Simon Jarrett: six years as editor
Editor: goodbye and hello
In announcing the departure of our editor Simon Jarrett, the board of Community Living Initiatives is experiencing a curious and unexpected emotional state.
We are very sad to lose our excellent Simon and are deeply grateful to him but thrilled that he has softened the blow by bringing to the table such a worthy and exciting successor as Saba Salman.
Beating a path from print to digital for a beloved, niche magazine such as Community Living is no mean feat. Managing to do that while improving the quality and balance of articles, the diversity of opinion and point of view, the feel and look of cover and content (and all on a shoestring) is quite something. For the last six years, our editor Simon has done just that – and more.
Academic, historian and author of seminal book Those They Called Idiots, Simon has been immersed in understanding and improving the lives and fortunes of people with learning disabilities for his whole career. And how this showed – in his commissioning of content, his incisive editorial and his unerring commitment to promoting inclusion and equality.
Community Living’s new editor, Saba Salman, is a well-known and highly respected journalist. She is an award-winning writer for The Guardian, The Independent and Byline Times and the author and editor of human rights anthology Made Possible, a book influenced by her disabled sister Raana and described by the right honourable Sir Norman Lamb as “a call to arms”.
Saba also chairs the charity Sibs, which supports the brothers and sisters of disabled people, and is an ambassador for social change organisation NDTi (National Development Team for Inclusion).
Farewell and thank you Simon. You have been a dream to work with on our journey towards bigger readership and greater influence in the fight for the rights of people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
Welcome Saba. With your auspicious arrival, the fight continues and the gloves are off.
Jo Clare
Active Prospects - Associate sponsor
Active Prospects is a Surrey-based charitable care provider that supports autistic people and people with a learning disability or a mental health need. We have been around since 1989 and employ over 350 staff to support around 250 people each year.
Our purpose is to support people to lead aspiring lives. We see ourselves as more than a care provider – we want to create opportunities for people to achieve their aspirations in life.
Although budgets are tight, we felt it was important to show our support for Community Living magazine by becoming an associate sponsor. We are specialists in giving people with a learning disability a voice: we set up the Pro-Active Community in 2015 as a co-production body of people we support and, since then, it has grown into an award-winning independent charity. Community Living has a long track record of helping people with a learning disability to influence change and we want to support that.
https://activeprospects.org.uk
Paradigm - Associate sponsor
Paradigm is about encouraging all – people with a learning disability, their families, organisations and communities – to explore what more is possible.
Boundless in energy and aspiration, Paradigm is a development and training organisation with a passion for supporting people with a learning disability to live lives they choose.
The success of our work is based on our commitment to co-facilitation and ability to bring people together to imagine what more is possible and plan action.
Through a range of work including the Reach Standards in support for living, the Gr8 Support Movement, Individual Life Designs, co-producing strategies and more, we help dust off the cobwebs, re-energise tired thinking and banish institutionalised thinking and behaviour. We are all about making human rights real and freeing people to live good ordinary lives.
After 12 years of working with Community Living’s editorial board, we look forward to and remain committed to sharing great stories, challenges and learning in a way that encourages all to protect human rights and to keep speaking up when we see them being eroded.
