A Great Day at the Learning Disability England Conference 2026
Some pictures taken from the conference - including our pictures on the promotional posters!
Last Wednesday, Lucy, Andreea, Emily, and Emma from the Beyond Words team went to the Learning Disability England Conference in Birmingham. It was a wonderful day full of learning, meeting new people, and sharing ideas about making the world more welcoming and accessible for everyone.
This year’s theme was “Being Seen, Being Heard”, and we loved talking with others about how our books can be used to support and advocate. It was also exciting to see pictures from our books featured on the conference posters, programmes, and other materials!
We had a stall where we met lots of inspiring people and shared news about our books and our Book Club in a Box project. We also got to listen to some fantastic talks, including:
Simon Bottery: Being seen in policy
Simon is a Senior Fellow for Social Care at The King’s Fund. In his talk, he discussed the key health and social care policy changes that people with learning disabilities, their families, allies and supporters should know about and where to get involved to make a difference.
Lord Scriven: Working to help people be seen
Paul, a Liberal Democrat Life Peer, has spent nearly 40 years focusing on outcomes for individuals over system convenience. In his talk, he shared how his nephew Myles’ preventable death inspired his work to advocate for learning disability care. Paul highlighted the missed opportunities and errors that lead to tragedy and called for meaningful change.
Simba Ngwarati: My Musical Journey
Simba is a musician and composer and a member of the City Lit Percussion Orchestra. Simba is also one of the self-advocate trainers for our BCiaB project, and an advisor on many of our books, including ‘Joe and Julie Stop Smoking’. He spoke about his work with the Royal Academy of Music to develop compositions and introduce them to working creatively with musicians with a learning disability, and his own musical journey.
George Webster: Being seen as an author
George Webster, a 23-year-old BAFTA-winning TV presenter, actor, author, and dancer from Leeds, made history as the first CBeebies presenter with Down Syndrome. Named one of Radio Times’ most influential TV personalities in 2022, George shared his journey as a children’s author, why he started writing, how it fits with his other work, and what being an author means to him.
William Kremer: Getting people seen and heard in the media
William is a journalist and a radio producer at the BBC. His workshop explored his recent work on accessible news media and insights into how news might be made more inclusive.
Hearing these stories and connecting with others reminded us how important it is to keep working together for inclusion. We’re very thankful to Learning Disability England for collaborating with us and inviting us to such a wonderful event.