New DMU-Cuba network to make society more inclusive for disabled people

Innovations to help make society more inclusive for disabled people are set to arise from a new partnership at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU). 

For 18 months, education experts at DMU and the Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam, have been working with counterparts and disabled-led organisations in Cuba to share ideas on how to ensure disabled people are at the heart of inclusive social development. 

The relationship has already led to many innovations, including the creation of methods for developing sustainable and inclusive children’s playgrounds, and new Easy Read materials about finding and navigating employment, co-created with learning-disabled workers. 

Because of this success, the relationship will be cemented in the creation of a new Cuba-UK disability network to build on the work. 

Dr Rosi Smith, senior lecturer in Education at DMU, said she had long admired Cuba’s approach to co-creation. 

She said: “Working with Cuba has been a lesson in the importance of the joined-up, intersectoral work they do so well. 

“That work is based on leadership by mass membership disability organisations only ever run by people with lived experience. 

“It is only through collaboration like this that we can start to enact real social change.” 

DMU began working with Cuba through a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to explore participatory disability practice in the two countries. 

The new network is being led by the education team at DMU in collaboration with the University of Granma (Cuba), the Centre for Research on Cuba at the University of Nottingham and the Autism Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, and the Cuba’s Disabled People’s Organisations. It includes the country’s new national learning disability and neurodiversity organisation formed last year. 

It was officially recognised with a visit to DMU by Her Excellency Mrs. Ismara Mercedes Vargas Walter, the UK ambassador to Cuba. 

During a speech at the event, Ambassador Walter said: “With a focus on accessibility and inclusiveness, this project is very instrumental in promoting a collaboration that effectively helps to bridge gaps and divides that we see in society. 

“In addition to the practical benefits and outcomes of the project, the fact that it seeks to involve the university for an academic approach on the situation of people with disabilities, hopefully leading to a new academic look from other areas of knowledge to seek sensitisation and alternatives in favour of people with disabilities, is particularly relevant.”