The Paralympic Games: Legacies and Empowerment

In this episode, I explore the potential impact the Paralympic Games may have on disabled people.
 
The potential for sport participation legacies from the Paralympic Games is reviewed, followed by a critical appraisal of the empowerment/disempowerment potential of the Paralympic Games for disabled people. 

Thanks for listening to the Disability Sport Info show! 

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Transcript of Disability Sport Info episode, ‘The Paralympic Games: Legacies and Empowerment

Key

Speaker: CB: Dr Christopher Brown (Presenter – University of Hertfordshire, UK) 

Speaker: LM: Dr Laura Misener (Participant – Western University, Canada)

Speaker: DP: Dr Danielle Peers (Participant – University of Alberta, Canada)

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 0:30

In this episode, we'll consider what difference the Paralympic Games can have on disabled people. We’ll discuss the concept of sport participation legacies and critically appraise the empowerment potential of the Games. We begin with a discussion on sport participation legacies from the Paralympic Games. I consider what we mean by legacy and consider how the Paralympic Games might, or might not, be able to influence sport participation. I spoke to Professor Laura Misener, an expert in the field of Paralympic legacies. 

Laura, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me today to discuss Paralympic legacies. In the build up to a mega sport event, and after amazing sporting exploits, there’s often the belief that the event or sporting achievements from the athletes, will serve to inspire some people to take up sport. This is often framed as being a legacy from the event. Claims of legacies from mega sporting events are common. But what do we mean by legacy in a Paralympic context?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 1:25

Sure. I’m happy chat about Paralympic legacies. Legacy is an interesting concept because it's a bit nebulous in many respects. People use it for anything and everything that comes after the event or has been created or impacted by hosting a mega event. So it is a bit of a catch-all term. But the reality is what we really mean by legacy is anything that is directly created as a result of hosting the event. So often we think about that in terms of large infrastructure, such as stadia or venues that we have to build in order to host a large Games, such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games. And in relation then to Paralympic legacies, the piece that's really important to consider, is the ways in which that supports more individuals with disabilities becoming more involved in participation in sport in all realms of life. So creating infrastructure, such as those venues that become fully accessible, where they may not have been accessible previously, creating public transportation that actually connects individuals to those particular infrastructures, in order to create an accessible network so that you can actually participate. And then, of course, there are, you know, things beyond the physical structures and the concept of social legacies. So the idea that it will change our understanding or our feelings about participating in sport, for example. And around the Paralympic legacy piece, there's quite a bit that's associated with the idea that it will change our perceptions and understanding of disability and our awareness about issues of disability. And so, the Games are often touted as an example of the way that we can think differently, see and view disability differently. And maybe understand visibility differently and more positively in our everyday life. Those are sort of the common assumptions that are considered to be legacy. The challenge, of course, is really understanding and measuring any of those to see if they actually do create any of this legacy.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 3:42

Really interesting insights and lots of topics that have been covered in your answer there. This brings us to the idea of measuring legacy. Legacy seems to be an all-encompassing concept, so how do we go about measuring legacies from the Paralympic Games? Are there any insights from the literature in how we can do this?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 4:00

Well, a lot of scholars have tried to measure different legacies. And there's been arguments made that you can't really measure legacy in the direct aftermath of a Games: that's not actually the legacy. The legacy is something that comes in the long term. So, you know, the five to 10 years, even longer than that, range after the Games. That's really the true measure of legacy at least that's what scholars have argued for a long time. The problem, of course, becomes is, many of us aren't around for that amount of time. It takes a lot to actually do those kinds of studies that are extremely longitudinal. So studying Paralympic legacy from that longitudinal perspective is challenging and there are almost no studies that do that, that actually look at that longitudinal long-term legacy. A few studies have examined some more direct impacts post-Games. So, for example, looking at has it changed individual's attitudes towards disability in the direct aftermath of the Games? So I was involved in a study with some colleagues who looked at the Commonwealth Games as an example of how does this potentially impact individuals’ attitudes. And what we really found is, in fact, the Games didn't really have much of an impact on people's perception and understanding of disability, partly because those who typically come to watch the event or are involved in the event, already have pretty positive attitudes, already have a really generally good understanding and insights about disability. So it's not necessarily impacting the broader society in a way we want it to. And so that becomes the big challenge of measuring legacy is because we need to ensure that there is intentionality. So something actually needs to be set out in advance of the Games, planned to do something to create these impact and to create these long-term impacts in order for us to measure. Otherwise, what we find is scholars measuring things that weren't really supposed to happen anyway and are just hoping that maybe something did happen or maybe the organisers say, ‘oh, this might be a great outcome, maybe lots of people will get involved in participating in sport’. That's a great one that event organisers like to say, everybody's gonna get up and start getting active once they watch the Games. And the reality is, that just doesn't happen. There's maybe a small inspiration, particularly in the Paralympic space, where typically we don't see individuals with disability on TV or broadcasts in that way. So it may have a small inspiration effect, but it doesn't have a big long-term participation impact in the way that event organisers or politicians might suggest that it does. And so those are the big pieces is actually measuring legacy is very, very challenging.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 6:52

I'm really interested in this notion that a mega event, such as Olympic Games or the Paralympic Games, may not be able to provide sustainable regular sports participation. We often hear claims from governments and host organisers that, ‘yes, this mega event will be able to inspire people to be active to participate in more sport’. But if we've got evidence to the contrary, why does this idea, this belief that a mega event will provide regular participation persist? For our listeners, are you able to explain why mega events maybe aren't the best way of increasing regular participation amongst the population.

