The Great British Greyhound Walk is an annual large-scale dog walking event that aims to raise the profile of rescued and retired (ex-racing) greyhounds. Organised by the charity Greyhound Walks, GBGW raises money and awareness whilst showing members of the general public what beautiful, gentle companions these dogs make once off the track.

The event primarily involves hundreds of organised, group “walks” of Greyhounds, Lurchers and other sighthounds that are led simultaneously across the nation on the same day, every Summer. The walks are often followed by social events and/or fundraising drives.

Last year, a total of 2,288 dogs took part in locations across the British Isles.

I began volunteering for this project in January, 2012.

The Brief

• Redesign and redevelop GBGW’s online presence, in line with the existing logo and branding.
• Create a site that was clean, modern and professional, without being corporate
• The website needs to be easy to use and easy to update as it would be administered by part-time volunteers with varying IT experience
• It also needs to be able to cope with large volumes of walk-related data that could be manipulated to produce a variety of outputs

My Role

As the sole developer on this project, I was responsible for implementing all of the site’s usability-related features, data management and functionality.

This included:

• Re-vamping the existing website from static HTML pages to a dynamic, database-driven application that could be administered by a small group of charity volunteers (with a range of IT ability) using a Content Management System (WordPress)
• A fully customised, bespoke WordPress installation, tailored to data that was specific to large-scale, organised dog walks
• Full Social Network integration (FaceBook and Twitter), including Log-in, account linking and posting to profiles.
• Employing a system wherein Walk data was handled dynamically using an Event Management System with Google Maps integration and Google Calendar/iCal compatibility
• Facilitating online submissions of Registration forms from Walk Organisers
• Facilitating online sumbission of Registered Users’ photos via website front-end
• Devising a way in which all stored walk information can dynamically populate a print-ready report, on-the-fly, for use on “Walk Day”
• Data input, content creation, photo uploading/editing

Although the logo and branding were originally produced by a third-party for use in print-based media, I was required to devise design elements that drew on and complimented on the existing brand, in order to create a look and feel that was as cohesive online as it was offline.

My role also involved educating volunteers in how to manage the site once it had launched. To this end, I wrote fully-illustrated tutorials for the volunteers detailing all website-related tasks, which were then accessible directly from the WordPress Dashboard. I also provided technical support via email and phone.

My talks are positive, engaging and dynamic: aimed at breaking down barriers and challenging preconceived ideas about Disability and people with disabilities.

To date, I have had experience delivering lectures to Health and Social Care students (in Further Education) on my experience of Disability and disability-related prejudice and discrimination.

I offer a multimedia experience; utilising powerpoint presentations and videos to demonstrate points in a varied and creative way. These can then be further supported by hand-outs, exercises and downloads (made available to students from their local Virtual Learning Environment) in order to expand upon and evidence learning.

My frank and open approach to discussing the social taboos that shroud disability, and those in the Disabled community, uses humour and universal human experiences to provide anecdotes that audiences can instantly identify with, whilst giving thought-provoking insights that aim to challenge the listener long after they have left the classroom.

Following the success of my “Houndy” Christmas Card designs and the extra publicity garnered by my FreeWheel Appeal, I was approached by award-winning online print company, MOO, earlier this year. As I had used MOO to produce the finished cards, they wanted to use my range of “Houndy” Christmas card designs to promote their Christmas card printing service, worldwide.

Examples of my cards and photography can now be seen on every multi-national version of MOO’s website (UK, EU and USA), I have a large feature dedicated to my work in their Inspiration Gallery, my work has also been featured in both the weekly email-based newsletter and used throughout this year’s print-based advertising in the run-up to Christmas.

Set of 5 Houndy Greetings Cards, starring Ziggy & Hector

Each card features my own design/photography showcasing my beautiful rescue hounds.

Details:

• Professionally printed onto high quality, heavy (340gsm), FSC certified stock
• The cards are satin coated on the outside for better colour reproduction, the inside is left uncoated and left blank for you to write a message.
• Comes complete with 5 heavy-weight, high quality, white envelopes.

£5.99

(excl.P&P)

For several years now, I have opted to send custom Holiday cards to friends and family, which feature examples of my photography.

This year? I’m offering them to you to give to your friends and family.

The designs feature my dogs, Ziggy and Hec­tor, in an all-hound cast as “Santa Paws” and his “Little Hinder­ance Helper”, in full festive costume!

The cards are printed on heavy (340gsm) card-stock, using a satin-coated fin­ish that both looks and feels luxurious, producing col­ours that are rich and pleas­ingly true-to-screen. Even the envel­opes are thick and crisp, fur­ther under­lin­ing the high-quality and cus­tom nature of the product.

The “Houndy Christmas” set of greetings cards are now available for purchase online, so get in quick as stocks are strictly limited!

