ago,
Andy Barrow: okay, I'm helping myself, but I am helping other people
Andy Barrow: as well, because for every person like me who maybe
Andy Barrow: encounters a negative travel experience, gets a little bit
Andy Barrow: annoyed, gets a bit angry, makes some phone calls, is a bit dogged about,
Andy Barrow: it has the articulation, the education to maybe fire off a
Andy Barrow: letter, argue the toss with the powers that be.
Andy Barrow: There are many other people who just don't have the time,
Andy Barrow: are not able to put that stuff together and remain
Andy Barrow: emotionally, even while they're kind of
Andy Barrow: delivering their grievance and lack the
Andy Barrow: confidence to either use the surface again, and worst of all,
Andy Barrow: think it's their fault.
Andy Barrow: When I have some kind of negative travel experience, always put myself
Andy Barrow: in the position of the person. My imagined person,
Andy Barrow: who maybe doesn't get out very often, has
Andy Barrow: been building themselves up to make this trip, because either they are anxious about
Andy Barrow: it or they're excited about it for a long time. And when it goes
Andy Barrow: wrong, they kind of almost go home with their tail between their legs and are
Andy Barrow: really sad about it and take some time to get over that and think it's
Andy Barrow: their fault. And that's kind of why I
Andy Barrow: do what I do, because I can.
Andy Barrow: I can kind of have these arguments, hopefully on behalf of people. I don't want
Andy Barrow: that to sound martyrish, but I feel like if you're in a position where
Andy Barrow: you're okay, then you try to help other
Andy Barrow: also, you know, for example, I'm lucky I have a
Andy Barrow: car. I could just get annoyed. Get in my car. If I get
Andy Barrow: really annoyed, I could just get on Uber and get a taxi and go home.
Andy Barrow: And some people don't have any of those facilities
Andy Barrow: in my wheelchair. I have a tiny wheelchair. It weighs about twelve
Andy Barrow: kilogrammes. It breaks down very small. I can pretty much get in
Andy Barrow: any car. I don't need ramped access in a car. Whereas
Andy Barrow: I suspect your friend that you mentioned as an
Andy Barrow: example would need a taxi with ramp access. And that has its own issues.
Andy Barrow: A car of a certain size. So it all swings around
Andy Barrow: about. So we all have pluses and minuses. But I just feel like I'm
Andy Barrow: kind of very lucky on this front, and I need to speak up for
Andy Barrow: people who aren't as lucky but also
Andy Barrow: have the perspective to be able to play both sides on this.
Andy Barrow: To your point of drivers and staff
Andy Barrow: who sometimes get abused for just trying to do their
Andy Barrow: job. My friend's been
Joanne Lockwood: on a train, and when she gets to say she wants to get off
Joanne Lockwood: at, there's nobody available to help her with the ramp.
Joanne Lockwood: So then the train just basically closed the doors and
Joanne Lockwood: goes off. So she's now effectively being held prisoner by
Joanne Lockwood: the train company, transported somewhere she doesn't want to be
Joanne Lockwood: and has to have that argument. She doesn't want to have that argument. She wants
Joanne Lockwood: to go home, see? Wants to have her tea. Now she's in a situation
Joanne Lockwood: where she now has to get angry. She has to get upset. She has to
Joanne Lockwood: start talking to people. And it's again and again and again.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm not sure how often it happens, but probably several times a year this has
Joanne Lockwood: happened to her. Yeah.
Andy Barrow: It's hard to explain that frustration. It's also hard
Andy Barrow: to explain that anxiety that something
Andy Barrow: may happen. It's hard to physically
Andy Barrow: quantify that.
Andy Barrow: Everyone that's in a minority will have a. Have a similar thing. You
Andy Barrow: know, whether it's you know, you know, a consequence of. Of their colour,
Andy Barrow: a consequence of their gender. You know, everyone will have that understanding
Andy Barrow: who's not in the absolute majority. You know, what's. What's interesting
Andy Barrow: for me is looking wider at diversity, but for the fact that I happen to
Andy Barrow: break my neck when I was 17, I'd be the absolute majority. I'm sort of
Andy Barrow: white, western male, 40 years old. And so it has given
Andy Barrow: me a different perspective. It's opened me up to a lot of different
Andy Barrow: communities to understand that. But back to
Andy Barrow: the transport. Yeah, that anxiety, I feel that
Andy Barrow: as somebody who I think is pretty confident,
Andy Barrow: and you have that idea of, what am I going to do here? How am
Andy Barrow: I going to get round this? And it's not a case of I can't travel,
Andy Barrow: it's a case of, right, I'm going to have to get some people to break
Andy Barrow: the rules, I'm going to have to enlist unsolicited help.
Andy Barrow: So I'm looking around for the platform for a couple of people who might be
Andy Barrow: strong enough to lift me onto the train, knowing full well
Andy Barrow: that, what station am I going to? Is it a through station? By that I
Andy Barrow: mean is it a station where the train isn't terminating
Andy Barrow: there? So I have a finite amount of time to get my arm out of
Andy Barrow: the door and stuff like that. The reason I work at
Andy Barrow: Southeastern is so this doesn't happen and so we can
Andy Barrow: hopefully all turn up and travel as
Andy Barrow: and how we want. Mistakes are always going to
Andy Barrow: happen, but for me also is how
Andy Barrow: those mistakes are dealt with. And I think a big frustration for
Andy Barrow: people with disabilities on public transport is just the time that it
Andy Barrow: takes for you. Your friend, okay, she misses
Andy Barrow: her stop. It's a pain, all right? But if it was
Andy Barrow: one stop and you got back straight on the next train and it was ten
Andy Barrow: minutes and you were done, you'd be like, all right, well, that was a pain,
Andy Barrow: but it was done a bit like, I don't know, forgetting where you parked or
Andy Barrow: something like that, but it's when it mounts up
Andy Barrow: and it's those time costs taken out of your day
Andy Barrow: every single day, every single week, every single
Andy Barrow: month, every single year. I think there was a really interesting article a few
Andy Barrow: months back that likened having sort
Andy Barrow: of a severe disability to
Andy Barrow: having a job that equated to about 30 hours a week
Andy Barrow: in terms of your time cost just to live.
Andy Barrow: That's not even transport. That's things like just getting yourself dressed and stuff like
Andy Barrow: that. And again, you want to be able to get all this
Andy Barrow: across without martyring too much.
Andy Barrow: That's always my angle as a person in a minority, because I'm a firm
Andy Barrow: believer that you need to represent your minority
Andy Barrow: and whether you like it or not, you're an ambassador for it. So the
Andy Barrow: bitter disabled guy is a really bad look. Can I
Andy Barrow: help you, sir? No, piss off. Why would you ask me for help?
Andy Barrow: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because the next person may need help.