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 7:37

Right. I mean, that's a million dollar question in some respects. Why doesn't it create participation and why do we not see the effects that event organisers claim it to be? I think if an event in of itself, I mean, to put it in really simplistic terms in a nutshell, if an event was the magic pill that could fix the inactivity problem, that we’d be set, right? We host a big event and everybody would get up and start active, but I mean, we understand very well theories of behaviour change, that behaviour change takes a long time and more than one singular process or event in order to change people's behaviour. So if people aren't already active, just seeing others active is not likely to inspire them to be active. In fact, we have seen studies that have shown the opposite because, in fact, it gets individuals realising, ‘well, I actually probably could never achieve that. So why do I start? Why would I even start?’ So it actually goes counter intuitive to our understandings of what we know about behaviour change. And interestingly, we have even seen some research where we might see what might look like an impact on participation from the Games and particularly Paralympic Games. But what those studies have found is that it's getting people who were already active, to try new things, so they might be switched to another sport. Maybe they see something in the Games they didn't know existed, and that's a really big piece about Paralympic Games is that you know, there might be, they might see somebody might see something they didn't know was available to them. And so that active person might then switch to another sport and so that's where sometimes organisers and those in the sport sector might say it does have an impact. It may have an impact in shifting people to different sports, maybe encouraging some people to go towards a high performance perspective. But overall, it's not changing the behaviour of average everyday citizens to say, ‘I want to get up and start moving and participating. To change behaviour takes a lot more than that. It's not just simply showing somebody what's out there and available. We need to be able to lead people in order to get people more active. So there needs to be an activation on top of that event, if we actually expect to see any changes in behaviour.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 10:02

I think we can make a distinction between those who already are participating in sport who may increase their frequency or engage in activity switching, and those who are new to sport participation. So when we hear claims about more people participating in sport, we have to question whether these claims are about already active individuals participating in more sport, or whether we're referring to new people participating in sport. It sounds like getting new people to participate in sport is harder. So it's the non-active individuals who we really want to take up sport from a health and social perspective, but that's harder to achieve using a mega sport event, it sounds like.

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 10:39

Yeah, because to change people's behaviour and I mean. I work in a School of Kinesiology and my colleagues are from all disciplines in kinesiology, so from sport management, psychologist, exercise physiologist, and this is what we study, is getting people to actually be active and change behaviour, and so just an event in of itself is not enough. The one value I think that's really important that we do need to remember though, in the Paralympic Games or events that demonstrate and show disability sport is, is at the very least it shows people what is available and what the options are. Where we don't see that on a regular basis. That's not physical to us. I don't think a lot of people knew or understood things about how Boccia, for example, is played or that that is a sport that is available to individuals with severe levels of impairment, severe levels of cerebral palsy. That's not something that is known and well understood. So the Games create an opportunity to showcase those things and show people that there are these opportunities available to them. But it's really upon event organisers and cities to do something about that if they want to get people active. Not just show it, you need to lead us to it and let us know how to get involved in that.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 12:00

So you can't just wait for the event to engender change by itself. That's not going to be sufficient. You need to have supplementary programmes and initiatives to encourage people to be active on a regular basis.

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 12:11

And, essentially, that's the concept, and I know we're going to talk about it, the idea of leveraging. Because that really moves us beyond just simply expecting the event to create the outcomes, to using the event as a catalyst to create particular outcomes. So if we want people to be more active or involved in disability sport, the event itself is a great showcase to what's available. But now we then need to activate on that. So demonstrate to individuals, ‘well, now that you've seen that, here's the local programme that you can get involved in. And here's how you get involved and come and try it out. And let's try a free day’. Let's have, you know, a free pass to it, bring a friend to it, so that we actually get people involved in trying those and then from there we can potentially build that sport participation in those opportunities. So leveraging is really about using the event as a catalyst, and then strategically creating those opportunities to have those particular outcomes and impacts and in this case, if we're talking about sport participation, it's making sure that clubs are ready, that organisations are ready and they're doing something to actually welcome new individuals and new participants into their organisations.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 13:27

You mentioned leveraging so I think now is a good time to focus on this. Leveraging is quite a hot concept in the legacy literature for the reasons that you mentioned. We know the event on its own is not going to be sufficient. If you want to get some participation benefits from the event you need to have leveraging to complement the staging of the event. But what do we know about leveraging techniques? What do we know about organisations leveraging the event? Is leveraging a common practice? Does leveraging happen before the event? Does it happen after the event? What's your understanding of leveraging in the literature?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 13:58

