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Critical race theory is a contemporary legal movement composed of progressive scholars, primarily people who identify as people of color, who seek to challenge racism in American society. In their writing, they explore the many ways in which racism infuses American institutions, popular culture, commonsense beliefs, pervades interaction and cuts to the core of the American psyche. One of the central challenges that any person, scholar, activist faces in the U.S. is the peculiar nature of contemporary discourse on race. Often times, much of white America treats racism as if it were a thing of the past, an article of a time when the racial caste system was explicitly upheld and defended, either in the form of slavery, explicitly racist immigration laws (like the Chinese Exclusion Act), the Jim Crow laws, or when Native Americans were massacred by Union soldiers. Contemporary anti-racist work constantly confronts this denial of racism from a large segment of America.² This denial of racism is one in which many people seem to have developed something of a psychic investment. Since the critical race theorists are working in a scholar-activist anti-racist vein, they also have to confront this massive self-delusion or mythic self-understanding.

The cross‐agency project described in this paper builds on the success of an earlier collaboration, called ‘Healthy Eating’, by the same team of participants (See JAT 3.1 March 2009). Personal safety has become an issue of national importance, and here we outline a new project developed using ICT tools and digital film, to create a DVD about personal safety for, and by, people with learning disabilities. The aims and objectives, the project development, and our plans for the future are outlined. The project is complex, and so the paper presents the general aims first, and then charts the work of each separate group.

This paper is a collaborative report on a visual learning project that utilised a range of information and communication technology (ICT) tools to draw together several different agencies within the Kingston local community. This was achieved by devising a series of practical activities through which all participants could share and develop their different knowledge and expertise. The focus of the project was on resources for healthy eating skills produced for and by people with learning disabilities. The paper gives the detailed aims and objectives of the project, an outline of the practical activities that were undertaken, and an indication of how the project model may be developed in the future.

The project described here is the third in a series of cross‐agency (now called community cohesion) explorations involving the development of resources for, and by, people with learning disabilities. (See Healthy eating, Journal of Assistive Technologies Volume 3. Issue 1. March 2008, and Keeping safe, Journal of Assistive Technologies Volume 4. Issue 2. June 2010.) Year 7 students at the Holy Cross secondary girls' school devised a series of simple educational games, for use on an interactive whiteboard, to support the learning of young adult students. The completed resources were then further developed at Lambeth College, and were finally made available for use both by Lambeth College and NHS Kingston's Occupational Therapy Service for people with learning disabilities.