I have a question on my booking form that specifically asks, you know, whether there's any access requirements and it starts that conversation and I think that's one of the most important things in accessibility is to start the conversation because especially I think if you're a disabled person, it's quite refreshing for somebody else to say, well, what can I do to make things easier for you?
I'm Becca Pountney, Wedding Business Marketing Expert, Speaker and Blogger, and you're listening to the Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place.
Let's get going with today's episode. Today I'm chatting with Lisa Heywood, owner of Folk Dance with Lisa. She runs fun, inclusive barn dances and Ceilidh's for weddings, parties and community events. I've actually attended a Ceilidh run by Lisa and I promise you it's a whole lot of fun. In her day job, Lisa works to make the music industry more accessible and she recently realized that she should be bringing her learnings into the wedding industry too.
So she reached out to me about coming onto the podcast and I knew I had to say yes. Lisa, welcome to the podcast. It's lovely to be here. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I'm really looking forward to having this conversation. There's so much for us to dive into. But before we talk about accessibility, first of all, I want to understand a little bit more about you and your wedding business. Because how on earth does one end up Working in barn dances. Okay.
So it's a bit of a family thing. So my parents were both in a Caley band. So I spent a lot of my childhood sort of tagging along to their gigs. I sometimes reflect. on how I have been to more weddings in my lifetime than any normal person has because, you know, ever since I was sort of a teenager, I used to help out with the band. And then I got into doing what I do now in sort of 2010. I never expected that I'd sort of take on the baton, but yeah, I sort of got into it at university.
So my role in the band is as the caller, which means I teach the dances. So it was kind of like a cross between like an MC and a dance teacher. But really the focus is on facilitating people having fun rather than, you know, being like a hard taskmaster making sure that they get all the dance moves right. So yeah,
that's how it all started. And is there a significant difference between a barn dance and a Ceilidh because I've always thought they're kind of one and the same thing. What is the difference?
It really depends who you ask and where you are. So Ceilidh, as you may guess from the spelling, is not an English word. It's a Gaelic word. Scottish Gaelic, if it's got the DHS on the end or Irish Gaelic if it's just ends with an I and yeah. Barn dances is kind of more of the English term for it, although sometimes people associate it with kind of Americana and like hoedowns as well, but I think in a practical sense. they're pretty much the same model of thing. The dances, the dance moves,
the music might be slightly different. Love it. And it was so much fun when I did it. So just talk me through, if someone is listening to this and they're thinking, sounds like a fun idea for a client's wedding, what does it actually involve? It's you, it's a band. Talk to us about that. So I've got my
band, the Rainbow Folk, which we've got a couple of different lineups. We usually go out as a two piece or a three piece. And yeah, basically we turn up an hour, an hour and a half. Before we needed in the reception and then we'll just bring our own PA system and lights. We set up in the room where the Kaylee is going to happen. And then we usually do two sets of 45 minutes or an hour with a break in between.
Quite often people choose to maybe cut the cake in between the sets or, you know, have a little bit of food. And yeah, basically we just get up all the guests up on the dance floor and we usually kick in sort of after the first dance. Or we can do a first dance that is a Kayleigh dance if the couple prefer that. And it's just about getting everyone up, having fun, laughing together, like the number of smiles that you see on the dance floor is amazing.
So it's just a great thing to get everyone sort of bonding and
breaking the ice. Is a really great way to get people on the dance floor. And, you know, sometimes you swap partners or you dance with different people and it just brings everyone together. All of the weddings I've ever attended that have had barn dancers or Kayleys have been so much fun. So if you're listening to this, definitely check out Lisa and her band. If you're interested in bringing something different to your client's wedding days.
Now, at least as I mentioned in the introduction, this isn't all you do. You also have your day job and work. I believe that that's in the music industry. Just tell us a little bit more about what you do in your day job.
So I work for an organization called Drake Music, who work at the intersection of disability, music and technology. So it started off as kind of a project to make adapted instruments using technology to make music more accessible to people who couldn't access traditional instruments. And it's kind of blossomed into this many armed project. So I've been working in the artist development arm of it. So it's working with professional disabled musicians to help them sort of.
advance their careers, explore new creative ideas. And I've very much been embedded in access since the beginning of my work with the organization. But I've actually just taken on a new role literally this week as the access coordinator for the organization, which means that I get to do lots of stuff around policy and processes to do with making things accessible.