Right. So there's a little bit of a debate in the literature and those of us who sit on one side of it. I would argue that there's a clear distinction between legacy, which is just an outcome of the event the event happening, something gets put in place and the event organisers, the Organising Committee moves on. Leveraging is about the capitalising on event related resources, so using whatever resources come in associated with the event, those things need to be tied to local initiatives. So ideally, it's not out of the blue, something completely different, but it really fits and is embedded within the policy structures existing within a local community. And that can then be something that is enduring and sustainable, longer term after the event. So can it happen before, during, or after, was one of your questions and yeah, it can, because in fact, the catalytic effect of an event happens at each of those stages. It happens before when you're gonna have this build-up and excitement of it coming and there are new infrastructure being built and you're recruiting volunteers, so you can use those opportunities to catalyse and create new things that might happen or they may be embedded in the community, new volunteers, new participants, right? So you can use that. During the event you have this celebration opportunity. And it's easy to capitalise on that celebration to create potential new outcomes that you might want to see. And then of course, in the aftermath of the event once the event is actually done, you have left with these legacy pieces, these resources, whether they be infrastructure, financial resources, human resources, in order to use those strategically to create particular outcomes, whether it be sport participation, whether it's to focus on new and accessible programming in the community, transportation, there's all kinds of different things that can be done to use those resources. 

So I would say from a theoretical perspective, we know well and we have good ideas about what can and should be done. But to be fair, we don't have a lot of empirical evidence to support this right. This is a good idea and there are events that are doing it, and we have some evidence that shows how events are how communities and organisations have used an event to create new participants in a programme or support a new facility to get new participants into that facility. But, in reality, we don't have a lot of studies that actually demonstrate how this should be done. And one of the key issues is that we know an organising committee is a short-term entity. They’re there to organise an event and then after the event is done, they're gone. So someone needs to be taking ownership over those leveraging initiatives that will be enduring beyond the Games. So if we really want more people to get involved in disability sport, it needs to be living in a different space. Those ideas, those leveraging activities, it can't just live with the Organising Committee. And I think that's the big piece that's been a stopgap in the literature, is that people have studied events and organising committees as being the central entity, but the reality is, as we know, is that event in those organising committees are fleeting, so we need to start to look towards what other organisations, what other groups could be capitalising and leveraging those events. And I’m being a bit long winded here, but I can give you one example of that is I've worked closely with a group in the province of Ontario. That is a group of disability sport organisations and provincial sport organisations that came together around 2015. Pan Am Parapan American Games. And the idea was to increase participation for individuals with disabilities in sport and physical activity. And so the event was the catalyst to create the bringing together of that group, but now we're talking five years out, and that group remains working together continuing to create opportunities, continuing to capitalise on the resources that were brought in as a part of the 2015 Games. And we have seen significant increases in programming opportunities and participation opportunities for individuals with disabilities capitalised on that and use that for coaching resources, increased Para coaching. So there are some instances of demonstrating how this is working. But I would say those instances are few and far between.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 18:41

In terms of that particular example you refer to, do we have data about the number of people participating? It seems there are resources available and knowledge may have increased, but in terms of converting people from being non-active to active, do we have the data to support the leveraging efforts that have gone on for that particular example?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 19:01

So I might throw my own government under the bus here by saying this, you know, but unlike the UK where you are, or in Australia, we don't have very good, broad-based statistical data related to participation numbers. So we actually don't have, even on our census data, we don't collect data about participation numbers. So we have very little information to know where the baseline was to begin with. So on one hand, it makes it really easy for politicians to say, ‘we've increased participation! Look at all these new people participating!’ because they have no idea where we started from. So anybody participating suddenly looks like a great increase and we're doing a wonderful job. So we have struggled with really being able to sort of prove that numerically and to really sort of say this is the actual increase in numbers. We have evidence from each of the partners that's involved in this collective to say, you know, they tell us and they have shown us within their own programmes, whether they've seen increased numbers, and they can tell us what those numbers are. But we what we don't know is, are those sports switchers? Did they come from another sport and suddenly decide, ‘well, now there's a new velodrome so I'm going to take up cycling instead of, you know, the swimming I was doing before’. We don't know to the extent at which we're seeing that. Anecdotally, from the partners. We are seeing, many have been saying, ‘yeah, we know these people, we’ve seen them around. It's not necessarily new’. So, because of that, what we actually have done recently is the partners have focused more on trying to get people into introductory programmes through partnership opportunity. So bring a friend to the programme. You know, come for free for your first 5 sessions and actually seen some good uptake on that. Partnering with hospitals and therapy programmes to get those who are maybe already in therapy or using physical activity as a therapeutic mechanism into participating outside of that space and a regular mechanism. So we're seeing some really good uptake on that. So that's a bit of a stay tuned, because I think what we will see is there is some opportunity of that, but overall, I would say the biggest piece for this group is the fact that they stayed together and they're working together. So the partnership is really the key legacy and then they are capitalising on that partnership.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 21:35

I think this points to the issue of measurement we discussed earlier. You've got the issue of a lack of baseline data and then trying to understand really granular detail about the nature of the participants. Are these new people to sport and physical activity? Are these already active individuals trying a new sport? We don't know because the baseline data isn't sufficient to really give us those insights. So I think this highlights the point you made earlier that it is tricky to measure legacy