Joanne Lockwood: It's interesting you mentioned this martyrdom and the
Joanne Lockwood: angry minority. Here we go again. The angry minorities trying
Joanne Lockwood: to break the privilege wall down again. And all that happens
Joanne Lockwood: is the armour goes up, doesn't it? The armour, the deflection, the water
Joanne Lockwood: bowery, the kind of, oh, come on, don't be a snowflake. It's
Joanne Lockwood: not that bad, really, just a little thing.
Joanne Lockwood: As you're talking. I'm thinking about the guy on the plane, the one that
Joanne Lockwood: his wheelchair wasn't delivered to the gate or was
Joanne Lockwood: lost, and they offered him a
Joanne Lockwood: pushed or an assistance wheelchair and
Joanne Lockwood: he said, no, that's making me disabled. I want choice, I want
Joanne Lockwood: advocacy. What's your take on that? No, absolutely.
Andy Barrow: He's completely right. And I encountered that before I worked on the
Andy Barrow: trains. Aviation was where I learned, as an athlete, you travel around
Andy Barrow: in large groups, okay? So you have support staff. I understand
Andy Barrow: mistakes are going to happen. If you're travelling as a twelve person squad.
Andy Barrow: Each person has two wheelchairs. That's 24 wheelchairs. Things are going to
Andy Barrow: happen. But if you're travelling on your own and your chair doesn't get brought to
Andy Barrow: you, that is massively disempowering and it's
Andy Barrow: embarrassing and insulting because you're sat there. You're like, I
Andy Barrow: am a world class athlete and I don't know
Andy Barrow: whether there's a couple of instances. It happened famously to Frank
Andy Barrow: Gardner, didn't he, as the BBC correspondent? But it also happened to another guy who
Andy Barrow: actually dragged himself through the airport.
Andy Barrow: And I've met him, he's a lovely guy, he's a wheelchair racer. He's
Andy Barrow: absolutely huge as well. So he's built like the
Andy Barrow: proverbial. And he was in a situation where he could drag himself through
Andy Barrow: the airport. But even as a full time athlete,
Andy Barrow: when I was, I'm sort of much more severely disabled than him. So that wasn't
Andy Barrow: available to me. But it's like, you're not going to demean someone of
Andy Barrow: our strength, confidence and power by saying, we're going to push
Andy Barrow: you through the airport. That's not the way we
Andy Barrow: want assistance to work. We want to be empowered to be independent as
Andy Barrow: individuals. And I've taken much more
Andy Barrow: in recent years in aviation of having that
Andy Barrow: conversation. But then I know my point of power. I know that if I
Andy Barrow: remain in my seat on the plane, I know exactly how much that costs the
Andy Barrow: airline every single minute that plane is delayed. But often
Andy Barrow: the airlines get unfairly blamed for it because most
Andy Barrow: airports actually contract assistant services
Andy Barrow: to an organisation that does it across the airport.
Andy Barrow: So there are all these different dynamics at
Andy Barrow: play. But I find if you kind of remain polite
Andy Barrow: and just talk about, say, look, this is the
Andy Barrow: situation, I'm not going to change until you bring my chair
Andy Barrow: back. There's no problem. I don't mind the mistake, I'm just
Andy Barrow: looking for resolution. I'm not even too fast.
Andy Barrow: Swift resolution isn't nice to have, but I know it's hurting you more than
Andy Barrow: me, but can we just move you into a corridor? No, you can't, because
Andy Barrow: then you're going to forget about me. And it's just having those conversations about
Andy Barrow: when people will take your wheelchair from you. And the idea of that as
Andy Barrow: well, the idea of what a wheelchair is, and it's not just a wheelchair, is
Andy Barrow: so much more. It's very cliche to say it's your
Andy Barrow: legs, but the simple fact of it is
Andy Barrow: that without the specific wheelchair I use,
Andy Barrow: I'd be way less independent. We'll go back to your friend
Andy Barrow: again. If you put her in my wheelchair, it sounds like, as a power chair
Andy Barrow: user, she'd barely be able to push it. It's no use to her, it's a
Andy Barrow: piece of junk to her. Me sitting in her wheelchair would be
Andy Barrow: no more than me going, oh, this is kind of fun. This is a bit
Andy Barrow: of a toy, but I don't need it. I can't drive it like you can.
Andy Barrow: Probably going to crash it into everything, break something off it and break someone in
Andy Barrow: the process. These things are bespoke to us. We can't
Andy Barrow: just change out of them. It's massively important.
Andy Barrow: I mean, a good example would be, why don't you just wear someone else's
Andy Barrow: glasses? Joanne?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, completely. One thing to say, and I talk
Joanne Lockwood: about this a lot, it's about. It's recognising that
Joanne Lockwood: you should have a plan a, but also knowing that plan a
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't always work. You don't get everything right first time and we all
Joanne Lockwood: accept that things go wrong. What I say to people, an organisation
Joanne Lockwood: should be judged by its plan b when it goes wrong,
Joanne Lockwood: how do they step up? How do they put themselves out there
Joanne Lockwood: and say, sorry, Andy, this isn't right
Joanne Lockwood: for you. Come to you and say, what can
Joanne Lockwood: we do to make this work for you? You say, thank you so much for
Joanne Lockwood: asking. This is how I think we could solve the problem. But
Joanne Lockwood: organisations trying to give you this one size fits all solution
Joanne Lockwood: based on their perception of you without ever
Joanne Lockwood: involving you and giving you agency about the decisions, because I
Joanne Lockwood: know my own personal characteristic. If someone says to me,
Joanne Lockwood: Joe, Joanne, what is going to make you happy in this
Joanne Lockwood: scenario? Now I'll say, this is what's going to make me happy. This is how
Joanne Lockwood: we can get out of it. Thank you for asking. I really
Joanne Lockwood: feel so empowered again. And that must be the same for you.
Joanne Lockwood: What's the plan b? Isn't it? Yes, definitely. We're back to our equality versus
Andy Barrow: equity, aren't we? What is your ideal customer
Andy Barrow: service experience? Somebody with the exact same
Andy Barrow: disability as me may have a drastically different outlook on the world and that is
Andy Barrow: to be respected, I guess, within the
Andy Barrow: bounds of safety.
Andy Barrow: It's a really interesting point, and it was funny that actually, I
Andy Barrow: have to say, for Southeastern, the reason I'm now
Andy Barrow: a consultant with them is because I had a bad experience with
Andy Barrow: them in the beginning and I wasn't happy with the way it was dealt with.
Andy Barrow: But when we broke it down and I got in and I spoke to some
Andy Barrow: people face to face, I said, look, I think I can help. And they
Andy Barrow: listened. So credit to them. So
Andy Barrow: if I were to take that in a snapshot of a 24 hours
Andy Barrow: period, it'd be like, oh, man, that was awful. Travel experience. If I take it
Andy Barrow: in a snapshot of a two year period, I was like, wow. They listened to
Andy Barrow: the point where they're now allowing and empowering me to try and help
Andy Barrow: their staff make life better for other
Andy Barrow: people with disabilities that use the network. So that plan
Andy Barrow: B is an excellent point. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: I genuinely believe that most organisations
Joanne Lockwood: want to do the right thing. They believe they're
Joanne Lockwood: doing the right thing. There's this corporate belief that we've got our
Joanne Lockwood: policies, we've got people who will deal with this, we've got
Joanne Lockwood: our customer service team who are person centric. All these good words.