I think it sounds fascinating your day job and I think it's so so important that we look at these things. Now there's a couple of words that we've been using That I think we're gonna be using a lot through this episode, and I wanted to make sure that we're clear for the listeners exactly what we're talking about and what we're covering. So the first of those words is disabled or disability. So when we talk about that in this episode, whatcha meaning by that phrase? So I think when
people think of a disabled person, they automatically probably think of a wheelchair user that's kind of, you know, the little dis disabled symbol that you see on toilet doors and stuff. But it's so much broader than that. And so. At this point, I want to introduce the idea of the social model of disability, which is the idea that people aren't disabled by something being wrong with them. They're disabled by society not being accessible to them.
So we tend to kind of grow up with what we call the medical model of disability, which is the idea that there's something wrong with a person and that thing needs to be fixed, and then everything would be all right. Whereas the social model says, well, actually it's, you know, it's okay to be deaf. It's okay to, you need to use a wheelchair. That's not the problem. The problem is that society isn't accessible.
So the fact that we don't have things that are BSL interpreted, or we don't have hearing loops in our venues, or you know, we don't have ramps you know, the fact that there are stairs. is disabling to somebody who is using a wheelchair. But if we provide a ramp or a lift, then we can make that accessible to them.
Okay, great. So what we're talking about today then is more of the social model of disability, which is where people are facing barriers in society, which then brings us onto this accessibility idea. What do you mean by accessibility? How are we helping people overcome some of those different barriers?
So accessibility, again, it's a hugely broad area. But it's basically how can we overcome those barriers or how can we remove those barriers so that. you know, a disabled person can access a service or a building or something like that. And some people might think of accessibility in terms of the law, you know, we've got the Equalities Act, for example, that means that certain public buildings have to be accessible to wheelchair users.
But to me, you know, we need to go beyond just the letter of the law and the bare minimum. It's about, you know, Disabled people having an equal experience to a non disabled person. So, for example, your building might be wheelchair accessible via the back entrance, where there's a ramp or there's level access.
Thinking about somebody getting married, If the person getting married is a wheelchair user, do they really want to have to go through the back entrance, through the kitchen, or whatever, to get to, you know, where they're going? We want to make them feel as special as a non disabled person would feel on their wedding day. So it's, it's not just about, you know, getting married. getting the bare minimum. It's about actually giving them an equal experience,
I think. Absolutely. Now, as we spoke about before, you work in the wedding industry, you've been to lots of weddings, and I know that you're working hard yourself to try and make sure your wedding business itself is more accessible. So what things have you put in place? What are you doing to ensure that you are accessible to all?
So I'd say there's two kind of two categories of access that I think about. One is just general things, which can really apply to anyone. So So it's about putting information on your website about accessibility, what, what you can offer, who can people contact if they have a question, also making sure that your website itself is accessibility. And that's includes things about like the contrast of the colors. you know, can people read it easily?
Are your links set up in such a way that somebody using a screen reader could access them? So one of the things that screen readers do is they try to replicate how a sighted person might use a website. So if you're thinking about you go on a website, you don't read every single bit of text. You're likely to just jump to You know, the link to the page, which has the information that you want. So screen readers have a mode where they can just jump through all the links.
If all of your links say, click here, that is not enough information to know where that page is leading. So if you've got links within the text on your website, you need to make sure that they actually say, I dunno, they just say something that gives an idea of where that link goes to. Might be. More information about my prices. rather than click here and that's the only bit that's linked for information
about my prices. Great example and that's something that we could be implementing almost immediately. I'm already thinking about places on my website where I probably have just got click here and haven't thought about click here for more resources, click here for more information about me. So I think that's something that we can all go and reflect on. And what about the events themselves?
I know on your website you say that you make your and your Kayleys accessible to all to be able to join in with. What are you doing practically there?
So one of the, the first steps, and again, this is kind of something that everybody can do is that I have a question on my booking form that specifically asks about any, you know, whether there's any access requirements. And that helps me to be prepared to know, you know, what, what I need to do and it starts that conversation.
I think that's one of the most important things in accessibility is to start the conversation because especially I think if you're a disabled person and you're constantly having to ask, Oh, can you accommodate this? Can you change this? It's quite refreshing for somebody else to say, well, what can I do to make things easier for you? So, you know, that, that has opened up some really interesting questions with my clients.