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 22:02

Extremely difficult to measure legacy. And, you know, on the one hand, we know governments, politicians in particular, want to see that numerical data, they want to see the numbers of how many people are participating. And then the other there are those of us who are in the research realm who see yes, that's important. But there are other pieces that are important. What is the experience of participation? Because if we think about it, one of the great things that can happen as a legacy is the creation of, for example, accessible facilities. I talked about that at the outset. And for individuals with disability, that's a big piece. You know, they may have been participating before but maybe it wasn't in a venue that was really meeting their needs, or a programme that was meeting their needs. And so that qualitative data has been really important and we have collected some information on that. I’m gonna put a plug in, we have a project ongoing right now. That is actually a website called Project Echo. And it is about asking people, ‘what are their experiences in previously host cities? So do they have better opportunities? Do they feel like they have better access? What is the experience that they're getting?’ Because that qualitative information is really quite critical to understanding legacy, not just the numbers. So we can measure those things but you know, comes back to politicians don't always want to hear that qualitative piece. They want the numbers.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 23:35

Good plug! Do check it out, Project Echo, really important project going on. Like you said, we do need qualitative evidence, those rich understandings of legacy that may not be highlighted in more quantitative studies. Well, it's clear to me from this discussion, that leveraging is really important. And if we want to get any sport participation benefits from mega sport events, leveraging must accompany the event itself. But do organisations leverage mega sport events from what we know? What's your take on this, Laura? Or how common is leveraging?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 23:55

It's not as common as we might think. And we go back to the central question of whose responsibility is it? So what we do know is that we think for sport participation, for example, it should reside with community sport organisations, local sport organisations. But we've done some research that has suggested that those organisations don't have the capacity or the ability really to activate in the way we might want them to. If we think about local community organisations, they're already stretched for resources, mostly acting, you know, in the capacity of volunteers and limited volunteer support. So, you know, even when we've tried to work with them to help them and support them leverage an event, it's been very, very challenging. And we haven't seen the outcome that we would have liked in order to support a leveraging effort. But there have been other studies that have shown even small leveraging activities. For example, a colleague of mine at University of Waterloo, Luke Potwarka, did some work around the 2015 Pan Am Games about giving out, you know, free passes, just a singular free pass, come and try this new facility. And it had a really good impact on the uptake. So, many people did then come and try the facility and in doing so, those at the facilities then capitalise on that opportunity and then have developed the programme more. So some small things are happening. They might be happening more than we, as researchers really know, because I don't know that the organisations in the groups doing them really see that as a big deal. Like I think they just do it because, well, this is a great event and why wouldn't we do something how great and so in fact, you know, it's getting and finding those little things that are going on that are really important. And you know, the example that I talked about in the province of Ontario, I don't know that that's necessarily unique. I actually think there are more events that have partnership groups working together to leverage in some way, it's just that this is still a relatively new concept. So there isn't a lot of empirical evidence to support or understand how and why and in what mechanisms.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 26:07

As an expert in the field, are you able to summarise the current state of knowledge in the Paralympic legacy literature? What do you think will be the most important aspect for future research in this area, do you think?

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 26:21

That's not a small question to end this up! That’s a big question! It's interesting, a number of years ago, some colleagues of mine, and I think you've spoken to one of them, David Legg, was part of that, we did a study on the state of Paralympic legacies. And at that time back in 2013, I think it was, I was astonished at the lack of research that was being done on Paralympic legacy, that we really knew almost nothing about what was happening related to legacy, leveraging and Paralympic Games. The things that we did know tended to be towards managerial implications. So for example, the importance of how the Paralympic Games has helped develop and fuel disability sport governance and developing sports organisations more broadly and across the globe. But beyond that we have very little understanding of what was happening with legacies related to the Games. Fast forward almost, you know, eight years later and it is pleasing to say we know a small bit more. We understand a little bit about, you know, what it looks like in terms of Paralympic impact in terms of venues, volunteers, what do volunteers, why do they volunteer? What are they doing at the Games? What do they get out of the Games? And we know a little bit about sport participation, and the fact that really, there isn't as much impact as we would like or hope that there might be. And we know a little bit more about sort of the broader implications around governance and partnerships, in terms of local level pieces. But I think what we do see is a pretty big gap in really understanding what impact the Games, the Paralympic Games, can have on cities, communities, and individuals. So I believe that is a big open piece because I encourage researchers to really take up this effort and really start to understand that. I think we have a good community of scholars who has really begun to take up that effort and we're learning more about athlete development, media and marketing, the communication strategies, broadcasting of the Games and the impact that has on local communities. And so, I suspect in the years to come, we're going to know and understand a lot more about Paralympic legacy because we have more scholars working in that space. And I find that very encouraging. But at the current time it's still in its infancy. So let's talk again in five years from now, Chris, and maybe we'll have a better understanding of Paralympic legacy.

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 28:55

Yes, hopefully in five to 10 years’ time, we’ll have a larger wealth of knowledge to draw upon about Paralympic legacy. And we can then have an even more in-depth discussion about legacy. Well, that's all we've got time for. It's been really interesting chatting with you today, Laura, about Paralympic legacies and I thank you for your time. I hope you, Listener, have learned more about Paralympic legacies following our discussion. Laura, it's been great talking to you and I look forward to catching up with you soon!