Joanne Lockwood: And I do believe that most big, large companies do set
Joanne Lockwood: out with the right intentions. But what tends to happen is like this chinese
Joanne Lockwood: whispers of intent. It gets dissolved down the
Joanne Lockwood: chain and often it comes down to the one person
Joanne Lockwood: you deal with, and that person has the power of influence on making your
Joanne Lockwood: experience fantastic or poor. And it's almost
Joanne Lockwood: like impossible for a company to predict that.
Joanne Lockwood: What's your advice to companies in trying to make sure that
Joanne Lockwood: the company culture really does permeate right down to the
Joanne Lockwood: individuals on the floor? I think it's a really tough one. I
Andy Barrow: normally refer back to my kind of sporting background as well. You have to
Andy Barrow: look first at how you treat the employees
Andy Barrow: in the company. We're almost getting to a point of
Andy Barrow: company culture and engagement. We're almost kind
Andy Barrow: of switching subjects to sort of employee
Andy Barrow: engagement and giving them the understanding of
Andy Barrow: why is it important? Why is it important that every person with a disability
Andy Barrow: should be able to travel? Why is it important that everyone's gender should be respected?
Andy Barrow: Why is it important that no customer or staff
Andy Barrow: member should be abused?
Andy Barrow: Have a protected characteristic abused? It's
Andy Barrow: that understanding. It's knowing
Andy Barrow: why people aren't getting the message, finding out a bit more about them. It's
Andy Barrow: treating them well in order that they then want to treat the customer
Andy Barrow: well, knowing it's also demystifying
Andy Barrow: failure. And I'm a big one for people
Andy Barrow: must fail. Everyone has to mess stuff
Andy Barrow: up. All right? You wouldn't have learned to walk or make a cup of
Andy Barrow: tea or write or get good at anything
Andy Barrow: if you didn't mess it up a lot. That is what life is built on.
Andy Barrow: But failure is so frowned upon in some organisational
Andy Barrow: culture that people would rather avoid a problem
Andy Barrow: than actually deal with it. And if you get avoidance of failure, you get
Andy Barrow: blame culture. And when you get that, you get
Andy Barrow: employees that don't feel empowered to be able to use
Andy Barrow: their common sense to deviate slightly from
Andy Barrow: the training they've had and see the wood for the trees, if you will.
Andy Barrow: Because the bottom line with things is like, I'm a person
Andy Barrow: standing in front of you, or sitting in front of you, a person asking
Andy Barrow: for help. Are you going to be able to help me without hurting
Andy Barrow: me or you? If at some point
Andy Barrow: some minor rules got bent somewhere along the
Andy Barrow: line, we can maybe look at that next time
Andy Barrow: and see if you could do something slightly differently. But for now, we got
Andy Barrow: it done. If you don't have that, you have a staff
Andy Barrow: member looking at a person who needs help thinking, my
Andy Barrow: manager told me I had to do X-Y-Z-I value
Andy Barrow: this job. What if I don't do x, y and z
Andy Barrow: to the letter and I get the sack? What's worse?
Andy Barrow: Annoying one person in a wheelchair
Andy Barrow: or losing my job? So I totally see it from
Andy Barrow: both sides. That's why it has to start from company
Andy Barrow: culture. We have to make it okay for our
Andy Barrow: employees to make mistakes. Through
Andy Barrow: learning or train. So they minimise the mistakes through
Andy Barrow: learning on the job, which is where people like myself come in.
Andy Barrow: People like yourself come in. If companies are looking
Andy Barrow: to. Sort of. Alter how
Andy Barrow: they view people and gender and trans culture,
Andy Barrow: you can't just write it out of a manual. You need people who are living
Andy Barrow: that experience to talk about their lived experience. And really importantly,
Andy Barrow: why it's important that you should respect that.
Joanne Lockwood: Completely agree. I think you've hit the nail on the head there. If your
Joanne Lockwood: culture of your organisation is one of COVID up, one
Joanne Lockwood: of it's the rules hiding behind the rules,
Joanne Lockwood: then you can see that from a customer experience point of
Joanne Lockwood: view. It's where people feel empowered. They know
Joanne Lockwood: that their organisation is going to back them up if they make the
Joanne Lockwood: right decision, maybe for the right reasons,
Joanne Lockwood: and go outside of the rules. I think you see that all the time in
Joanne Lockwood: airlines. Airlines have a very open culture around safety.
Joanne Lockwood: Safety is paramount. And airlines are very quick to speak
Joanne Lockwood: out on issues where safety is concerned. People look
Joanne Lockwood: at their organisations and people sometimes accuse the NHS of being an
Joanne Lockwood: organisation where things are covered up and people don't speak out.
Joanne Lockwood: So again, it's trying to look at those two cultures. And maybe if you're listening
Joanne Lockwood: today, what's your culture? Would you feel empowered to
Joanne Lockwood: go the extra mile and make a difference to somebody? Or do you feel you
Joanne Lockwood: had to hide behind the rules, or there's too many layers of management and permission
Joanne Lockwood: to get, rather than saying, I can fix this for you, I can do
Joanne Lockwood: this, and it's that two cultures, isn't it? What
Andy Barrow: are the steps of having the confidence to be empowered as well? I think that's
Andy Barrow: probably another conversation, how you have to treat people in order
Andy Barrow: to flourish within the organisation,
Andy Barrow: and everyone uses their kind of
Andy Barrow: harmony for good rather than not. But it's interesting that you should mention the
Andy Barrow: NHS. I mean, if anyone out there wants to read a good book, I think
Andy Barrow: Matthew Sade's second book, called Black Box Thinking, actually
Andy Barrow: compares directly the aviation industry and
Andy Barrow: the health industry, because he
Andy Barrow: rightly says, just about the most dangerous place to be in the world is in
Andy Barrow: a pressure sealed tin can 40,000ft above the
Andy Barrow: earth. If you make a mistake there,
Andy Barrow: the consequences are fairly dire. So over the
Andy Barrow: years, the aviation industry has very
Andy Barrow: painfully broken open every crash
Andy Barrow: in awful detail to be able to prevent it happening
Andy Barrow: again. Whereas in the health industry, you've seen more and more cover
Andy Barrow: up. So the advancement of that, and with particular
Andy Barrow: reference to safety records, has been massively stilted
Andy Barrow: compared to it. And it's that psychology, that psychology of
Andy Barrow: dissonance, of ignoring problems
Andy Barrow: that he kind of hones in on, because that's his kind of thing as a
Andy Barrow: psych and a sports psych. But it really is
Andy Barrow: interesting. It's interesting just how toxic blame
Andy Barrow: culture is within organisations and how much it sort of stems any
Andy Barrow: kind of creativity and progress.