So I've had people who have said, can you keep giving the instructions all the way through the dance? Because, you know, we've got people with memory problems. Who, you know, will need prompting all the way through. Or I've had clients say, just be aware that I'm not going to do every dance, even though I'm one of the people getting married. Because, like, I have, you know, sort of issues with energy levels. You know, I don't want to feel pressured. to be in every dance.
And so, you know, I use those to help prepare me. And then also I've done quite a lot of research by talking to disabled people to find out what, you know, sort of accommodations I can make. So I run a group for other disabled people. people working in Caley's and Barn Dances. I've had people come and do talks for me about, for example, wheelchair access at Caley's.
And then I'm also, this is definitely kind of going above and beyond, but I'm currently running a research project, which is a survey for disabled people who have been to Caley's to see, you know, are there any good examples of access? What sort of barriers do they face? And hopefully that's going to give us a much better idea of what sort of changes. We can make
incredible. You're doing so much great work, Lisa. And again, I think there's so much here that all of us can start putting into our own businesses. Just a simple question on a booking form that leads to a conversation. So if you're listening to this episode, you may realize already that you need a pen and paper to start noting down some of this stuff, because there are so many great ideas that Maybe you haven't thought about yet that you might want to implement into your business.
So go grab your piece of paper, pause the podcast episode, and let's get that to do list written down. Now we talk about how important it is to start the conversation, Lisa, but I think this is actually where lots of wedding business owners and just society in general stop. because they're actually afraid of getting the conversation wrong. And I know even just preparing for this podcast, it's really important to me to get it right.
It's not an area that I have anywhere near as much knowledge about as you do. And so I think sometimes we're scared of saying the wrong thing or using the wrong language. So have you got any pitfalls, things that we can avoid or encouragements for us to have these conversations?
So I think the first thing is just to remember that you know, anybody who is disabled, they are the experts in their own access requirements. So just don't make assumptions. Don't think, Oh, this person is a wheelchair user. So they must need this. You can certainly make suggestions and say, Oh, we could offer this, or we could offer this, but don't kind of say, I know that you need this because actually they might not need it.
So. The really important thing in having that conversation is just let it be guided by the person that you're talking to. I think, you know, in general, when we're talking about language, for example, if you're talking about it on social media or something like that, my first thing would, don't be afraid to say disabled. Most people prefer that term to things which, terms which dance around the subjects like differently abled or, you know, things like that.
Again, going back to the social model, you know, it's society which is disabling people. So It's fair to say that somebody is disabled by the barriers that they face. And again, on that note, you know, try to avoid focusing on, you know, the sort of deficit model or somebody's medical diagnosis. You know, the idea that somebody suffers from something or is wheelchair bound, you know, because actually wheelchairs can be really, you know, freeing for somebody who, you know, needs that.
So we might say a wheelchair user. The other thing that's useful to know is the difference between person first and identity first language. And this is one of those areas where the sort of best practice has maybe gone back and forth a bit over the last few years, which is maybe why people are feeling a bit confused. So person first language would be, for example, to say a person with autism, whereas identity first would be an autistic person.
And the main thing to remember is it's just a very personal choice. There is no one right answer. Some people prefer different language. The one thing I would say is I noticed that there's a general trend that in the UK people tend to prefer identity first language and in the US there seems to be more of a preference for person first language.
So in the US I see a lot of people talking from the disability community saying person with a disability, whereas in the UK, you'd be more likely to find people saying disabled person.
Really helpful. And I think particularly the part around not bringing it as a negative. So just that example of saying wheelchair bound really stands out to me because it just sounds like this person has no life. They're stuck in this wheelchair, they're locked into it, but actually they don't. just a wheelchair user, right? And I think when we see the Paralympics coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to my kids watching that and just seeing the incredible athletes doing incredible things.
They don't feel bound by a wheelchair. They are absolutely incredible people. So I think that's a super helpful thing. Now, talking about these things is one thing, Doing them is another. And I think one of the other pitfalls I'm scared people fall into, particularly in our industry, is this idea of tokenism or saying they're doing something, but then it actually not being particularly useful.
