In this episode of On Our Terms, host Áine Kelly-Costello catches up with Fionn and Jonathan Angus, an Irish duo otherwise known as Fionnathan. You'll find out how Fionnathan came to be and how they're using their influence to open up opportunities for more people with intellectual disabilities to have access to equal choices for living a life on their terms.
This podcast is co-founded by the European Union.
In this episode of On Our Terms, host Áine Kelly-Costello catches up with Fionn and Jonathan Angus, an Irish duo otherwise known as Fionnathan. You'll find out how Fionnathan came to be and how they're using their influence to open up opportunities for more people with intellectual disabilities to have access to equal choices for living a life on their terms.
This podcast is co-founded by the European Union.
Fionn
Well, independent living means that I have responsibility and I have choices too.
[Acoustic guitar music, and singing - lyrics: "I've got a little story, to tell you. Just some stories, about me, about you". Music fades to background while Áine speaks]
Áine
Welcome to On Our Terms, a podcast featuring diverse disabled perspectives on independent living and disability activism, produced by ENIL, the European Network on Independent Living.
I'm your host, Áine Kelly-Costello. Today I catch up with Fionn and Jonathan Angus, an Irish duo otherwise known as Fionnathan. You'll find out how Fionnathan came to be and how they're using their influence to open up opportunities for more people with intellectual disabilities to have access to equal choices for living a life on their terms. Enjoy.
[Music stops]
Hello, Fionn and Jonathan Angus, it's so great to be talking to you today. Could you start off by introducing yourselves?
Fionn
Yeah, my name is Fionn.
Jonathan
And my name is Jonathan. And when you put our two names together, you get
Fionn and Jonathan [together]
“Fionnathan”
Jonathan
Fionnathan is a father and son team.
Fionn
--a son and father team--
Jonathan
--a son and father team--planning to change the world.
Fionn
Yes, we are a social enterprise with three goals, the first one is to help me to have a great life. The second goal is to share our story and the third goal is to change and heal the world.
Jonathan
Yeah. And I think that because you have Down Syndrome, you might say that helping you to have a great life is more challenging, right? That's the way in which the word ‘disability’ may have some truth in your life. But I also know that in many ways, you having a great life happens so easily. And that's mainly because of who you are. But in some ways, it's also because of you having Down Syndrome. Yeah, there's – life is complicated, isn't it? Yes. There's some advantages to it. I think we have found, yeah.
Áine
I love how you talk about your personality and disability, being connected and all part of deciding what a great life for you looks like. Can you tell me how Fionnathan got started?
Fionn
Ah, yes.
Jonathan
Maybe I'll start the answer. Yeah. Because we had a conversation Fionn, way back when you were a teenager, and sort of conversations, the sort of conversation that a lot of parents have with their teenage children. And I asked you, what do you want to be when you grow up? And do you remember what you said the first time?
Fionn
I do, actually, yeah. I said I wanted to be the next David Attenborough.
Jonathan
Yes. And well, that made a lot of sense. Because you at the time, were watching a lot of nature documentaries, spending a lot of hours going through books about animals and wildlife and spending a lot of hours out in the field. Right? Yeah. Learning about wildlife. And I thought, yeah, that's, I mean, you're not going to maybe be the next David Attenborough, literally, but you could be someone who is a wildlife presenter or a wildlife educator. And I'd love to help you with that goal. Yes, but I realised that well, like a lot of teenagers. You change your mind often. Yeah. So a week later, I asked you again. And you remember what you told me then?
Fionn
Yeah, I said, I said, I said, I want to be a professional musician.
Jonathan
Right. Yeah. And to be fair, that answer made sense to me because you play violin.
Fionn
I do. Yeah.
Jonathan
And I thought, Oh, I better ask one more time. And you came up with a different answer.
Fionn
Yeah. I said I wanted to be a filmmaker.
Jonathan
You did? Yeah. And I asked again, and you even said, once I want to be a member of One Direction. Yeah. Okay. And I realised, well, I mean, that's very typical for teenagers to have a lot of ideas about what they might be when you grow up. And, I realised, I mean, I'm a school teacher, my background is 20 years teaching children. And I thought, you know, it's not really fair that we push teenagers to make big life choices, the way that we do, and maybe we could do this differently. If you and I went on a journey together. Yeah. We could explore all those things.
Fionn
Yeah. Right.
Jonathan
It was, I think really the start of our, this the start of the start of our having a social enterprise together. And when you started, because you said you love filmmaking? Yes. And as a response to that, we started doing interviews with people and filming those interviews. And you came up with a brilliant interview question. Yeah. What do you ask people?
Fionn
The question that I'm famous for is "what do you love about your life?"