Joanne Lockwood: People sometimes are scared to say sorry, scared to say I
Joanne Lockwood: apologise, scared to sometimes own take responsibility,
Joanne Lockwood: aren't they? I mean, I hear people use the
Joanne Lockwood: phrase, it's a mistake,
Joanne Lockwood: it's a mistake. So not. I made a mistake. It is almost like
Joanne Lockwood: depersonalising, pushing that away from them, not taking any
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility for that. I didn't mean to.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, you didn't mean to, but the impact was. So people often
Joanne Lockwood: think about intent is the only part of the equation. But impact
Joanne Lockwood: versus intent, that's a whole big equation. We got to think about how does it
Joanne Lockwood: affect you as an individual? Isn't it? Absolutely. And I think you said it
Andy Barrow: earlier, I think nobody means to make a mistake. That's us going back to sport
Andy Barrow: again. People get frustrated with mistakes. That's in the past. We can't change it,
Andy Barrow: actually, it's in sport. So it really doesn't bloody matter at this point in
Andy Barrow: time. But I'm not going to get hung up on the
Andy Barrow: mistake. We'll talk about it after. But nobody means to make. No one's
Andy Barrow: going out there going, I'm going to make disabled people's days really
Andy Barrow: bad on the public transport network today. No one's
Andy Barrow: doing that. But it's that fear
Andy Barrow: around being wrong, getting it wrong, failing.
Andy Barrow: And the consequences of that, whether it is
Andy Barrow: just the consequence to your ego or the consequence
Andy Barrow: to your life if you lose job
Andy Barrow: security through it, is actually
Andy Barrow: placed a higher importance at the moment of getting it right.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. So when I talk to companies and do DNI audits, one
Joanne Lockwood: of the questions on the questionnaire is, do you feel you can speak out without
Joanne Lockwood: fear of recrimination? And that's a good way of
Joanne Lockwood: judging a company culture. If you feel you can share anything
Joanne Lockwood: and no one's going to come blame you for that, they're going to take that
Joanne Lockwood: as good feedback. Maybe they're action, every item of
Joanne Lockwood: feedback they get, but you can give feedback, give
Joanne Lockwood: suggestions without fearing that someone's going to look at you and go, oh, they're a
Joanne Lockwood: troublemaker or they're being awkward. Yeah.
Andy Barrow: Feedback is really important. People having a right to reply, people having
Andy Barrow: people feeling like they've been heard,
Andy Barrow: particularly within, say, employment rank people feeling like they've
Andy Barrow: been heard. And it's another important thing
Andy Barrow: for people in the employment rank to see
Andy Barrow: the managers and have access to them. When I work with the managers, I
Andy Barrow: say, you have to do your walk arounds, you have to go and
Andy Barrow: meet people, and you have to face the fact that as a manager, you may
Andy Barrow: get somebody coming up to you that needs to vent and
Andy Barrow: wants to tell you something. That's why you're a manager. You have to wear
Andy Barrow: that. You don't necessarily need to act on it, because only a small part
Andy Barrow: of it might be worth acting on, but people need that because then they feel
Andy Barrow: heard and you feel like you're having a conversation and you're getting feedback
Andy Barrow: for what is going on in the organisation. I think
Andy Barrow: that's really important, because only through that transfer of
Andy Barrow: information do we get the best possible outcomes
Andy Barrow: to any problems that arise. And that's another thing with the
Andy Barrow: transport network, really. The information is out there on how
Andy Barrow: to do this. Just at the moment, it's siloed and we're
Andy Barrow: not communicating properly, and we shouldn't feel awful about that.
Andy Barrow: Every organisation is doing that. Every elite sports
Andy Barrow: team strives to communicate the best they possibly can, to transfer messages
Andy Barrow: in the most efficient way possible in order to make the correct decisions
Andy Barrow: in split second environments. We don't have to do that in business, but we
Andy Barrow: don't get the time to practise and train like sport does. But
Andy Barrow: there is a sweet spot. Yeah, for
Joanne Lockwood: sure. I was thinking, as a change, then,
Joanne Lockwood: do you think this is perception that disability, or
Joanne Lockwood: disabled as a word, it's a spectrum, isn't. I mean, we
Joanne Lockwood: think about LGBT, you think about
Joanne Lockwood: black people, brown people, people from all over the world,
Joanne Lockwood: from various different ethnicities. We lump these people together as bame. We
Joanne Lockwood: lump people together of different sexualities and genders as
Joanne Lockwood: LGBT. And do we lump
Joanne Lockwood: people together as disabled or with a disability? And one
Joanne Lockwood: wheelchair person is like another wheelchair person? We design our services for this kind
Joanne Lockwood: of. This middle person that doesn't really
Joanne Lockwood: exist? Yeah, I think there is a tendency to do that,
Andy Barrow: but to sort of defend things like
Andy Barrow: institutions, buildings, public transport, there has to be that
Andy Barrow: kind of. We need to cater to the bell curve as much as possible.
Andy Barrow: What we're looking to do is widen that out to all possible
Andy Barrow: scenarios. But, yeah, one person with a disability
Andy Barrow: is drastically different to another. And where does
Andy Barrow: disability stop as well? We're just now
Andy Barrow: focusing in much more on hidden disability. We're
Andy Barrow: focusing in much more on mental health as well as physical
Andy Barrow: health. So mental illness as well as physical disability.
Andy Barrow: But where does it stop? There's certain aspects of disability that have
Andy Barrow: absolutely been eradicated in modern society as disabilities.
Andy Barrow: And again, glasses is a good example. Okay, if I ask you to
Andy Barrow: take your glasses off, you may well be able to navigate the world near
Andy Barrow: perfectly. Just the crossword might give you some trouble. But for another
Andy Barrow: person without their glasses, they're done. For
Andy Barrow: left handed people, we've got someone like seven
Andy Barrow: years. Yeah, all the best people are left handed, Joanne, so there you
Andy Barrow: go. But life expectancy, seven years
Andy Barrow: less, 200 years ago, you're a witch.
Andy Barrow: If you are left handed or 100 years ago, someone's taking the pen out of
Andy Barrow: your hand. Is it a disability? Not anymore. Is
Andy Barrow: needing glasses a disability? Not anymore. Okay.
Andy Barrow: In certain situations, is being a wheelchair user a
Andy Barrow: disability? Not anymore. In fact, using a wheelchair is probably a damn site.
Andy Barrow: Easier than having to walk on crutches and take every step and being in pain
Andy Barrow: for some people, but it still is
Andy Barrow: enough of a hindrance on our lives. So,
Andy Barrow: yeah, to lump everyone in one category is kind
Andy Barrow: of folly. What we're looking to do is bring it back to
Andy Barrow: Joanne and Andy and what do you need? What do you need to
Andy Barrow: make things better today? What do you need over and above
Andy Barrow: what's there? And even what's the norm to make things better
Andy Barrow: today? What do you need to put
Andy Barrow: you at parity with everyone else travelling today?
