Sarah’s debut documentary nominated for a national award:
A young disability advocate has made the shortlist for a journalism award at the British Journalism Awards 2022.
Sarah Bowdidge from Ogmore Vale is one of the finalists nominated for ‘New Journalist of the Year, sponsored by Cardiff University’ at the British Journalism awards 2022, for her documentary for BBC Wales, based on her condition, Tar Syndrome.
Sarah’s documentary aired on 11th July on BBC 2 as a part of the series New Voices from Wales. Within the documentary, Sarah brought awareness to her condition, Tar Syndrome, which is a rare condition that causes those affected to have “missing or incomplete forearms.”
She worked with director, Steve Bollschweiler, who suggested the film be named ‘Speak Don’t Stare’ as Sarah had expressed to him that too many people stare at her rather than speak to her.
Although to anyone watching the documentary, Sarah seems completely confident, she did struggle during filming. She said: “it was scary for me being on camera for that long. At the start, I didn’t even want to show my arms to the crew. But once I’d done the documentary it’s made such a difference and I want to do that for other disabled people.
“It’s really hard to be positive all the time and no one should expect that of you, so as a role model I’m not going to be positive 100% of the time.”
From a very young age, Sarah knew that she wanted to become a journalist, even dressing up as ‘the press’ at the age of 7/8 for ‘what would you like to be when you grow up day’ at her primary school. However, it did not always feel achievable for her due to the stigma around disabilities.
Sarah joined the Bridgend Youth Theatre (BYT) which is run by Roger Burnell. Under Roger’s direction, the BYT has expanded into the It’s My Shout (IMS) film programme run with BBC Wales. IMS and the BBC have been producing short films for around 12 years now and more recently, has introduced the ‘New Voices from Wales’ series of documentaries.
Both film programmes have become a training ground for young people considering a career in the growing Welsh film and TV production sector.
Sarah said “Growing up I didn’t really see anyone with disabilities, definitely not hosting the news. On CBeebies, Cerrie (Burnell) had one arm and I remember parents complaining about their children being scared of her, and that immediately made me think ‘Oh my gosh, I’ll never be on camera because nobody wants to see it’.”
At the age of nine, Sarah was invited to feature on Rosie Moriarty-Simmonds’ podcast ‘Rosie’s world’, to talk about Tar syndrome and her experiences. Sarah got to interview her mum as well as Rosie herself, giving Sarah her first taste of life as a journalist. Rosie Moriarty-Simmonds OBE is one of Sarah’s role-models. She is a Welsh businesswoman, artist and disability rights campaigner who was born without arms or legs due to thalidomide who has also recently been made High Sheriff of South Glamorgan.
Since the documentary was aired, Sarah has received positive feedback from viewers, giving her the sense that the work she is doing as an advocate is effective. Sarah is “is so proud of the documentary”, and she hopes to be able to use it as an educational tool to children from the ages of 10 in schools across the country. She also would like to make more films in the future to spread awareness for more disabilities.
Sarah entered her documentary, to be considered for ‘New Journalist of the Year, sponsored by Cardiff University’ and was “over the moon and really shocked” when she heard that she was one of the finalists.
As she is up against experienced journalists who had entered portfolios of work, it meant “the world” to her that her film was held in such high esteem to be on the shortlist. Sarah is very excited to attend the awards in London on Thursday (15th December).
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