Now, I knew we were having this conversation and this situation happened to me yesterday, Lisa, that I wanted to share with you to just give an example of where I think we can go wrong with some of this stuff. So yesterday with my family, I was visiting a very well known theme park. I'm not going to mention the name of it, And they're clearly having a drive to be more accessible, which is great. So I'm going to start with the two positive things I saw.
So one of the positive things I saw, they've changed one of their film clips that they show in their 4D cinema. And I noticed one of the characters. In that children's film clip only had one arm, right? There was no mention of that. That just was what it was. And I was like, this is great because it's representation. There's no mention of it. It's not tokenistic. It's just happening as part of everyday life in this movie.
The second great thing I saw was one of the shows that we went to had a BSL sign language interpreter interpreting that show. There was a sign up saying there's BSL. And this one at this time is going to be interpreted. So not every show is interpreted, but there was one and it was clearly obvious which one it was. Okay. So there were the really two positive things, which I think were great now for the slightly less great one.
So we went on this ride and to get on the ride, you have to queue up all around these different steps, all around this thing. So there is absolutely no way a wheelchair user is going to be able to get on that ride. But I saw, as we were queuing up on the ride, there's been a big sign saying, you know, wheelchair access via the lift. Okay. Now I, I'm not a wheelchair user. I was not there with anyone who's wheelchair user. So that wasn't something I needed to do. I queued up in the line.
We queued up for a long time. And as we got nearer the front of the line, we were queuing up alongside said lift. And so my children are asking me about this lift. I'm like, Oh, that's for the wheelchair users so they can get up the stairs. And as we were talking, we were literally stood right by this lift, the lift doors opened and a man and a lady who was a wheelchair user were there. Now they weren't with a member of staff.
And so they just, these lift doors opened and they were just confronted with this massive queue of people right in front of them. No space to be able to get out of this lift. Just me and my kids stood there like trying to shuffle out of the way to let them through. So they then come out the lift, but now there's maybe 15 people between the lift and the front of the line to go on the ride. So I'm thinking, how on earth are they supposed to get through?
Then they said, Oh, they said to us to go to this separate entrance bit. So we saw this chain. So I helped them get to there. And then the attendant at the front of the line, who's kind of loading people onto the roller coaster, couldn't even see them. there at all. So they're just kind of hovering there. So I said, Oh, don't worry. I'll, I'll let them know that you're there when we get to the front of the line. So we get to the front of the line.
I said, Oh, did you know that there's a wheelchair user there? She's waiting to get onto the roller coaster. She then tried to move us out the way to shuffle this wheelchair through the line, which obviously was never going to happen. Then she said, Oh, actually, I think there's a different access point. So she wandered round, open the access point for them, try to get them onto the ride. So she put them in like lanes. 12 or something like that.
Then she said to me and my kids, right, you need to go past them to get to the next lane, but there was no room to get past them. So she kept, this poor wheelchair user then was just apologizing constantly for being in our way. It was just a catalog of errors, right? And there was nowhere for the wheelchair to be stored. I just couldn't get my head around it, especially when we're having this conversation. And I thought to myself, yeah, on paper, they've done the right thing.
On paper, they've said, you know, here's a lift so the wheelchair users can get onto this ride. But the reality was that it was still completely inaccessible for that person. So not only would I love your reflections on that little, little thing that I saw yesterday, but also just to understand how we can make sure we're not just saying, Yeah, we are accessible and having the sign, but they're not actually being completely useless.
Oh, there's so much tron pic there. Yeah, that's just an awful thing. And it's what it's goes back to what I said about, you know, giving disabled people an equal experience, not just a like, well, we've ticked the boxes, but, you know, giving them an equal experience to a non disabled person. So that they're not having to constantly apologize or, you know, not knowing where to go next.
I think this ties into something I've been thinking about a lot recently, which is that we really want to approach accessibility from a user experience perspective. You know, think about the customer journey. How is that person going to find the next step? How is that person, you know, going to get to the accessible entrance? Is it signed? Is there somebody to show them? And another thing that this really ties into, I think, is the idea of like disability admin.
