David Hevey looks at the impact of his colleague Sian Vasey OBE (1956-2020), a disabled woman who changed practice and output in British TV both on-screen and behind the camera.
By the 1980s, Sian Vasey, a young woman who was a wheelchair user in London, was already heavily involved and making her mark in radical organisations, including the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, UPIAS, and the London Disability Arts Forum, LDAF. Key to her involvement was her belief in the social model of disability – that you are disabled by society’s exclusions and not by your impairment – as opposed to the medical model of disability.
The 1980s were times of great social changes for us. After ITV’s Link, a monthly programme that was created by Richard Creasey in 1975, it was six years before the BBC had its own regular programme, made by Deaf and disabled people, See Hear.
The programme eventually came about following a protest in Downing Street, at which Deaf people marched, and then presented the government with a TV set that had been fixed to have no sound, just vision. This was before soft subtitles (“closed caption”) were a feature in TV sets; and seeing a presenter using British Sign Language was very rare. Deaf people, including the scholar and activist Paddy Ladd, protested that they paid the licence fee, but got nothing back.
The National Union of the Deaf had gained some independent funding and made a programme, Signs of Life, that the BBC broadcast in its Open Door slot on 10th May, 1979, but the BBC refused to take the idea forward and to make a regular programme for Deaf and hearing-impaired people. In response, the National Union of the Deaf worked with the British Deaf Association to create the Deaf Broadcasting Campaign, DBC, in 1980. The DBC organised and delivered the ‘broken’ TV set to the Prime Minister in 1981, as well as a petition to MPs in Parliament. The news cameras filmed the ‘broken’ TV being carried in through the door of No 10. The campaign struck home, Government ministers spoke to the BBC and See Hear was green-lit to start in October, 1981, and was to be broadcast once a month. (BSL Zone, 2019).
As a terrible footnote, even in 2021, the Downing Street press conferences still refuse to include a BSL interpreter, unlike the daily pandemic press conferences in Wales and Scotland, and in Northern Ireland, where there are two interpreters in-vision, with BSL and with Irish Sign Language.
Like Sian, I had joined in with the disability movement in the 1980s, and by the early 1990s I was heavily involved in trying to change how disabled people were represented in media channels. I was producing alternative ways of showing disabled people, including The Creatures Time Forgot project – posters, a book (Hevey 1992), and TV coverage – which had a significant impact in helping to move disability representation away from the old, doomy, monochrome victim imagery that was dominated by charity advertising and other medical model approaches.
My point was that the ‘enfreakment’ of disabled people served able-bodied fear-management, not disabled people. This hit a nerve, and I was both praised and attacked in equal measure across the media, including the news press.
However, a major event happened as a consequence of this media coverage, which was that Sian Vasey knocked on my council flat door one day and asked me if I would like to make a TV mini-series with her, based on the ideas in my book. I knew Sian a little from street protests by the disability movement, but did not know her well at that point. My flat was accessible, and in she came, proceeding to lay out how she wanted us to use parts of my book to pitch a three-part series to the BBC in which we would take apart the very negative charity models which dominated too many disabled people’s lives. It seemed such a worthwhile punt that I said, ”Fine”. About a month later, we were commissioned to make Poor Dear, a three-part series, for the BBC.
Then came the inevitable commissioning meetings, pressuring us to compromise from our radical positions; the BBC executives asked us to work with this or that non-disabled independent company, which we saw as a way of weakening our disabled people-led drive. We said: “no, we will deliver Poor Dear from our own new disabled staff-led company, Criptic Productions Ltd.”, and, after some arguing, the BBC executives agreed. They even went along with our crip spelling in Criptic. Sian was the producer-presenter, I was the producer-director and, putting ourselves under some pressure, we made three episodes in six months.
As the presenter, Sian was a brilliant interviewer – constantly pushing those we interviewed – charity bosses, advertising execs, and so on – to justify their medical model positions on camera. Sian interviewed with great rigour and great charm, which disconcerted those charity bosses we interviewed, who were very much unused to such a ‘radical crip’ being so sharp, so shrewd, and so friendly, all at once, in each interview. Many were furious when the camera was off! And Sian just smiled her charming smile and never became engaged in the off-camera rows with them.