Joanne Lockwood: And this is where we go into this. People may have heard of the social
Joanne Lockwood: model of disability rather than the physical model of disability, isn't it? Or the
Joanne Lockwood: medical model where it's society that makes you less
Joanne Lockwood: able to perform your day. Removing
Joanne Lockwood: these societal constructs of curbs. And we invented curbs,
Joanne Lockwood: we can de invent them or create other ways of working. Or we've
Joanne Lockwood: invented taps that turn on like this, we can reinvent taps that turn
Joanne Lockwood: on differently, et cetera. Exactly. Everything like that. Things like
Andy Barrow: automatic doors and stuff like that. And
Andy Barrow: the curb thing for me is always a really good example of empowerment.
Andy Barrow: Because I've travelled a lot and worked a lot in Asia. I get
Andy Barrow: asked, there's this misconception, this misconception that the west is
Andy Barrow: fantastic disability and that Asia is very backward around
Andy Barrow: it and it simply isn't true. If I had to draw one
Andy Barrow: hard, fast distinction, I would say there's less empowerment in Asia. And
Andy Barrow: what I mean by that is if we spot there's a curb in the west
Andy Barrow: and it gets to be a pain in the backside for whatever reason,
Andy Barrow: eventually someone will come along, put a drop curb in and everyone will go about
Andy Barrow: their business. In Asia, what they may well do is
Andy Barrow: station two people by the curb to lift the person up over
Andy Barrow: the curb. The end result is the same, but it's very disempowering. We're
Andy Barrow: not teaching people to help themselves and that's what we want to
Andy Barrow: do. I don't want people to need to help me. I want to be able
Andy Barrow: to go about my business as best I possibly can.
Andy Barrow: That's something I'm able to do. There are always going to be people with
Andy Barrow: disabilities, mental or physical, that are going
Andy Barrow: to need permanent help and that's
Andy Barrow: never going to go away. That person to person assistance around
Andy Barrow: disability, whether it is in the sphere of travel or not, is never
Andy Barrow: going to go away. So understanding what help people need,
Andy Barrow: asking them if you're able to communicate with them what
Andy Barrow: they need and understanding why they need it and how it makes them feel if
Andy Barrow: they do or don't get it, is probably the important thing.
Joanne Lockwood: I hear you completely and I think what I'm picking up from what you just
Joanne Lockwood: said there is just going back to this plan b, isn't it? So, in the
Joanne Lockwood: asian model of the curb, their plan
Joanne Lockwood: b is carry you. What we're trying to say in the UK
Joanne Lockwood: is our plan b is carry you once
Joanne Lockwood: re engineer plan a so it works next time for you. So, yes, you can
Joanne Lockwood: get away with it. Once a learning occurs,
Joanne Lockwood: change occurs. Next time you access it, your plan a now works.
Joanne Lockwood: That's what we're trying to say. We don't want plan b to be the default
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. We want to learn and incorporate your needs into plan
Joanne Lockwood: a. Learn and change. But then in some ways it's kind of
Andy Barrow: really interesting because in some ways, when I travel to kind of
Andy Barrow: far flung places, I'm less fussed about
Andy Barrow: access issues because also, maybe
Andy Barrow: the absence of more of a plan
Andy Barrow: where that's concerned leads to people being far more
Andy Barrow: helpful and understanding. Certainly nobody in Asia
Andy Barrow: has ever told know I can't come into their nightclub because I might be a
Andy Barrow: fire hazard, or they can't help me up the steps because it's more
Andy Barrow: than my job's worth, mate. But that ties in culturally
Andy Barrow: as well, because in Asia, a lot of the time, there's quite a lot of
Andy Barrow: shame in failing. People are saying no, which is not an ideal thing,
Andy Barrow: but I know that it's actually, if I want to go in that restaurant, it's
Andy Barrow: got ten steps up to it. I'm going to go, can you
Andy Barrow: help? And loads of people are going to come running and lift
Andy Barrow: me. Now, that works for me specifically as a relatively light guy over
Andy Barrow: relatively light chair who is okay getting lifted doesn't feel
Andy Barrow: disempowered by that. Some people hate it, but I'm like, you know what? I want
Andy Barrow: to go up there. I want to get on that boat. I've been carried like
Andy Barrow: a bride across more than one beach in my life
Andy Barrow: and slung on a boat because I wanted to be on a boat. I wanted
Andy Barrow: to get in the sea. It was the only way it was going to happen,
Andy Barrow: and I'm okay with that. But that's the point. The conversation
Andy Barrow: took place and I said, can you help me do a
Andy Barrow: thing? And they said, yes, I can. And health and
Andy Barrow: safety is not in the way of that. We don't necessarily have that
Andy Barrow: luxury over there because we've put health and safety rules in place. But if we've
Andy Barrow: done that, then we must be able to see people within
Andy Barrow: those. So we need to kind of scramble and make our
Andy Barrow: plans a bit better again. But the key in those
Joanne Lockwood: things you've just talked about is where the power resides. The
Joanne Lockwood: power resides with you. Power of a choice. You're using
Joanne Lockwood: your power of choice to enact what you want to
Joanne Lockwood: happen. And if you think I'm here, boat's there, I want to go on
Joanne Lockwood: the boat. There's a beach. The only way I can get on there
Joanne Lockwood: is give me a chiggy back, stick me on your shoulder, wherever you need to
Joanne Lockwood: do, because I want to do it more than that.
Joanne Lockwood: Because you're empowered. You don't feel you've lost dignity. You
Joanne Lockwood: feel you've achieved your objective. In that case,
Joanne Lockwood: you are a Paralympian. So you've
Joanne Lockwood: talked about this throughout our conversation so far. So I'm sure I'm dying
Joanne Lockwood: to hear. Doing
Joanne Lockwood: what? Where? How successful were you? Where did you go? Yeah, I
Andy Barrow: mean, look, my story is rugby through and through, so I was kind of
Andy Barrow: mining. I like sport growing up. Didn't mean I was any good at it. Just
Andy Barrow: enjoyed team sport. Loved rugby sport for people of all shapes and
Andy Barrow: sizes. There's a role for you on a rugby field. Unfortunately, I had a tendency
Andy Barrow: towards the more dangerous jobs in sport, so. Goalkeeper,
Andy Barrow: wicketkeeper, front row hooker, broke
Andy Barrow: my neck playing rugby. Rugby is a very safe game.
Andy Barrow: Incidentally, it's a freak accident. These things happen. They
Andy Barrow: still do far less than they did. A good example of us making things
Andy Barrow: safer and amending problems as best we can. But catastrophic injuries still occur.
