230131-EAPMinutes-V10

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PÀIRC NAISEANTA A’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el 31^st Janu­ary 2023 5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present Anita Howard Kev­in Hutchens (Joined part way through meet­ing) Lina Payne Peter Kennedy Vanessa Alt­weck Becca Mayo Lili­ana Cor­ri­eri Linda Bam­ford Stu­art Hall

Attend­ing Brenna Jessie Jenny Allen Kate Christie Fiona McLean (Chair) Josie Slade Kath­er­ine Willing

1. Wel­come 1.1. Fiona wel­comed the group and guests to the meeting.

2. Recap and Actions from pre­vi­ous Meet­ing on 30^th August 2022 2.1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were agreed. 2.2. The action log was reviewed. It was agreed that actions four and five would be car­ried for­ward to the next meeting.

3. Item 1: Social Media Access­ib­il­ity Guid­ance – Brenna Jessie 3.1. Brenna intro­duced her­self to every­one and the pan­el mem­bers intro­duced them­selves to Brenna. 3.2. Brenna gave an over­view of some cur­rent pro­jects such as the LGBT Charter Cam­paign. Brenna also briefly dis­cussed the Con­tent Work­ing Group. Brenna explained her over­all approach to com­mu­nic­a­tions which is based on mak­ing every­one feel involved and represented.

Pan­el Feed­back 3.3. The pan­el felt the length and detail of the guid­ance was right for staff and would ensure it was useable. The pan­el reflec­ted that the dif­fer­ent sec­tions made it user friendly and easy to fol­low. The pan­el sug­ges­ted review­ing who the doc­u­ment is for, as not all users will be using it fre­quently. The pan­el sug­ges­ted hav­ing a short­er, easy to fol­low, check­list for users who will not be refer­ring to the lar­ger guid­ance fre­quently. To help those who may not be using digit­al meth­ods fre­quently, the doc­u­ment would bene­fit from examples to help con­tex­tu­al­ise it. The pan­el sug­ges­ted a par­tic­u­lar web­site which included use­ful and com­pre­hens­ive access­ib­il­ity inform­a­tion. 3.4. The pan­el felt there was a need with­in the doc­u­ment to bring in an inter­sec­tion­al approach. The pan­el gave the example of the first para­graph where the cross sec­tion of gender and safety inform­a­tion could be included. The pan­el felt the doc­u­ment lacked guid­ance on the use of gen­er­ic lan­guage which may have con­nota­tions, such as, fam­ily or res­id­ents. 3.5. The pan­el sug­ges­ted includ­ing inform­a­tion on the use of audio or pod­casts as this helps those with low levels of lit­er­acy. 3.6. The pan­el advised that there should be a review of any image bank that CNPA util­ises to ensure it is inclus­ive. 3.7. Finally, the pan­el com­men­ted on the need for inform­a­tion on afford­ab­il­ity. The pan­el sug­ges­ted includ­ing in the guid­ance ways to ensure events are afford­able by includ­ing a digit­al link or ver­sion. The pan­el also sug­ges­ted includ­ing links to loc­al lib­rary ser­vices as not every­one has access to the internet.

1. Break

2. Item 2: Broad­er Dis­cus­sion on Equal­it­ies and Com­mu­nic­a­tions – Brenna Jessie 5.1. It was agreed that there was not enough time to fully cov­er this dis­cus­sion top­ic. It was agreed that Brenna would return to the EAP at the March meet­ing to allow detailed dis­cus­sion of this topic.

3. Item 3: Dis­cus­sion About the Cairngorms Nature Fest­iv­al – Josie Slade 6.1. Josie gave an over­view of the fest­iv­al and explained what feed­back she was look­ing for from the panel.

Pan­el Feed­back 6.2. Pan­el thoughts based on any pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence of the fest­iv­al in terms of equal­it­ies and access­ib­il­ity: • One of the main con­cerns around per­son­al exper­i­ence of the fest­iv­al was the cost. It was often expens­ive to reach the fest­iv­al and some events were expens­ive. It was recom­men­ded to ensure that in gen­er­al there was a digital

option and that events coordin­ated with the times of pub­lic trans­port to allow for people to reach the event in a cost-effect­ive way. 6.3. Sug­ges­tions of ways to make the fest­iv­al more access­ible from a coordin­a­tion view­point: • The pan­el sug­ges­ted put­ting out edu­ca­tion mes­saging pri­or to the fest­iv­al around the use of assist­ance dogs and how people should behave around an assist­ance dog to make this access­ible. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted look­ing at wheth­er event loc­a­tions could be planned around chan­ging places toi­lets or wheth­er a mobile chan­ging places bus could be hired to make events access­ible. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted, where pos­sible, try­ing to coordin­ate event times with the pub­lic trans­port. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted where there was a require­ment for face masks ensur­ing that there are clear facemasks avail­able for when there may be indi­vidu­als who need to be able to lip read. 6.4. Sug­ges­tions of Oppor­tun­it­ies for Part­ner­ships includ­ing ideas for activ­it­ies: • The pan­el sug­ges­ted mak­ing con­nec­tions with day centres. • Where pos­sible, the pan­el sug­ges­ted think­ing of dif­fer­ent events that will help attract dif­fer­ent groups of people, such as music to attract young people or career help events. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted involving groups who aim to get those from equal­ity groups into the out­doors such as; such as Women in the Hills, Girls on Hills, Muslim Hikers and the Out­ward Bound Trust who has been work­ing with Refugees. 6.5. Sug­ges­tions on how to help event pro­viders cre­ate inclus­ive events: • The pan­el sug­ges­ted cre­at­ing an access­ib­il­ity check­list which can be past onto event pro­viders. 6.6. The pan­el also gave some gen­er­al com­ments on the fest­iv­al: • The pan­el sug­ges­ted a park for all theme. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted using a prom­in­ent fig­ure to help advert­ise the event or who could cre­ate a link with under­rep­res­en­ted groups such as a BBC Hol­i­day Show presenter. • The pan­el sug­ges­ted includ­ing a testi­mo­ni­al from someone who had been dis­con­nec­ted from nature.

1. AOBS 7.1. The CNPA neurodi­versity policy was raised, and it was agreed that this would be dis­cussed via cor­res­pond­ence with the pan­el. 7.2. It was agreed that the LGBT Youth Charter Action Plan would be raised via cor­res­pond­ence. The pan­el were asked to com­ment as to wheth­er there was any­thing miss­ing or gen­er­al comments.

END OF MEETING

NEXT MEET­ING TUES­DAY 28^th FEBRUARY