Then, during the pre-viewings, the BBC executives in the room began to panic again – it was too anti-charity, there were not enough non-disabled people in it, it was too pro-rights, it was too political, and so on. We managed to persuade them that this was a true position of what many disabled people felt, and still feel, about charity. In one of the episodes, dealing with how charity promotes a cure, in contrast to disabled people, who were more focused on access than they were on cure, the BBC pushed us to include ‘more disabled people who want to be cured’; and we pushed back, saying, disabled people do not go around waiting for cures, they do go around pushing for barriers to be removed, and you would not be telling the journalistic truth if you pushed this ‘crips want cures’ position. The BBC executives began to despair. At one point, one executive said that we would be hugely criticised for ‘attacking charities.’ Good, we replied, bring it on – because those old-school disability charities had to change.
After Poor Dear was broadcast on BBC1, Sian and I went our separate ways into two separate independent production companies for a while, before our work aligned again, and we both became producer-directors at the BBC Community and Disability Programmes Unit, “the DPU”, to most of our people. By the time we joined it, in the mid-1990s, the DPU was regularly making films and programmes about how disabled people saw the world. The DPU closed in 2000.
For me, the most interesting thing about the DPU – staffed by disabled people – was that many of the radicals from the disability movement were there in-house. It was people like me, Sian Vasey, Elspeth Morrison, and others. But there were also some ‘play it safe’ non-radicals, who just wanted to ‘be in telly’ and didn’t really care about changing disabled representation or reflecting the movement, which Sian, Elspeth and I very much cared about.
Indeed, one of my early films there was Desperate Dan, for which I was the executive producer. It was a documentary about the Direct Action Network (DAN), a street-protest organisation, and it was very much a film supporting their demands. We got around the calls for ‘BBC balance’ by arguing that other more naff producers (we did say that, we were young!) in the BBC were making old-school ‘poor cripple’ TV and we were showing the reality of the new, radical social model approaches – and we were getting large audiences with these new approaches.
Sian brought her usual brilliant journalism and constant drive. She would turn around stories faster than anyone else in the unit and, with her lived experience of disability, drive for rights and experience in television (she was one of the very early pioneers working on ITV’s Link disability programme, before working at the BBC), Sian became the formidable journalist of the DPU. While I made my landmark series, The Disabled Century, Sian drove much of From the Edge. For the first time, there was a superb disabled talent pool, both behind and in front of camera at the DPU – and Sian was one of the stars from whom we all learned what are now considered to be the tools of the trade.
So why was Sian such a pioneer? From being one of the few disabled on-screen talents, she continued in television as a director, producer, presenter, journalist and writer, through sheer tenacity – she would never let an interviewee off the hook, but her persistence was always utterly charming. However, she was much more than that. She was a stalwart of the fight for rights for disabled people, and she easily bridged the space between being in the movement and being in television. In other words, her head didn’t turn because she was ‘in tele.’ If anything, it gave her a platform from which to fight for more inclusion. And we all knew that if you could get the real stories and tell them in innovative ways, then you could get audiences in the millions, as opposed to the old style ‘poor old Harry is wheelchair bound’ material, with sad piano music, which still dominates too much of the media, even though it no longer draws large audiences.
Around 1999, and after several years in the DPU, I moved onto BBC’s Modern Times to make more films, and Sian moved on too, moving into the wider media … and for a while we lost touch.
To new generations, Sian Vasey being an incredible TV pioneer and a role-model for front-of-camera disabled presenters, and for behind-camera disabled crews, was all about the control of content. And it was not only her control of TV content, but also her pushing for a radical and rights-based approach with which to create new ways for TV to show and see disabled people and our allies, an approach which is still fresh and authentic all these years later.
If the BBC ever puts up statues, then I say that one should be of Sian Vasey, saying – She Led the Way in Radical Disability Television. And I’d place her at the BBC’s main gates.