Speaker:  LM                      Time: 29:22

Well, thanks so much. It was great to be here.

*** Discussion ends ***

Speaker:  CB                       Time: 29:24

Associate Professor Laura Misener, there, talking about Paralympic legacies. So we now turn our attention, our final focus of this podcast, to the question of, ‘is the Paralympic Games a source of empowerment or disempowerment for disabled people?’ To help us consider this question, I’m delighted to welcome Assistant Professor Dr Danielle Peers to the show, who will be discussing the literature on the empowerment potential of the Paralympic Games. 

Dr Danielle Peers is a renowned expert in the field and is a former Paralympian herself, having represented Canada in wheelchair basketball, winning a bronze at the Athens Paralympics in 2004. Danielle, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me today to discuss the empowerment potential of the Paralympic Games. 

I think it's fair to say the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is keen to push the idea of the Paralympics as having the ability to empower disabled people and to affect positive changes for disability in society. But there are some who question whether the Paralympics is really as empowering as the IPC and others suggest. So, to start off, I and my listeners would be keen to understand: what do we mean by empowerment or disempowerment when discussing the Paralympic Games? And in what ways can the Paralympic Games empower or disempower disabled people?

Speaker: DP                        Time: 30:41

When we can think about empowerment, we kind of want to think about it in multiple levels. So on the one we tend to conflate sometimes what's good for individual athletes, what's good for the collective of Paralympic athletes, and what’s sort of good or empowering for disabled people in general? So when talking about empowerment at the individual level, I like to think about something Foucault would call ‘degrees of freedom’. So one way to think about that is what are the range of choices an individual has in their life? What are the kinds of different ways that we act, think, be as individuals? What’s sort of our possible range? And so I think it is very possible, at the individual level, to think that particular Paralympic athletes are likely, sometimes, feeling empowered by their Paralympic journey, right? It’s very possible that they have new career opportunities opened. That people who may not have had opportunities to travel, for example, may have access to that through Parasport. And the people who may have felt isolated in this small community may have met other disabled people and found, potentially, a disability consciousness through that, or a sense of community. So I don’t want to take away the ways that people's individual life chances may be bettered by their experiences as an athlete. I certainly have experienced some of those things myself. 

But also, I think anytime you're dealing with elite sport, you're dealing with an incredibly disciplinary regime, right? I mean, as an athlete, and as a team athlete, I can speak to just how much of your life is controlled by that team, by the coaches, by the programme, the things you're not allowed to do. 90% of your time is dictated by someone else. I have a kind of impairment that can be made worse by overexertion. And despite having agreements about what I would be doing based on what would not harm me long term, those were rarely recognised when a game needed to be won. There's just so many times when we get set up in a situation where it felt like, actually, as an athlete, my degrees of freedom when I was an athlete were incredibly limited! You know, I didn't attend my grandma's funeral because I wasn’t allowed to, you know, go home from tournaments, those of the kind of things that also restrict our choices. So I think at the individual level we can talk some empowerment some disempowerment in making decisions. 

But I think what I'm more talking about is at the collective level. So when we think about the collective of Paralympic athletes, what I’m talking about when we think about empowerment is, to what degree do athletes have agency within their own lives in sports? To what degree to disabled athletes get to make decisions about what ball size they play with, the rules of the game with the kinds of structures they’re playing within, with the classification systems and when those change, right? The kind of the world of Parasport around them, to what degree do they make changes? And this, of course, I’m drawing off the wider disability rights movement when we talk about the difference between organisations for disabled people and organisations by disabled people, right? Where a bunch of people, who are not disabled themselves, have started organisations to quote unquote, ‘help’ disabled people. These are charities, the people who have full control and often are paid good money to run these organisations are actually not disabled people themselves. And there’s some questions as to whether these organisations actually increase the life chances and possibilities or empower in any way disabled people. And the Paralympic Committee has a long history and I think, continued history, of being an organisation for disabled people and not by disabled people. And in, fact, the leadership that gets heroized, often, about those who started the Paralympic Movement and built it, people who get credit for that often we're not giving credit to any disabled people and disabled athletes who, you know, had a pretty significant role in the development of their sports. We erase them from history, but also, they've often been pushed out, held out, actively fought against them being in positions of power within the Paralympic Movement. So, until the Paralympic Movement basically has a requirement that at least 50% of the leadership are disabled, it will always be an organisation for, and it will always be non-disabled people being paid and having the power to make decisions for disabled people who often don't have a lot of agency in their own lives and in sports. 

And then the last question is, basically, does the Paralympic Movement empower disabled people in general? And I think on that level, it is a resounding no. I think the evidence is quite strong that the Paralympic Movement, the support of a handful of elite athletes, has not for the most part increased the life chances of disabled people globally. And I think there's a good argument against, even within cities that have held the Paralympic Games, often hate crimes against disabled people have gone up. In the case of London, for example, the Paralympic Movement, IPC, has taken on sponsors that have created disability in massive numbers, and that have continued to oppress, and actually been organisations whose entire job is to oppress disabled people, in many ways, if we take Atos as an example in the case of London. So I think I would argue a resounding no to the Paralympic Movement being a force of good in disabled people's lives globally.