Each set contains 5 cards (one of each design) and comes complete with 5 heavy-weight, high quality, white envelopes.
The front of each card reads: Merry Christmas
The inside of each card reads: And a Houndy New Year

£5.99

(excl.P&P)

The Wheelistically FreeWheel Appeal began in order to raise money for a Free­Wheel™ attach­ment for my wheel­chair. Dis­abled since birth, I have Cereb­ral Palsy [Spas­tic Diplegia] and (sec­ond­ary) neur­omus­cu­lar Scoli­osis and have been a full-time wheel­chair user for over twelve years.

Like most spe­cial­ist equip­ment designed for those with dis­ab­il­it­ies, the Free­Wheel™ doesn’t come cheap. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to gain any financial help from Social Care Ser­vices or my local NHS Wheel­chair Ser­vice. Also, many sources of fund­ing in the third sec­tor will only provide grants to exist­ing registered char­it­ies and/or com­munity groups, not indi­vidu­als in need, such as myself.

I began rais­ing money through the sale of my pho­to­graphy and self-designed greet­ings cards, with 100% of the pro­ceeds going towards fund­ing a Free­Wheel™ and through any dona­tions made online dir­ectly to the appeal.

Using my blog in conjunction with the power of Social Media, I was able to successfully raise over £400 in aid of my Wheelistically FreeWheel Appeal, in just over a week.

The following video was created once I’d received the FreeWheel and is dedicated to every person who donated and helped me to reach my total.

GGSGamer.com is an up-and-coming gaming-related website that provides gaming-related articles, news and reviews across all platforms and all genres.

My Role

I volunteered in both a Staff Writer and Contributer capacity from December 2010 to December 2011.

My duties included:

• Writing journalistic articles focused on the online, console and computer games industry and its technology.
• Researching and “networking” in order to gain contacts and press releases that will lead to the latest news and information in the technology and gaming industry.
• I also specialise in writing editorial pieces about, and actively promote, accessibility and assistive technologies that can enable those with physical impairments to enjoy gaming.

Greyhound Walks is an Essex-based charity that raises money to aid the rescue and rehoming of greyhounds and lurchers. Originating out of a select group of ex-racing greyhound owners that enjoyed getting together to walk their dogs, numbers and awareness soon increased until Greyhound Walks became a registered charity that now uses their presence to support local retired greyhound kennels and lurcher rescue organisations.

Greyhound Walks now organise large-scale greyhound and lurcher walks in four different counties across the south and east of the country, every weekend. To date, the largest greyhound walk boasted over 200 dogs, strolling together on New Year’s Day, 2011.

My Role

I have volunteered as a Social Network Administrator since early 2011.

My duties include:

• Promoting both the Charity and its key annual events (e.g. The GW Dog Show) via Twitter and FaceBook
• Updating the charity’s FaceBook account with all the latest news and forum discussions.
• Updating the charity’s Twitter account with all the latest news and forum discussions.
• Using Social Media to raise awareness about Greyhounds as a breed and adopting retired racing Greyhounds as family pets.
• Using Social Media to advertise up-coming walks

ABNA London Youth is a sub-section of the non-profit organisation, Antigua and Barbuda National Association (London) and is dedicated to representing their members, aged 25 years and under. ABNA London Youth encourages positive participation and inclusion of youths in the Association through performing arts events, competitions, sporting activities and social gatherings.

I worked as part of this project for a year, between May 2009 – May 2010.

My Role

I volunteered as a committee member of ABNA London Youth and was responsible for all online ventures that support and promote the young people of the Association and their events and activities.

My duties included:

• Designing, creating and maintaining an interactive, community-based website. The website was database-driven and used WordPress as a Content Management System; the community aspect ran on an installation of BuddyPress
• Maintaining all Social Networking presences (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc)
• Being on-call as the main adviser regarding any Photography-based events
• Researching and sourcing custom print suppliers for Photography Competitions

A complete overhaul and re-branding of my eponymous blog to: “Wheelistically”.

Built using WordPress as a content management system, the website features:

• Flickr, Twitter and Vimeo integration
• User registration to view member-only content
• Integrated PayPal shopping cart functionality

The design takes the of a Child Theme built on top of the WordPress theme ‘The Erudite’, to provide full integ­ra­tion of con­tent cre­ated via 3rd party web­sites (Twit­ter etc) and tailor each post design to its con­tent: particularly to give proper emphasis to EXIF data in Photography-related posts.

The design was partly inspired by the works of the late John Heart­field, a German-born avant-garde artist and ex-Dadaist, known pre­dom­in­antly for his rad­ical pho­tomont­ages of the 1930s and 40s. The other and most eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able influ­ence is that of the Sur­real­ist Move­ment; par­tic­u­larly the work of Dali and his Sur­real­ist objects (most not­ably, the infam­ous Lob­ster Tele­phone [1936]).