I was literally talking to a friend this morning about this because I was, I was going to ask if I could use an example. This is one of the first times I really had to think about physical accessibility was I organized a training weekend for a sort of volunteer project that I was part of. And the idea was that we'd go to like a village hall out in the countryside, somewhere indoor camp overnight for the weekend. And you know, that way it would kind of keep it And it had to be.
a village hall that was accessible and that was also close to an accessible train station. And trying to find something that met both those requirements was so difficult. And it just made me realize like how much thought has to go into planning anything. If you're a wheelchair user, I know so many stations, there are stations which are only accessible in one direction. And so you can go north, but you can't go south.
And I know friends who have had to push the emergency stop button on trains, cause nobody's been there with a ramp to help them off. And they know that if they don't get off at that station, that they'll have to travel like, you know, 30 minutes in the wrong direction and then go back to get to where they're going. And so, you know, in terms of user experience, I think that we should not only be making sure that. Disabled people have an equal experience.
I think we should be making sure they have a better experience to make up for all of that crap that they have to go through, really. So going back to the point about tokenism, I think this ties into something that I know, Becca, you love to say, which is take action and do the work. And I think in this particular case, it's really important to do the work before you start shouting about it. Because if you go around saying, Oh, like accessibility is my new thing.
And, you know, he's, you know, all my marketing with wheelchair users in it. And then a wheelchair user books with you and it's not actually accessible, then that's going to be really disappointing and a really bad experience for them. So, you know, really make sure that access is embedded in your business before you. Start shouting about it and really think about the user experience. Think about it from somebody else's perspective.
How are they going to get, you know, through, if you're a venue, for example, like, how are they going to get from each part of the day to the next? Does, does everything flow for them? before you go around saying, Hey, we're so accessible.
Yeah, 100%. I think it's really important that everyone doesn't just suddenly go away and say, I'm accessible on their website. Because that's the easy part, right? We could write the words, but it doesn't actually mean anything if then the user comes and we're not actually following through. In fact, it's worse. because they're expecting something and then we're not delivering on it. Now I know you shared a couple of examples earlier.
I wondered if you had any other examples where you personally or someone you know has made adjustments at a wedding to make it more accessible.
So if you want examples of somebody else I would just seriously recommend going to Disabled Elizas. Instagram feed because she is a disabled content creator who recently got married and she's done some great reels and things on how they made their wedding accessible. One particular example for me, this is an interesting one because it was a, it wasn't a direct booking to me. It was something that came through a band that I work with.
So I didn't actually know about this in advance, but I turned up to this gig and I saw that there was a wheelchair user. And I think that often people just assume that wheelchair users won't want to join in with a dance related thing like, Oh, they can't do it. They just won't want to do it. But I obviously don't think that's the case. So I had a chat with that person and just said, you know, Hi you know, I'm the caller.
I just wanted to check whether you'd like to join in with the Kaylee dancing. And they sort of said, Oh, I think I'll go away and think about it. So I thought back to all this learning I'd done about including wheelchair users at Kayleigh's. This person was using an electric wheelchair, and I know that there's they've got quite different ways that they move compared to a manual wheelchair. So they have quite a big turning circle.
So I was thinking, right, if they want to join any dances, I'm going to have to make sure that there's not lots of turning in it. And basically this person then approached me sort of a couple of dances before the last dance and said, do you think I could join in with the last dance? Cause I'd like that. And so I just you know, made a few little adaptions. I made sure that the basis of the dance would work well.
It was one where people go down the middle and I thought that would be a really great thing to do in a wheelchair is just like go down the middle of a really long line. And yeah, they were just so happy with it. And like everybody else was clearly really happy that they'd got the opportunity to join in as well. Like when they went down the middle of the group, like everyone was like cheering and yeah, it just, it showed that all of that sort of work doing the learning.
was well spent because then I got to apply it and make sure that that person could join in.
Amazing. And what I love about having this conversation with you, Lisa, is I can just see how excited you are, how, how happy you are to be able to make these adjustments and to be able to ensure that everyone can apply. Access what you're doing, and that's how we need to look at this. We need to see this as a really exciting opportunity, a way to make people feel included, a way to make sure everyone can access our services.
And I think sometimes we see it as a, as a worry is something to be concerned about. But actually, I just love how you're talking about it as something to be excited about. I'm actually part of a theater group talking about people wanting to dance in a wheelchair. I'm part of a theater group and we've recently had someone contact us who is a wheelchair user asking if they're able to be in our next show. And I'm really excited.