Andy Barrow: So I broke my neck. What that means for me is I'm paralysed from the
Andy Barrow: chest down with limited use of my hands
Andy Barrow: and a little bit of a deficit in my arms as
Andy Barrow: well. So, looking round for sports, what sport am I going to play? Obviously
Andy Barrow: wheelchair rugby, or murder ball, as it's
Andy Barrow: better known. So I started playing wheelchair
Andy Barrow: rugby first out, started playing it really
Andy Barrow: to get my confidence back, to find a team sport that I could play. My
Andy Barrow: life had changed hugely at that age
Andy Barrow: to get physically fit with such a severe physical
Andy Barrow: disability. About four fifths of my body doesn't work, because you understand how
Andy Barrow: your body would. I need to make sure that that
Andy Barrow: 20% worked as well as it possibly could for me to be able to
Andy Barrow: achieve as much independence as I could in my life and do
Andy Barrow: all the things I wanted to do. And I didn't know what they were, I
Andy Barrow: was 17. But independence is really important. It feeds
Andy Barrow: well, actually, into our conversation about why it's important that things are
Andy Barrow: accessible and people can move around on their own, because independence.
Andy Barrow: So, anyway, start playing wheelchair rugby, get good at it.
Andy Barrow: You like something, you play it more, you practise more. The harder you work, the
Andy Barrow: better you get. All that kind of stuff. And it really took me around the
Andy Barrow: world, so I was very lucky. I went to three Paralympic games, a captain to
Andy Barrow: the Great Britain wheelchair rugby team for about five years, won
Andy Barrow: three european gold medals. Sadly,
Andy Barrow: never got over the line in a Paralympics or a world, so never did
Andy Barrow: better than fourth. That is a bad place to finish, but there you go. Wouldn't
Andy Barrow: take it back. I was lucky enough to go to
Andy Barrow: for my final tournament to be the London
Andy Barrow: 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which
Andy Barrow: was amazing. Just an unbelievable demonstration of teamwork
Andy Barrow: and equality. Equity. The
Andy Barrow: Paralympic game specifically is the biggest event for social mobility in
Andy Barrow: the world. It's huge. And in the
Andy Barrow: UK, we're some of the leaders
Andy Barrow: in showing strong
Andy Barrow: role models who happen to have disabilities.
Andy Barrow: So it's done a lot for me and my life. It
Andy Barrow: launched my career as a speaker, first in schools. It
Andy Barrow: obviously gave me the knowledge within travel to do what I do
Andy Barrow: now. So travel is kind of just a part of me. I
Andy Barrow: still speak as well.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow. A real olympian,
Joanne Lockwood: as you're talking now. It popped some of my head. So currently we have the
Joanne Lockwood: Olympics that people know and then we have the Paralympics.
Joanne Lockwood: So two weeks, then a week, then two weeks again.
Joanne Lockwood: Could we not have them interleave? So we don't have two
Joanne Lockwood: separate events? Or do you think it's important to have a separate
Joanne Lockwood: event? I think it's important for a couple of reasons.
Andy Barrow: The first one is you don't want it to lose autonomy or be seen as
Andy Barrow: second two. And now it has enough
Andy Barrow: momentum to be a world event in its own
Andy Barrow: right and huge. And I think that is correct, that it's front and centre and
Andy Barrow: people see fantastic world class sport from people who happen to have
Andy Barrow: disabilities. That idea of this is just disabled people having
Andy Barrow: to go. Died of death a while ago, and probably the final nail in the
Andy Barrow: coffin would have been London. If you know anything about sport, you know how
Andy Barrow: hard these athletes work.
Andy Barrow: They just happen to have a disability. The second is logistics.
Andy Barrow: It's the biggest sporting event in the world, the Olympics,
Andy Barrow: and it's represented by people from every single
Andy Barrow: country. So over 200 countries in the world, you
Andy Barrow: have an olympic village, houses x amount of thousands of
Andy Barrow: people. You can't really, logistically just
Andy Barrow: increase that by. The Paralympics is something
Andy Barrow: like 50, 60, 70% the size of the Olympics. You can't really just
Andy Barrow: nearly double the size of that event, which is already huge and
Andy Barrow: requires its own village. We're talking about hosting
Andy Barrow: 27 simultaneous world championships. When we talk
Andy Barrow: about an Olympics, it's a bit of a scramble to just then go
Andy Barrow: and host nearly 60. So for those two
Andy Barrow: reasons, I'm happy with it being its own separate event.
Andy Barrow: What I would do is every four years, I would change the
Andy Barrow: order. So one, four years,
Andy Barrow: Paralympics went first. One, four years, Olympics
Andy Barrow: went first. And there's pros and cons to being first or second. I think Channel
Andy Barrow: four spun it brilliantly in 2012
Andy Barrow: when they put all their ad campaigns out that said, thanks for the warm up,
Andy Barrow: meaning the Olympics, it was like, yeah, you guys were the curtain raiser, now it's
Andy Barrow: the real stuff, so you can spin it how you want it. And
Andy Barrow: the fact is that so many people, the Paralympics in London, sold
Andy Barrow: out, the tickets were cheaper. I don't
Andy Barrow: care about that. That's market forces. Tickets are going to be cheaper in parasport,
Andy Barrow: they're going to be cheaper in youth sport, they're going to be cheaper in women's
Andy Barrow: sport. Is it right? Not necessarily. But does it get bums on seats?
Andy Barrow: And if it does, that's fine by me. So it sold
Andy Barrow: out. And I think a lot of people as well that were naysaying about the
Andy Barrow: Olympics, saw how amazing it was and then scrambled and thought, I still
Andy Barrow: want to be a part of that. I've never seen anything like it before
Andy Barrow: or since. In terms of the adulation that
Andy Barrow: we had as athletes, in terms of
Andy Barrow: the spectator numbers, the crowds, people that just wanted
Andy Barrow: to be involved. It was an absolute privilege and
Andy Barrow: something I'll never ever forget.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I hear what you're saying there, and I think you're right.
Joanne Lockwood: From having, again, it's about power and agency. It's your event
Joanne Lockwood: for you.
Joanne Lockwood: You and your fellow Paralympians are owning that event
Joanne Lockwood: as a celebration of you. And it's not about trying to be the
Joanne Lockwood: same as anybody else, it's about trying to be your own identity. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's extremely important. Language obviously, is really
Joanne Lockwood: critical around this stuff. And we talked earlier about whether you're with a disability, have
Joanne Lockwood: a disability, a disabled user, a wheelchair user or
Joanne Lockwood: all these various terms complex. And one thing I was thinking about as you're talking
Joanne Lockwood: there is that we have women's football, we have women's
Joanne Lockwood: cricket, we have women's tennis and then we have football,
Joanne Lockwood: tennis and cricket. I want to keep
Joanne Lockwood: women's football, women's cricket, women's tennis, but I want to have men's
Joanne Lockwood: football. So what we don't have is
Joanne Lockwood: men or male or the privilege is the default. Therefore we don't need to
Joanne Lockwood: prefix it. So we have the men's
Joanne Lockwood: football FA cup and we have the women's football FA or the Women's
Joanne Lockwood: FA cup. So they're both prefix.