Speaker: CB                        Time: 35:53

Some really interesting content there, Danielle, I think there's lots of avenues I'd like to explore. First of all, you have a strong conviction that the Paralympic Games isn't empowering for disabled people, generally. I was wondering what evidence we have in the literature to support this view. Are you able to briefly discuss the evidence we have to support this position?

Speaker: DP                        Time: 36:12

I’ve certainly written on this before but if we look at even like some of the major sponsors for the London Games, we know that there were massive protests by disabled communities around two sponsors in particular, Atos, who at the time of funding the Paralympic Games and London putting a lot of money into it, was cutting disability supports for disabled people across England. There's certainly a lot of research articulating and giving evidence for leading to death and incredible lowering of life opportunities, life chances for thousands, if not more, disabled people. Atos didn't only work in England; you can see the same kinds of things happening now in Australia. So taking on sponsors whose, essentially, job it is to delimit the life chances of disabled people and allow states to not support disability rights is, I think, pretty atrocious. There's also taking on sponsors who were the culprits who owned the companies who were in charge of the Bhopal massacre, which is a massacre that happened, a massive chemical incident that happened in India, and that caused incredible amounts of disability and also death in that community and have never been properly supported or recognised. And, again, the Paralympics have decided to keep these on. So I think there's a sort of pretty robust evidence about that they're taking money from and in support from organisations who are definitely not in the business of bettering the lives of disabled people. But on a more global level when we think about, like how the Paralympics has enlarged the relationship with the International Olympic Committee and their desire to create a sort of sellable Olympic Games, has diminished, significantly, the number of classifications and this has not been evenly distributed. The classifications that have been taken away are generally those that involve people who have more significant impairments, and certainly David Howe is someone who has written more extensively on this than I have, but to be extent that the IPC has, I’d say for years and decades, pushed out those with intellectual of disabilities from the Paralympic games and the Paralympic Movement more generally. Really pushed against, I’d say, against the vast majority of disabled people. So when we think about even who has a disability in the world context, the Paralympics serves an incredibly narrow percentage of that. And I think an increasingly narrowing percentage of the kinds of impairment types, let alone we're sort of dealing with elite members of that group and often members of the group who can afford expensive equipment. So it becomes kind of, I’d sort of argue a freakshow of a particular sellable form of disability. The idea of inspiration as overcoming and this idea is essentially that individuals can overcome any kind of barriers in their way to be successful, and the impact of that is that we're not actually looking at removing the barriers and the incredible kinds of violence, attitudinal problems, policy problems, architectural problems. A really significant difference and really harmful one between the sort of, ‘oh, look! Look at those people who have all these resources and often minimal impairment, single impairment types, very narrow range of impairment types, look at how they can overcome everything, disabled people can overcome. We don't need to give them support; we can cut back on the kinds of accessibility initiatives we're doing because they can simply overcome’. And, in the end, that harms the vast majority of disabled people for whom our inaccessible, uncaring, and ablest societies harm on a daily basis.

Speaker: CB                        Time: 39:53

Again, some really interesting content, and multiple threads I'd like to explore if we had more time for this discussion. But unfortunately, we don't have enough time to talk about all of those things.

I’m really interested in your discussion about the increasing marginalisation of athletes with severe impairments in the Paralympics, and you've explained why this is the case. I’d like to focus now on your thoughts about the marketing campaign in the UK by Channel Four to promote the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. For London, there was a strong focus on positioning Paralympians as superhumans, while for Rio, Channel Four focused on the achievements of disabled people with a range of different impairments, focusing on the notion of ‘yes we can’. Both marketing campaigns were praised, but there were also criticisms, particularly from some disability activists and commentators. Please can you explain your thoughts on these campaigns and also explain to our listeners what these criticisms were?

Speaker: DP                        Time: 40:46

So, I think the first thing I want to say is that there's a way of looking at this, which is, are the Paralympics bad or good? Are they disempowering or are they empowering? I’m much more interested in the question, to what degree are the Paralympics and these particular campaigns useful and dangerous? And so it's much less helpful, I think, to try and categorise these things as sort of one thing or the other, right?

Speaker: CB                        Time: 41:09

So trying to avoid binary classifications. 

