I travel a lot and really miss being at home. It’s such a privilege to be able to spend time away, meet new people, learn new ways of doing and seeing, especially when it comes to disability and accessibility, but there’s nothing better than arriving home to Co Meath, opening my front door and closing it behind me. I breathe an incredible sigh of relief, which is rooted in the fact that my house is designed for me and is accessible to me so I can be as independent as possible there. In other spaces, I spend so much time and emotion figuring out how to be in that place in a way that others don’t have to.
I was privileged enough to be able to buy my first home a year ago. Until then, my story was similar to a lot of other people in Ireland; I was in my early 30s living at home with my parents. I’m so grateful that self-employment and building a business has allowed me to get a mortgage and buy a home. This is an opportunity many people don’t get, especially disabled people.
I grew up in Finglas until I was about 11 and I loved it there. But I was very aware of people’s perceptions and judgments based on postcodes or otherwise. Living in Finglas taught me many things; one of them is that it’s not necessarily where you live but how you live. We had great neighbours and great family close by. My parents moved out of Finglas to Navan solely because they had a growing family in need of more space.
I was so lucky to have a dad who also had dwarfism. That was fundamental to me in a household where I had three sisters and one brother, all of whom are non-disabled and of average height. I was just like my dad, and I was given that language from such an early age that it became a kind of script for me and it gave me answers to other children’s or strangers’ questions.
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My parents did a huge amount of work settling into the local community both in Finglas and in Navan. They founded Little People of Ireland when I was seven and this was instrumental to my own feelings of inclusion and my own understanding of the importance of community. I grew up with people who looked like me. I think without that, feelings of isolation or loneliness, or that feeling of being “other”, would have been much more pronounced.
It’s easy for me to speak to the positives of my childhood because there were so many, but of course there were challenges – comments from strangers or, as I got older and with the evolution of social media, people taking photographs on their phones and being unkind. But I had two parents who were advocates and they gave me the skills to advocate for myself and for others. I grew up with a great sense of confidence and pride. I was told from the earliest age that my disability would always be fundamental to who I am and it didn’t make me any less Sinéad.
I’m so incredibly proud of my parents. They sat with us every evening and helped us with our spelling tests and our times tables. They taught us the importance of dedication and tenacity and trying. Yes, you might make a mistake and fail, but keep trying and keep learning. I see my life and my siblings’ lives as gifts of timing. I was born in 1990, and not long after policy decisions were made around access to third-level education. My parents wouldn’t have been able to afford to send us to college otherwise. That policy change transformed our lives.
I used to be a primary schoolteacher and I miss having a relationship with 27 or 30 children, and having a classroom that was for many the only safe place they had during the day, or at least safer than their experience of home. I miss creating opportunities for people to learn in different ways, because no two people learn the same way. I still think of myself as an educator and a facilitator, though. At Tilting the Lens our job is to move the dial through education, advocacy and design. The skills I learned in the classroom have been fundamental to my success.
Disabled people shouldn’t have to be deemed productive in order to be citizens, in order to have rights, in order to be valuable to society
— Sinéad Burke
I’m an early riser. I wake up just before 6am and I read The Irish Times, the Financial Times, Women’s Wear Daily. I inform myself and update myself on the actions of the industries I work with, so I have the knowledge and expertise to go into rooms and have important conversations and suggest strategic actions around solutions.
In Ireland there are so many systemic issues that need to be solved for people with disabilities – the lack of independent living options, opportunities for employment and financial independence, access to school and education places – we’re always busy fixing yesterday. While this is incredibly necessary work, we have no mechanism in place to deal with tomorrow, five years’ time or 10 years’ time.
[ Sinéad Burke: It’s never too early for children to learn to be curious and kindOpens in new window ]
One of the things we need at a societal level is greater ambition around the positioning and value of disabled people. We should be thinking about disabled people as political leaders, arts leaders, business and community leaders. But it’s also about understanding deeply that any person’s value is not only defined by their productivity. Disabled people shouldn’t have to be deemed productive in order to be citizens, in order to have rights, in order to be valuable to society.
In conversation with Marie Kelly. This interview, part of a series, was edited for clarity and length. To find out more about Tilting the Lens, see tiltingthelens.com