For Reid Davenport—who has cerebral palsy and often relies on a wheelchair to get around campus to avoid fatigue—the dream of studying in Italy during his junior year was “abruptly shattered” when he learned that the streets and sites of Florence, Rome, and much of Europe were not wheelchair accessible. Despite the discouraging news, Davenport resolved to confront the challenge head on with a video camera and a new purpose: He scrapped the study abroad program that he had been accepted to and focused instead on putting together an independent film project that had him documenting his way around Europe to explore its lack of wheelchair accessibility.
“The feeling of injustice that filled me that day hasn’t dissipated in the slightest,” noted Davenport, who graduates this month with a degree in journalism and mass communications. “What better way for me to explore the extent and the reasons for why modern Europe is so inaccessible than for me to take my electric wheelchair and document my European travels?”
To fund his documentary and the traveling it would require, Davenport applied for and received from Columbian College a $5.000 research stipend through the Luther Rice Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, which encourages discovery- and inquiry-based education at the undergraduate level. He also raised funds using Kickstarter, a website that crowdsources funding for creative projects. The online fundraising campaign exceeded his expectations, generating over $8,000 from more than 150 donors.
The funding support enabled Davenport to spend January of this year traveling with a cameraman to Dublin, Brussels, Naples, Florence, and Paris. He interviewed 13 Europeans knowledgeable about the issue—including a director of a disability advocacy group and a college student who also uses a wheelchair—to learn how others are coping with the obstacles resulting from “a modern society that hasn’t felt the need to accommodate its disabled citizens.”
“I wanted to share the experience of living with a disability, and try to catalyze change for accessibility,” said Davenport about the film, titled Wheelchair Diaries, which he plans to premier this summer. “I hope viewers not only get a sense of how different it is to be disabled, but also, despite our differences, see how much we all are the same.”
His trip was not without struggles. While in Europe, he grappled with airport security, a broken wheelchair, and finding handicapped-accessible public transportation and taxis.
“I experienced my fair share of overwhelming challenges during my trip,” said Davenport. “I tried to capture and portray those challenges in the documentary.”
A rough cut of the documentary has already garnered praise. During GW Research Days last month, the film project earned Davenport the third-place prize in the Undergraduate Humanities and Creative Arts poster contest. Assistant Professor of Media and Public Affairs Jason Osder, who taught Davenport a class on digital media production and served as his faculty advisor, is confident the film will be a big success.
“Wheelchair Diaries truly is an extraordinary project,” said Osder. “Reid has exceeded expectations at every juncture, and I feel confident we will see his documentary in many film festivals in the future.”
To view the documentary’s video trailer, visit http://wheelchairdiaries.com/.