And I think it's a really positive thing, a really positive way to be looking at it. Now, when people are listening to this, they're probably thinking, right. Becca, Lisa, I hear what you're saying. I'm getting excited about this too, but practically, what are the things I need to be doing? So what is it, what's important to think about when we're thinking about making sure our individual businesses are more accessible?
So my first thing would be to learn. and spend some time learning about the social model of disability, for example, and I'm going to send Becca some links where you can read about that. And then I think the concepts to base your sort of accessibility journey on. So we've got the social model, we've got thinking about, you know, the user experience of access. And then something else that I like to think about is.
the idea of anticipatory versus kind of bespoke access, because I think, I think sometimes when we're talking about access, people are like, Oh my God, say if I'm a celebrant, does every ceremony that I do have to be BSL interpreted? It's like, well, obviously not. There's no point in having BSL interpretation for a ceremony if there's no, BSL users in the audience. So you, at that point, you're doing bespoke access. You want to make the access bespoke to who is there.
There are, however, some anticipatory things that you can do before you have that conversation about bespoke access. And those would be the things like having the access information on your website really easy to find making sure that there's a really clear contact for questions about accessibility. Especially if you're a venue. Or some, a business that has multiple staff having one key person whose responsibility it is to answer any questions about access.
Because one experience that I've heard quite a lot about is the experience of trying to contact a venue or something like that to find out if it's accessible. and the person who receives the email says, Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that. I'll forward you onto this person. And then that person doesn't know the answer and they forward you onto somebody else. And that person doesn't know the answer and they forward you back to the first person and you still haven't got the answer.
And you've been copied into like five emails. Again, it's this disability admin thing of, you know, we want to reduce that. So if it's one person's. responsibility, even if they don't know the answer, if they can take on the admin of going and finding the answer and then going back to the client, then that's sort of an ideal scenario. So think about the combination of things that you can do in a sort of anticipatory way like that. versus the bespoke things that you can do once you've actually
started that conversation. And so much of that, especially the bespoke part of it comes down to asking that one simple question on your booking form or on your intake form that says, is there anyone with accessibility requirements? Because then you can make it bespoke. And I think sometimes we can fall into that trap.
I was just thinking, as you were talking, I've got a really good friend who is a sign language interpreter, and she recently got a job spec through for this company that wanted her to go and sign on stage for all of these talks. And her first question back to them was, well, do you have someone? in the audience that needs that? Or are you just doing it so you look good? Because I'm not a dancing monkey. I'm there to help interpret to someone who needs to be interpreted to.
And if they haven't actually asked the question, is there someone that needs a BSL sign language interpreter, then I they're kind of doing the wrong thing. They're trying to do the right thing, but actually doing the wrong thing. Does that make sense?
Yeah. I think again, it goes back to that idea of like tokenism. Like if you just put something in place because you want to look accessible versus doing what somebody actually needs. It goes back to, again, to that, to that thing about not making assumptions as well. For example, not all deaf people are BSL users. So, you know, you don't want to ask someone, this is why we ask someone, do you have any access requirements, rather than, do you have a disability?
Because finding out what somebody's disability is, is completely irrelevant and useless, really. because you can't judge what they need from that. You need to be asking what, what are your requirements? What can we do to support you to make this more accessible? Because it's so
individual to every person. So, so true. Now, while we're on this conversation, again, talking a little bit about tokenism, I want to talk and bring the conversation over to representation, because I do believe representation matters and we should be doing it in our wedding businesses. But I also think it's quite easy for us to stray into this idea. of tokenism. Now, I don't class myself as having any kind of disability, but I did have a bit of experience with it a few years ago.
So you may not know Lisa, but between the ages of three and five, my daughter had quite severe hearing loss and wore hearing aids. And at that point, we were starting to talk about whether we needed to To learn sign language, we didn't know if it was going to be forever or whether she would grow out of it. As it turned out, it was just severe glue ear and she is now hearing and no longer needs her hearing aids.
But during that time, I did have an insight into this different way of living and one of the things I noticed was the lack of representation. All I wanted to do was buy her a doll. That had a hearing aid because I wanted her to feel like it was normal. You know, a three year old girl wearing these pink sparkly hearing aids, she feels different to all of her peers at preschool. It was really hard to try and find this doll that would wear a hearing aid.