Joanne Lockwood: That way women's football isn't seen as the second best, it's just
Joanne Lockwood: seen as women's have meant. Or there's a whole nother conversation
Joanne Lockwood: about degendering sport. But that's in a whole nother conversation. Let's not go into
Joanne Lockwood: that. But I think it's important that we don't recognise women as being
Joanne Lockwood: not the default. As being second best. Yeah, absolutely.
Andy Barrow: I think it's a really good argument. I've had some
Andy Barrow: involvement with the women's sport trust in the past and that point has definitely
Andy Barrow: come up and been made. Because to say women's football,
Andy Barrow: then football implies that football is the real football.
Andy Barrow: That's not right. That's absolutely not right. And you'll see that in
Andy Barrow: athletics it happens by default. In
Andy Barrow: tennis it normally happens by default, because it's a
Andy Barrow: way. Whose singles final is it? Well, it's the men's
Andy Barrow: singles final or it's the women's singles final. And again,
Andy Barrow: things like, as just mentioned, changing the order. Why not one year at Wimbledon,
Andy Barrow: just have a women's final on the Sunday and the men's final on the Saturday
Andy Barrow: was. What if it didn't
Andy Barrow: matter in the first place? Why would it matter to switch it?
Andy Barrow: I think it's really important to.
Andy Barrow: I don't know about sort of degendering completely, because otherwise that's just
Andy Barrow: confusing. What am I watching if I'm not being told whether it's men's
Andy Barrow: or women's? So I'd rather you're
Andy Barrow: proud about your gender within the sport?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I think that was more about the conversation about whether
Joanne Lockwood: nonbinary people had a non binary people compete in
Joanne Lockwood: sport. There's huge debate
Joanne Lockwood: around trans people, trans masculine, trans
Joanne Lockwood: feminine people competing in their acquired gender and whether they have
Joanne Lockwood: disadvantage or advantages around their performance. There's a
Joanne Lockwood: whole debate around that. There are many sports
Joanne Lockwood: where people's gender is not actually deciding factor
Joanne Lockwood: and so people can compete fairly. So those are the sports we should be looking
Joanne Lockwood: at saying, well, it actually doesn't matter if it's a woman's or a man's. But
Joanne Lockwood: then there's also the argument that women still want to be
Joanne Lockwood: proud and have their own event in the same way that you, as a Paralympian,
Joanne Lockwood: want your own paralympic event, women want their own event as well.
Joanne Lockwood: And that's quite right, but it's trying to work out how we create
Joanne Lockwood: a freestyle, all style type event that people can opt to
Joanne Lockwood: compete in if they want to as well. It's very interesting, actually, that in
Andy Barrow: wheelchair rugby, it's actually a coed sport.
Andy Barrow: We're able to do that by virtue of the classification system.
Andy Barrow: Now, if you don't know what the classification system is, it's a way of us
Andy Barrow: categorising the diversity of your disability, not how good
Andy Barrow: you are at the game, but basically in a physical sense, in a very physical
Andy Barrow: sense, how many muscles you have to play the game. And that has
Andy Barrow: to happen because otherwise it's an unfair playing field. If you
Andy Barrow: were a good example would be, I've said I'm paralysed from the chest down with
Andy Barrow: limited use of my hands and arms. People with a disability in all four
Andy Barrow: limbs are eligible to play my game. So in theory, somebody could come in
Andy Barrow: who's just missing two legs from just below, just above
Andy Barrow: the knee and missing their arms from the wrists. That
Andy Barrow: person has their entire trunk to their
Andy Barrow: disposal and stuff like that. They can move and
Andy Barrow: they can navigate the court in an entirely different way. To me, so we have
Andy Barrow: to award points, numbers, so we can
Andy Barrow: say, you're worth this many points on the floor, because we have to draw the
Andy Barrow: lines somewhere and that's how we are actually able to fit
Andy Barrow: women into the male framework. Whether we get to a point where our
Andy Barrow: sport grows and the women. There have been some women's
Andy Barrow: only events, but at the minute, the women really enjoy playing the
Andy Barrow: mixed version of the sport. And it's just one of those happy
Andy Barrow: idiosyncrasies about sport and disability and the way it
Andy Barrow: works that we can make that fit into the classification.
Andy Barrow: Women play at
Andy Barrow: half a point less than men for their disability because we had a big conversation
Andy Barrow: about it and went through the well, if you're disabled, you're disabled, it doesn't
Andy Barrow: matter. But we took into account your bone density, your fat to
Andy Barrow: muscle ratio, and we were like, actually, no, as a woman, you are at a
Andy Barrow: disadvantage if you have the same functionality as a male. So
Andy Barrow: you play half a point less, which
Andy Barrow: is really interesting, because in theory, in our game,
Andy Barrow: the best possible team in an imagined future would
Andy Barrow: be four female players. So
Andy Barrow: it's a really interesting concept
Andy Barrow: and it's not here nor there. It's just a nice
Andy Barrow: thing to kind of think about and a neat little solution that we've made in
Andy Barrow: a very niche part of the world. I
Joanne Lockwood: said the same. When we look at whether we can level the playing field in
Joanne Lockwood: terms of men's sport, women's sport, or even making it
Joanne Lockwood: trans accessible, is learning from paralympics, learning
Joanne Lockwood: from ways we can value each person
Joanne Lockwood: as an individual and give. I mean, sport is a human right.
Joanne Lockwood: Competing competition should be a human right. So we can allow everybody to
Joanne Lockwood: compete at their sport in the way they can, without
Joanne Lockwood: feeling discrimination or without feeling they've got to apologise for
Joanne Lockwood: being a bit taller or a bit shorter. Absolutely. I mean, I
Andy Barrow: think it's really hard. It's really hard in
Andy Barrow: competitive sport, particularly where trans is
Andy Barrow: concerned. Sort of interested to sort of hear what you think
Andy Barrow: about where physicality is not the deciding factor,
Andy Barrow: that's one thing. And then sort of wheelchair rugby, although the sport is a contact
Andy Barrow: sport, it's the chairs that get smashed to bits. We have these special wheelchairs around
Andy Barrow: us. We smash them to bits every 18 months. Direct person to person
Andy Barrow: contact. How
Andy Barrow: this is where some people will get squeezed out just
Andy Barrow: on the safety factor. To other people, not themselves. Your
Andy Barrow: own safety is your choice. And that's a really
Andy Barrow: difficult one, because I'm looking and thinking specifically at rugby and about
Andy Barrow: articles I've read around sort of trans
Andy Barrow: athletes in rugby, and it feels really difficult. And if I'm honest,
Andy Barrow: I don't know the answer. No, I don't know the answer
Joanne Lockwood: either. I think from my personal view is
Joanne Lockwood: that there are lots of views, lots of opinions, lots of people to
Joanne Lockwood: take into account and the best solution is to sit
Joanne Lockwood: down collectively and have an open discord
Joanne Lockwood: and a constructive outcome for everybody.
