Help me to make a disabled sports magazine
You can contribute to this project here https://gofund.me/c44b0fc7
Hi, I am Michael and nearly 20 months ago I was made disabled by FND (functional neurological disorder) which limits me in all kinds of ways, especially with walking, pain, and brain fog.
After help from the hospital and other medics, I was able to make an informed decision not to sit on my backside despite my disability and watch TV all day. I said if I do disabled photography I can sit by a track, or court etc and take action photos of the game. So an idea was born on the 20th Jan 2023, I had a basic website 8 days later and 30 visitors every day for 2 months with just stock images initially and my hope was to make the disabled people doing sports look amazing with some new photos. What is out there is not very good and I intended to change that.
6 months in and somehow I am exhibiting at the Disability Expo, people love what I am doing. As now one has done this before to make disabled people look good. In the madness run up to the Disability Expo I am now a cic company registration no 14952638.
Then I found the international blind games and went to them out of curiosity initially, a question is how do blind people play sports like football, cricket, chess and others? A fantastic week of photography was had. As soon as I was back I was packing for the icing on the cake I got a press pass for the Invictus Games. I could only stay 2 days due to medical appointments back in the UK. However, what I did in those two days was amazing and new photography where Nikon Germany helped me out with a borrow of two new lenses that made the photo pop even more. I have now purchased these two lenses.
I then started doing grassroots photos for Boccia, Showdown, and Goalball and that now brings me to part 2 of the journey.
NOW 2024
I have always wanted to get & create a printed/electronic magazine for the disabled sports arena that was the idea at first, but I had to make inroads first and now I know it is, well all these new contacts want to see it. I believe I will do a quarterly initially, then as I get reliable staff and access to events, I may go every 2 months and hopefully every month. OK, that is in the future and let’s stay with every 3 months for now.
In the production of the magazine I am employing various people, however, they need to have a disability, as they will see things differently than an able bodied person who may write, photograph etc for me.
So what I am looking to fund is
1. The printing costs/postage,
2. Payment to staff initially,
3. Sponsorship of the magazine running costs,
4. Travel expenses, paying guests for their story.
5. I would also like to be paid to go to various events like the Paralympics (waiting to hear about if accepted), blind football in France (week-long), Pickleball tournament on August and a few local deaf golf tournaments plus a lot of fun disabled days in and around London and the UK.
6. Also along the way I will be doing some real-life disabled people doing things eg cooking, training for a sport, socialising etc as stock images as what is out there is out of date, do not represent disability as they should and that one of the 1st things people asked me at the Disability Expo we need representative images.
7. Advert spaces will be available and the cost is to be determined, but please feel free to ask for a quote
I started this on a whim by purchasing the web domain and web space for £120 and I said if it did not work, I would be only out of pocket £120, to my amazement, it took off and had a life of its own with lots of encouragement from the disabled community and a few of my abled body peers on regards to the photos I have been producing.
Everything I have done for this venture be it money or events has been there are the right time and right place, even some new contacts just before Christmas 2023 and a few networking events after it is an amazing rollercoaster of a ride and does not want to stop.
So can you help the disabled sports people and their trainers, and sports coaches to name a few get some amazing photography from your truly, so that I can show that there is life after a disability and life is too short to ignore to go and have fun and meet new people.
You can contribute to this project here https://gofund.me/c44b0fc7
Thank you
Michael
p.s. Every donor will get a link to the online version free of charge for the 1st issue as a way of saying thank you for your help in getting this off the ground.
Links and sample Photographs below
The main website for my images
Interview with Small Businesses Saturday
This is a very rough and ready mock-up of the magazine, it will not be like this in the final one as I will get it professionally designed, this was a template I had around to see what a front cover might look like.
You can contribute to this project here https://gofund.me/c44b0fc7