What I did at the end is I just bought a normal doll and then I bought these hearing aid accessories from America, got them shipped over and super glued it on to the doll. But actually it would have meant the world to her if I could have just gone into the shop, bought this doll that had a hearing aid and she would have seen herself represented. So there is positives to representation, a hundred percent, but also we can be slightly tokenistic.
So talk to me about how we can be representative in our wedding businesses without straying into tokenism. It goes back to
doing the work before you shout about it, because absolutely we would love to see more representation in styled shoots and, you know, in marketing materials. But if you do a styled shoot with, you know, Disabled person and then your business isn't actually accessible, then that's going to be a disappointment. That is just tokenism. So, I think that one way that you can increase representation before you get to that stage is go and follow some disabled content creators and share their content.
And that's something that I do a lot of. My Instagram feed is basically Almost entirely disabled content creators because that's where I do most of my learning, you know Remember like you don't have to go and read a book if that's not your thing You don't have to you know, sort of go and read a really long blog like just having you know, that on your Instagram feed, it's such a great way to learn.
And if you specifically choose disabled creators who are talking from their own lived experience, then it can, you know, you can learn so much. So I just try every day to share at least one post about access or disability on my stories. And that's just such an easy thing to do and it kind of, you know, helps to increase visibility and the sort of representation. And that both you and your audience will learn about accessibility.
I also think, you know, you can talk about your values on your website, on your social media, but again, make sure that you have the action to back that up. Amazing.
Now, as we start to bring this conversation to a close, Lisa, have you got one final takeaway for the wedding business owners, venue owners that might be listening to this episode? What's one final takeaway that you want people to think about?
I'm going to be cheeky and actually say two, which I think the first thing is start the conversation. Just give people an opportunity to tell you and, you know, be proactive in that way. It makes such a difference. And then the second thing, I've said it before, just remember that disabled people want to feel special on their wedding day too. We all know that it's so much admin organizing a wedding. So let's not add a load of disability admin to that.
or give them access provisions that just make them feel less than like having to go around the back entrance. Let's make sure that we're making people feel as special as they should be.
I love that. And you know, that it's important to me that we should make all couples feel special on their wedding days. They're not just numbers to us. So it's really important in all aspects of our business that we're looking at how we do that, whether they've got a disability or not, let's just make everyone who's getting married feel absolutely special. Now. If people want to learn more, and Lisa, I know that there is a lot more for us all to learn.
This is a great place for people to start, but there's a whole lot more that we can be doing and can be learning. Have you got any resources, places to point us to where people can do more learning?
There's so many that I'm not going to bore you by listing them all now. But I'm going to send. Becca, a list of creators on Instagram, as well as some handy explainers. There's a really great one about the different models of disability on the Drake music website. So I'll make sure that all those links are
in the description. Amazing. Yeah. I will ensure that I put all of those links Inside of the show notes. So if you want to access any of those and do the learning, then you can go ahead and grab those. Lisa, it's been so much fun talking to you about this topic, a topic that I was nervous at the start about talking about, but actually I'm so glad that we've done it and I think so many people are going to have learned from it as well. However, I always. End the podcast with the same question.
So I'm going to pose that to you now. What's one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in your own wedding business?
So I think the main thing that I wish I'd known sooner was just that you don't have to be one size fits all and try to be like everybody else. It's okay to be yourself and to shout loudly about your values, which is what I'm trying to do about inclusion, accessibility, and just being a bit different.
Love it. Absolutely. I love everything that you're doing, everything you stand for. Thank you so much. If people want to find out more about you personally, about your Ceilidhs, about your barn dances, and to see the content that you are sharing as well, where's the best places for them to find you?
So you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. My handle is at Lisa. H dot dance, or my website, which is www. lisaHeywood. net, that's Heywood spelled H E Y W O O D. It's the northern way, not the southern way.
Amazing. And again, I will make sure that we put those in the show notes as well so that people can click and find you. Lisa, it's been such a pleasure having this conversation with you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for having me. Wow. What a fascinating conversation that was with Lisa. I hope you've enjoyed listening to that as much as I have enjoyed speaking with her about this subject.
If you do need to go back, listen again, grab that notebook, note down the things that you could be doing. I encourage you do some more learning, go through and look at those links that Lisa's going to put together for you. And if nothing else, consider putting that question on your booking form. I'll see you next time.