David Hevey worked for the BBC’s Disability Programmes Unit during the 1990s and produced the landmark history series The Disabled Century (1999).
References and background
Books, Journals and Audio
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Baldwinson, Tony. (2019) UPIAS: The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (1972-1990) A Public Record from Private Files, Manchester, TBR Imprint. Print and online.
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Baldwinson, Tony. (2019) Le Court Film Unit: An Award-Winning Disabled People’s Film Crew (1958-1969), Manchester, TBR Imprint. Print and online.
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Finkelstein, Vic. (1987) ‘Disabled People and Our Culture Development’. London Disability Arts Forum (LDAF). Vol. 8. 1987.
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Finkelstein, Vic. (1996) ‘Outside, ‘Inside Out’’, Coalition Journal, Manchester: GMCDP, April 1996, pp. 30-36. (An edited version in, Disability Now, 1996.)
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Hevey, David. (1992), The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery. Taylor & Francis.
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Vasey, Sian. (1989) ‘Disability Culture: It’s a Way of Life’, Feminist Arts News, vol 2 issue 10, pp. 5-6.
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Vasey, Sian. (1997) ‘Sorry - I Can’t Make the Tea!’ [a chapter in the book] - Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media, Ann Pointon & Chris Davies (eds.), published by the Arts Council of England and the British Film Institute, pp. 135-140.
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Vasey, Sian, et al. (2002) [two audio programmes] Programme 1 - Disability and Difference, Programme 2 - Normal Lives, Different Lives, the publishers are the BBC and the Open University, reference K202/CD2.
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Vasey, Sian. (2004) ‘Disability Culture: The Story So Far’, [a chapter in the book] - Disabling Barriers, Enabling Environments,John Swain et al., pp. 106-110.
TV programmes
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Link, (1975-1999). Producer-Creator: Richard Creasey; Presenters: Rosalie Wilkins (1975-), John Sheppard (1975-1988), Niam McAleer (1979-); Kevin Mulhern (1984-); Birmingham: ATV, then Central TV, then Coffers Bare Productions Ltd. (1982-1999); for the ITV UK network.
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Signs of Life, (1979), National Union of the Deaf, in the community access slot Open Door, BBC Community Programmes Unit, TX: BBC1, 10th May 1979.
Open Door, (1973-1983) BBC Community Programmes Unit, including:
- Hidden Costs of Disability, Disablement Income Group (1981)
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Attitudes: The Second Handicap, Chris Davies (1983).
- See Hear, (1981-current) BBC, monthly series on deaf people’s issues.
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One in Four (1986-1992), monthly disability issues programme, Isobel Ward, Simon Barnes, Chris Davies, TX: BBC1 (1986), then BBC2 (1986-1992).
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Same Difference, (c.1987-1991), Same Production Co. (1989–1991), for Channel 4.
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From the Edge, (1992-2000), a disability current affairs programme, BBC Disability Programmes Unit, TX: BBC2.
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Over the Edge (1993-1995) an annual six-part disability documentary series, BBC Disability Programmes Unit.
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Poor Dear, (1994), Director: David Hevey, Presenter: Sian Vasey, Criptic Productions Ltd, TX: BBC1, 9, 16, 23rd January 1994.
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Desperate Dan, (1995), documentary in Over the Edge slot, first episode of a six-part series, BBC Disability Programmes Unit, Executive Producer: David Hevey; TX: BBC2 28 June 1995.
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The Disabled Century, (1999) a three-part series and studio debate; Producer-Director: David Hevey TX: BBC2. 10th June 1999, repeated 2012.
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Modern Times, (2000) Director: David Hevey,
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10,000 Private Eyes, TX: 22 March 2000;
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Suicide, TX: 27 September 2000.
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Children’s Hospital – Birmingham (2001), Producer: Sian Vasey, TX: BBC1, 18 July 2001.
- BSL Zone: I Want to Change the World (2019), Director: Sebastian Cunliffe, BSL Broadcasting Trust / Drummer TV Ltd, TX: Film4, 8th March 2021, 08:00.