Speaker: DP                        Time: 41:11

Yeah. Of course I do this, not because I want to throw all Parasport under the bus. I actually think there’s a big difference between ‘are the Paralympic Games empowering?’ or ‘can Parasport be? Or disability sport be empowering?’. Those are two entirely separate questions. Yeah, any more than the Olympics somehow represents all of sport, for non-disabled sport. There are all kinds of issues at the Olympic level. The big thing about these kinds of campaigns are, yeah, so they drew a lot of interest, people were sort of excited about it, all this sort of thing. They may have drawn more people to the Paralympic Games, they may have been useful in these ways. But certainly it's frustrating the degree to which people who were running those campaigns. I mean, there's been writing for 34 years on things like inspiration porn, things like supercripping, and the ways that this can be just incredibly harmful for the most disabled people. What's really interesting about supercrip narratives is that they do two things at the same time that seem opposite to many things. One thing they do is, by definition, they depoliticise, right? They focus on what bodies can do and they don't focus on what the barriers are to people participating. And so the thing is two things at the same time. The first is it lowers expectations around disabled people. So this idea if you look in the superhumans video, you have like people breaking world records and running, and then in the very next shot, you have them like brushing their own teeth. Like in this weird way, like it absolutely really diminishes the incredible athletic accomplishments that people are having. Right? It's the same thing to break a world record as to brush one’s own teeth. So, yeah, it diminishes the actual achievements of people. It kind of lowers expectations in a weird way where it's sort of like, ‘wow! You brushed your own teeth!’. And also that if one doesn't brush one's own teeth somehow that has some sort of impact or statement on one's value. Right? So again, independence here becomes the most important kind of value at the heart of this, which for a lot of disabled people, interdependence is actually the valued and supported way of living. So, yeah, it depoliticises, it lowers expectations and it actually diminishes our accomplishments in really significant ways. But it also sort of ties the valuation of disabled people to this idea that they can achieve and they will overcome these kind of barriers to achieve these, to become Olympic athletes. And it means that people who do not do that, or who cannot do that, because of course this is structured around very limited ranges of disability, come to be blamed for their own dependence upon systems or dependence with other people. So, the superhuman campaign is almost the perfect example of all of that, right? With jazzy music thrown in! ‘Look at all the things that we can actually do! Amazing things, brushing our own teeth!’ I think this sort of like builds again this idea that disabled people are incapable and that and that the valuation comes when they can independently do things that are valued by non-disabled people, strikes me as a fundamental sort of, I mean, again, it would run counter to any kind of activist move that can ever possibly be made in the name of disability. And, indeed, here's where we go back to empowerment, any activist moves that have been done against the Paralympic Games and the Movement, or even within the Paralympic Movement, have been quickly squashed by the Paralympic Movement. Right? They're not actually interested in hearing what disabled activists have to say about how to empower disabled people, or what activists within the Paralympic Movement have to say about how to make the Paralympic Movement more accountable, more empowering, more affirming for disabled people.

Speaker: CB                        Time: 44:58

For London 2012, for the first time in 32 years, the BBC were not broadcasting the Paralympics. Instead it was Channel Four. And Channel Four made a big effort to get as many eyeballs and as much focus on the coverage as possible. So when we’re considering the superhuman campaign, who are these adverts actually aimed at? Are these  adverts targeted at non-disabled people, first and foremost, in order to get as many people watching the event as possible? And do you think there is an increasingly close relationship between the Olympic Games, as an event, and the Paralympic Games, as an event? And if the Paralympic Games is moving closer towards the Olympic Games as an event, does this have an impact on the empowerment potential0 of the Paralympic games, do you think?

Speaker: DP                        Time: 45:39

Yeah. This is where it’s again helpful to detach what is empowering for the Paralympic Movement, is potentially different to what is empowering for Paralympic athletes as a class, which is definitely  different to what is empowering for disabled people.  Which is definitely attached differently to what is empowering the particular disabled athletes, right? So were these campaigns good for empowering the Paralympic Movement? Yeah, probably! They brought in money, all of those things, right. Great for the Paralympic Movement but, again, the Paralympic Movement is not run by disabled people for the most part. Right? These are the people who are benefiting off from this, this kind of success. So it was great for I would say, we have to think of the IPC like the IOC, as a corporation. We need to think of it as something that is money driven. The Olympics’ primary purpose is not about empowerment, right!? I mean, the IOC and IPC have banned activist articulations by athletes at the Games. This is an organisation that I think is foundationally against movements for social change, right? The world order, the corporations making billions of dollars, this is in the best interest of the Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee, not in the best interest of most disabled people, the vast majority of disabled people. Certain Paralympians, particularly those who did well in London and were from the UK, I’m sure benefited greatly from the greater visibility. Again, that broadcasting did not broadcast all sports equally, right. There are particular kinds of athletes that we're going to get access to that limelight and celebration. And so they may have been empowered by it. But that's actually quite a different thing to say. So the Paralympics. I mean, the metaphor I use is, essentially, can you imagine feminists, a radical feminist organisation that was really for empowering women, selling calendars of porn to make money? Right? Yeah, great. They made lots of money. They sold lots a calendars, great, but like they did it by throwing some significant principles. Yeah, porn can be great and can be empowering but probably not the kind that’s going to be used to sell at a mass level. So I think it's similar, right? We're going to use these things that disabled people and disabled activists have been very clear are harmful, for the purpose of increasing the empowerment of a Movement, which is not equitable to the empowerment of a people, so I just think we need to keep those things separate. 

