 About the Author:
Penny Farrell is a Speech and Language Therapist in Ireland and an ally of the global stammering community. She is advocates for acceptance and respect for all human diversity to challenge stigma and ableism. Penny especially wants to help young people who stammer meet and connect through play and gaming. She has a weekly Minecraft club where she plays with a small group of hugely creative youth Minecrafters who also happen to have a different flow of speech. |
In our video, we want to show just three possible ways for stammering to be seen and heard in the media. The three children came up with their own ideas and made each of their videos themselves.
The first video is a stop motion animation. 11-year-old MC crocheted the bears, made the props and took 574 photographs to create the video!
The second video is a short documentary about ‘The Beano’. 11-year-old Eli would love to be a narrator. His endless knowledge of ‘The Beano’ and expressive presentation really demonstrates his talent at narrating.
The third video was made by 11-year-old Tommy who is a musician, gamer and YouTuber. He wants everyone to know that you can be a YouTuber if you stammer, just like he is. This video gives you a tour of our world built by the Minecraft Club.
The Minecraft Club is a free weekly club for children in Ireland to meet and build in our own private world. I pay a monthly subscription for Realms Plus in the Bedrock version of Minecraft. This protects the world as only members of the club can access the world and build in it and allows players to join from tablets, consoles or a PC. We play in creative and peaceful mode which means we have access to all the blocks and do not battle with mobs. Each week, we decide what to build and work together to design and build it. We chat about lots of things, sometimes about stammering, but often about our news, movie recommendations, anime, why Fanta is so good, and Minecraft design ideas. It is a fun, creative way for kids who stammer to meet each other and form a community.
In preparation for this video, the group explored ways of using the blocks to create a 3D representation of stammering to spell out ISAD 22 and this year’s theme. They used different shades and colours of blocks, varying placement of shadows behind the letters, variable sizes of letters, stretched letters and repeated letters to represent their stammered voices. In our Minecraft world, we listen with patience and wait for each other as we let our words flow out at whatever rate they come.
We hope you enjoy seeing and hearing stammering in our videos and hope the mainstream media will take a leaf out of our book and do the same!
The names are edited out for anonymity, as the children are 11y.o. Penny edited the clips.
Love the Minecraft world created by you all, particular the zoo with axolotls. Awesome video.
Thank you Patrick! We’re glad you liked the axolotls. They are so cute that we even had to write a sign saying ‘warning – very cute axolotls”. One of the turtles escaped from the zoo and rides on the rollercoaster. Some of the sea creatures also moved house to the hotel swimming pool so there are dolphins and squids to surprise guests that swim in the pool 🙂
Brilliant video. There’s a big Beano fan in my household, so we enjoyed learning more about the Beano, as well as loving the BBC N-N-News and the aquarium tour. Thank you so much!
Thank you – we’re really happy to hear that you enjoyed the Beano mini-documentary. I had no idea how many characters there were, it’s an impressive number. The BBC N-N-News bears are brilliant and should definitely feature on the news more often. The aquarium was one of our first projects and we’re all still very proud of it, even though some of the creatures escaped so now we have a wild turtle that rides on the rollercoaster and some sea creatures surprise any guests that swim in the hotel swimming pool! 🙂
Hi Penny,
Thank you for sharing your amazing kids and clever ways to talk about stammering/stuttering, particularly as it relates to the media. You have made great gains decreasing stigma with these young people and given me some great ideas for my children’s support group.
Thanks again for all you do for this community!
Hello Rita, Thank you for your lovely message. They are an amazing group, with so much creativity and talent. The Minecraft club has been a really fun way to combine creative group building projects with an opportunity to create a community of young people with shared experiences. This ISAD project really highlights the gap that currently exists in mainstream media and we hope to see that change, with increased representation of stammered voices. Happy ISAD!
Hi Penny,
I loved “Breaking News: Stuttering is Cool!”. It’s spot on, so awesome, so creative.
The entire video is amazing. So many of society’s ideas are challenged, ideas that are accepted as fact, but are in fact irrational. Specifically, the idea that the news and the weather must be read fluently. The weather does not change so fast that a 10 or 30 second block would make any difference to it.
Congratulations on this initiative. Thank you.
Hanan
Hi Hanan,
Thank you so much for your kind comments and enthusiastic feedback. The group were really happy to hear that you loved the video and enjoyed the way we tried to challenge society’s ideas. We hope we will hear stammered voices reading the weather and news, narrating documentaries and being included in the media without stammering only being featured when there is a piece about stammering.
Hello from the United States!
MC – What spectacular bears and props! I can tell that it took you quite some time to get all of that stuff together and WOW am I glad you took all that time. Your finished product shared a very important message – one that will stick with me for a long time.
Eli – That you opening up my world to “Beano.” Truthfully, I have never heard of this before. Could it be because it might not be that popular in the United States? Either way, now that I have this knowledge about “Beano,” I promise you that I will further look into it because of your great descriptions. Thank you for sharing your passion through your important video.
Tommy – It was a blast to fly around your digital world. Through your awesome voice, I can totally tell you have a cool personality. And that cool personality will open spectacular doors for you as a musician, gamer and YouTuber. Keep up the good work!