Jonathan
Yeah. And it's kind of a brilliant question.
Áine
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I love how you talk about the range of choices and things that you want to be and that you do as part of having a good life. So, from an independent living perspective, and as a person with an intellectual disability as well, Fionn, how did the logistics of getting Fionnathan off the ground go?
Fionn
Well, really, the vision of why we have this social social enterprise is because the HSE said they would give an individual direct personal budget. So, the HSE said, "if you set up a service provider for one person, we'll give you a personal budget".
Jonathan
Yes. And just to be clear in Ireland, the HSE is the ‘Health Service Executive’. Basically, the government body that's responsible for health supports. And there's some question, particularly in the case of people with intellectual disability, whether the support funding should be delivered by the Department of Health, that's caused, in your case, a great deal of confusion.
Fionn
Yes.
Jonathan
And the other thing to make clear, is that when, six years ago, you got your personal budget, you were the very first person in Ireland with an intellectual disability, to manage your own supports.
Fionn
Yes.
Jonathan
And fortunately, we had the help of some amazing people with physical or sensory disabilities who already had fought that fight to get personal budgets. One man in particular.
Fionn
Yes, Martin Naughton.
Jonathan
Martin who helped to set up ENIL, right?
Fionn
Yes,that's right.
Jonathan
And, so the HSE said, well, we've given personal budgets to these other people. We made them set up their own little companies, and we're going to make you do the same thing. And, and so that was the start of things because we may not have ever said – we had all these ideas, but maybe not to put them under the framework of a company.
Fionn
Right, yeah.
Jonathan
Under the structure the company as a social enterprise. It was really through meeting the adversity of the HSE, setting up these hoops that we'd have to jump through. It turned out really great. Because of the kind of company structure that we chose, you have to have a board of directors. And so you had to find six people who would be on your board. That's neighbours mostly, right?
Fionn
Yes, that's right.
Jonathan
And that was really, really healthy and positive to bring people in and to, and to kind of look at well, what are your goals for life? Yeah. I'm paid by the company. Yes, my 10 hours a week. But Fionn is also paid by the company. We sort of found that right away. And we love to find hacks wherever we can. And one of them was that Ireland, to be fair, has a government grant, for companies that hire someone with a disability where they have they pay half the wages for the individual. So we availed of a grant like that, to make it easier for us to cover your wages.
Áine
That's really interesting. I'm glad you found working with your neighbours and other people to talk about your goals and to be in community with you to be such a good experience. But I also think it's kind of a shame that people with intellectual disabilities were being asked to set up their own service provider just to be able to get support and that support was tied specifically to health and not also to wider social outcomes around having a good life, right, because having good health support is only one part of that.
[Music - short acoustic guitar interlude]
I know you've done a lot of advocacy in this area, Fionn, to improve things for all disabled people, but particularly for people with intellectual disabilities, to have better access to independent living. So I wondered if you could tell me what challenges there are still now, for people with intellectual disabilities to have access to personal assistance in Ireland?
Fionn
PAS
Jonathan
Which stands for Personal Assistance Services
Fionn
That's right. Yeah, it’s not a right. In early 2021,
Jonathan
Ireland looked for
Fionn
Ireland looked for disabled people's organisations to give feedback on the first government report on implementing the UNCRPD, and have to bend the rules because that there weren't enough
Jonathan
There weren't enough disabled people's organisations in Ireland.
Fionn
Yeah.
Jonathan
So they bent the rules by bringing in organisations where the majority leadership are people without living experience of disability, but whose interests are supporting people with disabilities, particularly in the intellectual disability realm, but in all disabilities, they've had to bend the rules and say, well, we're not yet there as a country in terms of direct advocacy by people with disability.
Fionn
Right.
Jonathan
And you mentioned that it's not a right to get a personal budget. And Áine we know that in every country in the world, and even in different parts of each country, there are different rules for whether and how, and how much and how much freedom you have to get a budget and what to do with it. And in Scotland, for instance, it's a it's, it's a rite in law, that if you apply for you will be given a budget to manage your own supports, and some other countries, I assume have that. But in Ireland, it's like hen's teeth to get such a thing. So as we mentioned, Fionn, you were the first with an intellectual disability.
Fionn
Yes.
Jonathan
And now seven years later, they're still running pilot projects on it. And they're testing it out for 100 people, but they've put so many restrictions. And they put so many delays on the process that, well, I don't know that we've come to this conclusion. But some people feel that it's a poison pill, and that they've intentionally made it so it will fail. So they can say, “oh, well, we tried individual budgets, and it doesn't really work in an Irish context”. So it's been very frustrating. We do a lot of advocacy, we do a lot of meetings with individuals and families. And many of them haven't even been able to get off the starting block.