So when we talk about the IPC and the IOC, the IPC’s increasingly going to become this corporate entity. It has always been led by non-disabled people. There have been some disabled leaders within it when we think of its history. So I think the more aligned it becomes with the IOC, certainly some folks like Eli Wolff have argued the importance of no longer having two Games. And you can just imagine what is going to be cut if those two Games were ever to merge. it's not going to be Men’s 100 metre wheelchair track, let me put it that way! So, increasingly, as it moves away from a participatory, multi-disability model to a selling arm of the Olympics model, the more it is going to undermine any kind of funding of those kinds of other sports at a grassroots level, and that's what I care about. I actually don’t care what happens. I don't think the Paralympics or Olympics will ever be either forces or spaces of major social change! Any serious Olympic scholar will tell you the same thing, right!? I mean, the critical scholarship is significant, right? There's a lot of critiques. All of those critiques of the Olympic model, Committee, everything with the Olympics, hold identically true about the Paralympics! Right. Somehow those scholars spare the Paralympics the exact same critiques.

So I think we really need to be holding the Paralympics accountable in the way that we hold the Olympics. But the only reason that sport scholars haven't, is because there's this sheen of, they’re empowering disabled people. That somehow the Olympics are about corporate interests, and the Paralympics are somehow about social change. And I think that has to disappear. We have to hold them accountable. And we have to critique them, because if there's any hope of the Paralympics actually becoming something that could be a positive force, then we need to do this work. And I think where my investments lie, is that unfortunately, these things trickle down. So the kinds of things that get funded in a country like Canada in terms of disability sport, are those that go to the Paralympics. They get funded more if they do well at the Paralympics. And so the kinds of changes that are incredibly ableist at that level trickle down to impact every disability sport opportunity that exists in our country, and I'm assuming many others as well. And so there's a celebration of going to this model like the Olympics. Like ‘Paralympians will be paid the same amount for a medal as Olympians are’, you know, and there's a celebration of that, and I think that is terrible. Yeah, great for the individual Paralympians; that's great. But increasingly imagining that display sports intention is to gain medals at the Paralympic level is terrible. I think it’s terrible for the Olympics too. Why are we designing our entire sports systems around .1% of athletes?

Speaker: CB                        Time: 51:20

You’ve already touched upon this point when answering some of the other questions I’ve posed, but I was wondering if we could just focus specifically on the role of technology in Paralympic sports, and whether that is a source of empowerment or disempowerment for disabled people?

Speaker: DP                        Time: 51:34

When you come in and think about the larger question of Paralympic sport, there are a couple of things going on. In some sports, by definition, things are always gonna be won by the richest countries and by the richest athletes, right? That there are particular sports in which if you cannot afford incredibly expensive technology, and remember, some of this technology is trademarked and not everyone has access to it. You have this incredible divide that has already existed around Parasport in terms of the kinds of funding people have for accessible infrastructure and things like that, that is just being multiplied by the kinds of ways that technology drives capacity within specific sports, right. So that's at play. So it's definitely a force of inequity. So that's great. I mean, if you want to do the Paralympic Committee should be using all these billions they’re getting from corporations to equally fund each country to ensure that their top athletes have the same access to technology. Like, if the discourse of justice and empowerment that the Paralympic Movement uses were in any way actually real, that would be the easiest possible policy to put into place! Right? But of course they don’t. Because it was never about that. 

And then I think we have this sort of idea of like, whether the technology is sexy, right? So the selling of particular sports around this technology is really interesting. And one of the things I find most interesting about it, if you look at like the history books written on the Paralympics by non-disabled people, always you'll have this thing where you’ll notice the only pictures are people that you can recognise as being disabled. So even when they use people with visual impairments, they'll only choose the sports where there's a specific blindfold being used or something! So people have to be made legible as disabled before they can be understood as a Paralympic athlete. And so one of the bonuses of technology is that it does this thing where it makes someone legible as disabled, but in a way that can be sold and packaged in these sexy ways, that a blindfold can't necessarily do, right? 

So, yeah, I think it does these two things that make it more sellable. If you were to look at, you know, as Howe's articulated, like athletes with cerebral palsy running, there's no technology and if you just take a still shot, disability is not necessarily visible on bodies, so that is not a sellable thing. And this is where my argument has been one of my argument has been, is that to some degree we're still using kind of freak show techniques, where we want to heighten and, in some ways, exaggerate the visibility of disability, to market our own bodies, to make it a gawkable feature. So I think technology is not in itself a problem, but I think there's all kinds of ways that within the kinds of political structure and problems we’re in, it’s being leveraged in ways that increase the kinds of inequities and the maldistribution of opportunity and empowerment, as opposed to using it in ways that could potentially have the opposite effect.

Speaker: CB                        Time: 54:43

It’s been great chatting to you today, Danielle. It's been really interesting to learn more about the empowerment discussion. Lots of different topics have been covered. And I know I've learned a lot as a result of this discussion, and I hope you, Listener, have also taken some insights from our chat today. 

So all there’s left for me to do is to say thank you, Danielle, for taking the time to speak with me today. It's been really interesting, like I said, and I really look forward to catching up with you soon. Thanks very much. 

Speaker: DP                        Time: 55:09

Pleasure. 

*** Discussion ends ***

Speaker: CB                        Time: 55:10

Assistant Professor Dr. Danielle Peers, there, who discussed the literature on empowerment potential of the Paralympic Games. 

That's it for today’s podcast. Join me next time where I’ll be discussing more academic knowledge on disability sport in our next Disability Sport Info show. For now, thanks for listening and goodbye. 

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