Joanne Lockwood: It's trying to move the bell curve, as you were saying, not just to be
Joanne Lockwood: narrow, to try and widen that bell curve. So there's more people
Joanne Lockwood: included, and if you don't fit the criteria, you understand why you don't
Joanne Lockwood: fit the criteria and there's a plan b.
Joanne Lockwood: Maybe there's another competition for people who don't
Joanne Lockwood: quite fit this bell curve criteria. We've got another one that
Joanne Lockwood: caters for these people and we do it differently. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: somehow there's got to be a solution somewhere where everybody feels
Joanne Lockwood: they're gaining and nobody feels they're losing. Yeah.
Andy Barrow: The Paralympic model isn't a bad place to start, although it's not
Andy Barrow: without its issue, because we are seeing
Andy Barrow: things as a big thing going on in wheelchair basketball at the moment, whereby a
Andy Barrow: lot of the top classes, so we're going to say the most able classes, are
Andy Barrow: getting reclassed and some of those people are being told they
Andy Barrow: aren't disabled enough to play because they have minimal
Andy Barrow: disabilities. But there's no way those people are going to be
Andy Barrow: able to compete on an equal footing in able bodied basketball. Yes, they
Andy Barrow: have minimal disabilities compared to somebody like myself, in fact, compared to many
Andy Barrow: wheelchair basketball players. So it's imperfect. There are going to
Andy Barrow: be people that get squeezed out. There are going to be people that fall on
Andy Barrow: the right side of the lines, people that fall on the wrong side of the
Andy Barrow: lines. If ever you watch a wheelchair race, for example, and
Andy Barrow: somebody wins by a ridiculous margin,
Andy Barrow: as a person with a slightly more trained eye, your immediate
Andy Barrow: thought might not necessarily be, wow, they're so much better than everyone else. You're like,
Andy Barrow: wow, there's quite a lot of function going on there. Not that they're in the
Andy Barrow: wrong class, but they're the optimal level of
Andy Barrow: functionality for the class they're in. So there's always going to be that problem you
Andy Barrow: have it in rugby with, say, when you look at
Andy Barrow: maori players compared to, say, white
Andy Barrow: players in New Zealand or anywhere around the world, for that matter,
Andy Barrow: because of the lean muscle to fat
Andy Barrow: ratio and stuff like that. But that's the
Andy Barrow: way you're born, and that's a difference now
Andy Barrow: that comes up against trans. If you feel like you're born in the wrong
Andy Barrow: body. And
Joanne Lockwood: sport often is leveraging every advantage you have
Joanne Lockwood: as a human being to win. And
Joanne Lockwood: elite male athletes, swimmers,
Joanne Lockwood: sprinters, they're leveraging their bone structure,
Joanne Lockwood: their muscle, their history, their background, their culture, all the things that make them
Joanne Lockwood: them, their mental attitude as well. So it's a combination of
Joanne Lockwood: being. Using your body and your mind to
Joanne Lockwood: win at all costs is kind of the theory, isn't it? So
Joanne Lockwood: if we start denying people the ability to
Joanne Lockwood: use their body to the maximum, then we have to
Joanne Lockwood: start classifying people who are from
Joanne Lockwood: different continents, different racial backgrounds, and saying, well,
Joanne Lockwood: hang on a minute, your children thinner, traditionally, than people from this country,
Joanne Lockwood: and people in this country are generally more overweight,
Joanne Lockwood: less sun, et cetera. So then we end up classifying everybody
Joanne Lockwood: and that becomes even less fair, doesn't it? That's the thing. And to use a
Andy Barrow: very controversial word in the best possible way, and
Andy Barrow: this has been sort of done before, the freak aspect is what makes
Andy Barrow: sport awesome. And it was another great channel four marketing campaign
Andy Barrow: because it called the Paralympians freaks of nature
Andy Barrow: before it called them superhumans. And then everyone got up in arms about
Andy Barrow: it. Whoa. We call Usain bolt a freak of nature and it is an
Andy Barrow: entirely positive label we give him. So they were just playing with that
Andy Barrow: idea of people's interpretation of what
Andy Barrow: freak means. If you've lived an attitude all your life and you grew up
Andy Barrow: running God knows how many miles every day or cycling up and down mountains
Andy Barrow: every day. Yeah,
Andy Barrow: your entire. Gosh, the words gone right out of my head. Your entire physiology
Andy Barrow: is going to be different. How do you think Sherpa in Nepal
Andy Barrow: drag rich people up Everest every single day? Not rich
Andy Barrow: people that aren't experienced, but Sherpa simply be able to just nip
Andy Barrow: up and down like it's not a problem. And that's
Andy Barrow: environment.
Andy Barrow: It's a really complex and interesting conversation.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think we'll let our listeners ponder on that
Joanne Lockwood: conversation and thought, maybe if you're listening and you
Joanne Lockwood: have an opinion, then do drop me a line and tell us about it. Maybe
Joanne Lockwood: you'd like to come on a future podcast episode and talk about your
Joanne Lockwood: perspective on this topic. Well, Andy,
Joanne Lockwood: it's been absolutely awesome. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I can't believe
Joanne Lockwood: how quickly the hour has flown by. And hopefully a couple
Joanne Lockwood: of listeners are still with us out there listening along, because I'm
Joanne Lockwood: sure that there's so much to take, inspiration from, so much to ponder. You've
Joanne Lockwood: got immense amount of experience and you're doing some fantastic work
Joanne Lockwood: to promote accessibility on transport and in the world.
Joanne Lockwood: So how can our listeners get in touch with you? You got a website?
Andy Barrow: Yes. Simple for me. Cheque me out.
Andy Barrow: Www. Dot andybarrow. Co. UK. So,
Andy Barrow: Barrow Barow and you can find
Andy Barrow: all my social channels on that. So through that website you'll be able to
Andy Barrow: hit my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and my email
Andy Barrow: is Andy at andybarrow. Co.
Andy Barrow: UK. So pretty simple. It's pretty simple. And
Joanne Lockwood: you're open to people just randomly connecting on LinkedIn or doing an inquiry
Joanne Lockwood: for speaking or consultancy, et cetera? Absolutely, yeah. Please do get
Andy Barrow: in. Know if you've enjoyed what we've said today. If you got
Andy Barrow: anything to add or you think I can help you, then yeah,
Andy Barrow: please do get in touch. Thank you so much. Well, a huge
Joanne Lockwood: thank you to the listeners for tuning in and
Joanne Lockwood: sticking with it. Please share this podcast with your friends
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Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. Tell your friends, tell
Joanne Lockwood: your colleagues. I have a number of exciting guests lined up and
Joanne Lockwood: I'm sure you'll be inspired by them over the next few weeks and months. If
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Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: My name is Joanne Lockwood and it has been an absolute pleasure to host this
Joanne Lockwood: podcast for you today. Catch you next time. Bye.