Fionn
Yeah.
Áine
That's so frustrating. Because when you don't have access to personal assistance, that can really limit your possibilities and how you see your future. I think. So, do you think that Ireland is also making it especially difficult for people with intellectual disabilities? Or in Ireland, is it hard for anyone with a disability to get personal assistance, because of there being no right to have that?
Jonathan
Do you want me to say something about that?
Fionn
I do, actually. Yeah.
Jonathan
Because in some ways, I'm the expert, not, not by direct experience, but because when we started this project, I was actually working toward a PhD in this subject area. Yeah. Right. And the CRPD, it calls for choice and control. Yeah. And certainly in that, in that type of disability, and the maybe we could say the the level of disability that you experienced, where you would be – no one's suggesting that you should be homed in an institution right now in this day and age, but they do say you should go to a day service.
Fionn
Yeah.
Jonathan
And in many ways, those day services Have a lot of the same mindset as an institutional setting.
Fionn
Yeah.
Jonathan
Because you'd be with a group of people with similar challenges. Cognitively. And you would all be doing sort of from 10am till 4pm, five days a week, this, whatever it is that the organisers decide for you to do. Yeah, you're just there day after day. So, some of us who say, well, they should be thought of as day-wasting services. Yeah. Because there's so little we were really lucky that you didn't fall into that trap.
Fionn
Yeah.
Jonathan
Because the level of expectation for people that are there really crushes initiative.
Fionn
Yeah.
Jonathan
And when you said you wanted to be the next David Attenborough, we said together, well, what would that look like?
Fionn
Yeah
Jonathan
Travelling the world and seeing the wonderful, wonderful majesty of the wild world.
Fionn
Yeah, right.
Áine
Yeah, I like the term “day-wasting service”. Because I think the big difference between what you're doing and those kinds of services is that you have so much more choice about how you're spending your time and what you're learning and who you're interacting with. So that's great. And it sounds like maybe it's quite tricky for all disabled people in Ireland to get their rights but that there's extra layers of discrimination and challenges, and low expectations for people with intellectual disabilities. And so just building off that incredible travel that you've been able to do and all of the experiences you've been able to have through Fionnathan, Fionn, can you tell me what independent living means to you?
Fionn
Well, independent living means that I have responsibility and I have choices too. And sometimes my dad, he can be a jerk at times. But mostly he's a rockin awesome father.
Jonathan
Right. And you should make clear that when you single me out, it's because when you moved into your own apartment, yeah, I moved in with you. Yeah, right. So yours is the only name on the lease. I am your paid assistant. Yeah. So when you got your, your budget? You said I'll hire my dad. Yes. So when you say so. So that's I mean, that's, I suppose a unique wrinkle? Because I think if you look the world over? Well, I don't know how common it is for people to make that choice in many places. I'm sure you know that it's not a choice that can be made. And that we, I think we both agree is problematic, because in our case, certainly Fionn would have never been able to do this. If they had put that restriction down. Yeah, because when you when you got your personal budget, even though you're giving up 30 hours of support, you were only given 10 hours of individual support. Yeah, right. But what did I say? What was my pitch to you to hire me?
Fionn
You said to me that you don’t count hours.
Jonathan
That I don't count hours. Yeah, I'll work with you as much as you want me to. Yes. And that's why you were able to move into your own apartment straight away. But I like how you said it's, it's about, what did you say? Is it about responsibilities and choices? Yeah. One word to represent each of those two things. So what were those two words?
Fionn
Oh, I came up with the word ‘laundry’ for the word ‘responsibility’ and the word ‘movies’, for the word ‘choice’.
Jonathan
Laundry and movies. That's what independent living means to you? Yeah.
Áine
So I think I'm hearing a few different things there as well. Because, yeah, having like learning, having the ability to learn to do things like you know, doing your own laundry, if that is something that feels important as a responsibility is great. But I'm also hearing that you were able to have more autonomy and more choices in your life about moving into your own place with the support of your dad, and so, is having the good support around you. Is that also part of independent living, yeah?
Fionn
Yes, it is. I love and embrace the word ‘interdependent’. So the way I look at that is that the word ‘independent’ is a tool, rather than a goal. So being independent is a tool, but then the goal is really interdependence.
Jonathan
We have to be good at using the tool of independence to interdependence? Yes. And why do you say that independence isn't the goal, because I think a lot of people would say, well, that is the goal to be independent. What do you think of that?
Fionn
I think that the word independence in their mind, well, first of all, there is common talk that they need to say for the word independence as they mean to say supported independence.
