NEWS UPDATE
JBC Winter Newsletter 2009/10.
Happy New Year to everyone! We hope you have all survived a good Yuletide holiday and that you are looking forward with excitement to the New Year.
Our move to the coast took place on 11 December and we have almost completed our settling in, although it will probably take another couple of weeks to be totally finished. Despite our oldest cat dying before we arrived here, we are very pleased with the change of lifestyle. We adopted John Claricoat's retired guide dog, Ruth, who is enjoying long walks and playing on the seashore.
Our new contact details are: -
E-mail: E-mail June (No change.)
Tel: +44 (0) 1255 503 778.
1. "Historic Cities" - Despite the move, we actually managed to complete the report in November and those people who assisted us in the research have (or should have) all received electronic copies. We are now happy to share it with anyone who thinks it could be of use to them in their work. It is available in PDF format. For those of you who did not contribute, we would ask you for a contribution of 30 Euros towards our costs. Anyone interested, please contact us by email or telephone as shown above. We hope that others who were involved in the production will continue the work and build on this report to further EU developments.
2. Website: Our move has prompted us to update our JBC-London website and Tony Scott is in the process of doing this, so watch out for a new improved version.
3. Medical Training: It's the time of year for the courses to start once again. Following our move, June is not intending to do any of the actual lecturing in future. She is concentrating upon the many legal cases that are multiplying on the desk and leaving David, Joan, Ennis and Tony to do the frontline work. We are currently training Steve Rattray to join their number and hope he will have completed the course at least in time to join the actors for the examination season.
4. We are still enjoying working with several of the architect and signage companies with whom we've had a good relationship over the past five years or so. There are exciting new projects in the offing for several of them. June has retired from the Steering Group of the SDS and the SDG Editorial Panel, although JBC is still an SDS member.
5. We are pleased to note that the long awaited 'Hope' Magazine for Londoners has finally reached Go! June has been asked to provide several articles for inclusion in its editions.
6. We are thrilled to learn that the work we did with Waltham Forest to apply for HLF finance to upgrade Lloyd and Llewellyn Park, close to our old address has been very successful. The redevelopment has won £3,48m for the work.
7. We were very pleased to receive a copy of a book on access to museums written and edited by Rajka in Slovenia. Our co-operation with Rajka assisted us on our Historic Cities report and on this very useful book. It is one of several that Rajka is writing prior to undertaking a new PhD course on museum inclusive design, which we are sure will influence new approaches in Slovenian galleries and collections. We wish her every success.
Aunt Megan Visits the Houses of Parliament
Last year, June played the part of 'Aunt Megan' during a RNIB campaign' event at the Houses of Parliament. This was to explain to MPs and Lords how important audio description can be to thousands of people when it is included on TV programmes. At that time, it was announced that Sky would increase its AD coverage to 20% and this was soon followed by the BBC. Other providers are not so considerate and it is only now that they have to commit to 12%. Offcom conducted research to see what more was needed and it is hoped that the results of this will be announced in March. The proposals are that all Public Service broadcasters should commit to 20% but the RNIB are urging for 20% across the board. 
Certainly this would open up the wide variety of programmes that appear on the other channels.
June, in her role of Megan from Penarth welcomed visitors into her mocked up sitting room to take tea with her and watch a non audio described TV clip so they could see the difficulties imposed. Afterwards, they could see the same clip with AD whilst discussing the technical aspects with RNIB staff.
We are hoping that the event will be as successful as last year but the General Election looms large and may put thoughts about audio description out of their minds for another year.
June is shown in the photo taking tea with Helen Southworth MP who hosted the event.
June and David