Penny – Thank you for all that you do. Through your thoughtful and forward-thinking facilitation, you were able to give all three of your clients wonderful ways to express themselves. The world needs more 21st century clinicians like you. Much love and respect to you!
Hi Erik,
Thank you for such a detailed reply! We read the comments when we met for our Minecraft club and they were thrilled to hear your thoughts.
MC is glad you appreciated the attention to detail and the time it took to make the bears and create the stop motion. It means a lot to know that you took home an important message.
Eli says that one of the characters from The Beano is Denis the Menace and there is a UK version and US version. Although they both featured in 1951, they were created separately and the characters look very different. He really is a mine of information (get it…?!).
Tommy is very cool indeed. He also told me that he is ‘pro’ which is a new way to say cool. Now we can be cool Erik, by saying ‘you’re pro’. For now, we’re both noobs!
I love the BBC News parody and stuttering is cool newsflash 🙃
I think that phrase is pretty catchy….it could even be a title of a book…oh wait, it is! 🙂
I think Franky Banky and the BBC bears could do a collab!
Thank you for your comment!
This video is fantastic and really inspirational, Penny gives so much to the stammering world, thank you for creating this and raising such appropriate awareness of stammering and acceptability.
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for your lovely feedback. The club members are a fantastic group and their video really does question why stammering isn’t seen and heard more often. We hope that videos like this will be the start of a societal change!
Hi Penny!
This video was so awesome to watch! Love the creativity kids have. Also all the hard work to put together and edit the videos, takes time and they did amazing! I also think it’s super cool how you have included Minecraft as a place where kids get to express themselves and feel respect for one another.
Thank you for sharing!
Best,
Anel I.
Hi Anel,
Thank you for your kind words and acknowledgment of the time that is needed to create and edit the videos. It was a labour of love for the kids to create their pieces and a learning curve for me to combine and edit them into one video. We love that you think the Minecraft club is cool…we do too! The game lends itself well to group creativity and allows us all opportunity to talk and build, or listen and build, depending on how we feel on the day. The club members can express themselves through their designs as well, which is cool. We’re glad you enjoyed our video!
Thanks, Penny
Hi Penny, I just wanted to let you know how my children thoroughly enjoyed these videos. My boys 9 and 11, watch YouTubers talking about magazines and playing Minecraft all the time and when they saw the video, they too questioned why more people with a stammer aren’t on youtube or the television. Imagine what a great impact it would be to be have weather spokesmen, sports spokesmen, actors and etc., with stammers on the television. The inclusivity would have such a positive outcome for PWS and for all.
-Maria Balkji
Hi Maria,
Thank you for your lovely message! We completely agree with you and your boys – why aren’t there more spokespeople who stammer? We hope that this will change. We loved hearing about how the video gave you and your boys food for thought on this topic.
In the meantime, we can create our own media contributions and our club plan to make more videos so that we can continue to represent stammering voices.
Thanks again!
Penny
Hi Penny
What you do for kids is gold! I am so happy for the shift from getting “fixed” to just be “normal”, no matter how you speak. And by using games, talking while gaming, and even posting on social media, just like any other kid does, is the perfect bridge to just keep cool and stutter on. I wish you were in my life when I was a kid. <3
Keep them talking!
Anita
Hi Anita,
Thank you for your lovely message. Keep them talking and creating a fun space to talk in – that’s what is most important! The great thing about gaming is that everyone in the club can participate however they like, some like to chat lots, others like to listen, but we’re all building together and we can talk and express ourselves freely. When we talk about our designs and how we’re going to make a building, it feels like a natural group conversation.
The club members love your phrase, ‘keep cool and stutter on’. We’ll do just that…in fact, we want to make some Minecraft signs with that message on!
Thanks!
Penny
hello Penny I really liked your articles, and I like the world the kids created in Minecraft it’s really cool looking. I like to game mysef, I am actually going to school to be an SLP right now. I was wondering how did you start the Minecraft club? I wanna do something like that for the kids I work with in the futur when I graduate and become an SLP.
Hi!
Thank you for your lovely message! How cool that you are thinking of using Minecraft in your future work as an SLP!
We tried the club a couple of different ways:
1. First we used Minecraft for Education. This is great because there are games and mini-games in this version but group play is only possible on local LAN so we’d need to be in the same room. As we all live far apart from each other, this was not possible.
2. We played Minecraft Bedrock using a a private server (Shockbyte) which was good but…it only worked for Minecraft on PC or iPads. Some of the members wanted to join using their game console (XBox/PS4/PS5) but that isn’t possible using a private server.
3. I now use Minecraft Bedrock Realms and pay the premium subscription for 10 players at a time. This means that I can add members and there can be 250 members and any 10 can play at one time. This helps to keep our world private and secure. We use voice chat on Discord while we play. This method has worked out the most accessible for our set-up. If you have any questions about Minecraft club and getting set up then feel free to get in touch with me. You can DM on twitter @penny_f_slt
Best of luck with your studies!
Thank you 🙂
Penny