Jonathan
But because what is independence in its pure form? What does it mean to be not dependent or to be completely free?
Fionn
It means isolated, like Robin Crusoe.
Jonathan
Yeah, like Robinson Crusoe. So you have no ties to anyone? Yeah, no one relies on you. And you don't rely on anybody else. Yeah, you're independent. And really, I think when you look twice at that, you realise Well, that would be kind of cold. Yeah. And I don't of course, that's not what the independent living movement means at all. Yeah. But because you didn't suffer so many of the ugly challenges that a lot of other people with disabilities have suffered when I think of talking, of course of the social model of disability. Yeah. You didn't have to first overcome those things. Yeah. But rather, you could look straight away at more of the social realm. Yeah. Your personal connections to the world and you really want to be interdependent. Yeah. And what does interdependence mean to you?
Fionn
Well, first of all, thank you for the question. I love that!
Jonathan
Well, that’s the interview. Go ahead.
Well, I suppose, what it means to me is that I can rely on the community and the community can rely on me too. Yes.
Áine
That's great. Yeah. Can you give me some examples that come to mind of how you and the community are interdependent?
Fionn
Um, yes, actually, I can. Um, we do this food distribution project. We are hosted by a group called Food Cloud charity.
Jonathan
Food Cloud is a national project that makes arrangements with the big supermarket chains. Yeah, right. The grocery chains, to take all of the short dated food. Yeah, produce and meat and fish and so many things and give it to organisations, usually charities. We had to make an argument that we should also be recipients even though we're a social enterprise. We've avoided becoming a charity because of some of the connotations of what charity is. Yeah. Right. And would you contrast that with what an enterprise is? And we kind of like that more. So, we can do a lot of our time doing things like Food Cloud, where or there's no money being exchanged. We don't make any profits doing this. Right. But socially we make loads of profits. Yeah. Because every week, two or three times a week, we go to the grocery store and we fill up the car. Yes. Lots of great food. Yeah, far too much for us to eat ourselves. Yeah. And so initially, you would just go door to door in the neighbourhood here, with your red wagon, full of food and knock on stranger's doors and say, Would you like some? Yeah, take as much as you want. And eventually, now, we've developed a neighbourhood network. So that there's we all text each other and different houses will hold on whatever large amounts of food so that it can be redistributed. And there's about two dozen families that are involved. And according to the app on my phone, we've diverted 5568 kilograms of food from what would have gone to waste to feeding families in our neighbourhood. Yes, that's right.
Áine
That's great that you have those networks, and that you're diverting the food from going to waste and making sure that people eat it.
[Music - short acoustic guitar interlude]
So I wanted to come back to something we talked about a little bit before, you were saying that you had a great ally, with a physical disability who helped make sure that you managed to get a personal assistance budget. But, you know, historically, the independent movement has been dominated by people with physical disabilities, because that's kind of how it got going. And sometimes people with intellectual disabilities, you know, have been excluded or sidelined, as you were saying in terms of being shot into de services and having their choice and control taken away, and that being harder to advocate because of that. So can you tell me some accessibility or inclusion tips that make it easier for you to join in advocacy and be fully included?
Jonathan
Last year, the orochtus invited you to do a piece of work and maybe should explain what the octopus is and what that piece of work was.
Fionn
Right. So, I was a part of the committee of disability naturals, and I gave an edge pose testimony to the Orochtus. Does, does simply the Irish parliament of Ireland,
Jonathan
about personal assistance, services,
Fionn
Assistance services, yeah.
Jonathan
And I think if you hadn't written them a letter, when they asked for contributions, they wouldn't have even thought of people with intellectual disability, when they were doing their research into personal assistant services. And it would have been really, about people with sensory and physical disabilities exclusively. And so you did a good service just to open their minds a little bit to expand the scope of what their thinking was. And they did respond quite well, because they invited you then to give testimony to Parliament. Yeah. And the reason that happened is because well, frankly, it's because I saw the call for evidence you love to, you know, be online to search for animals and to search for horror movies, or whatever your interests are. Yeah. But you don't love to search for opportunities to be an advocate and things like that. Right. You're great at doing it once you're once you're brought to the room. Yeah, but my job as your supporter is to find what's the address of that room and the day that's happening. So, a lot of it I think in terms of tips, one of it is one would be either to get good at keeping track of what's out there, or to get an ally who's good at it, because we don't have to be good at everything. Yeah, we need allies who are good at it.
Fionn
Yes, find your ally. Yeah.
Áine
Yeah, thanks for that, I think what I'm hearing there as well as that people from the government and but also from independent living movement, people like me who are disabled but don't have an intellectual disability, that we need to make sure that we're specifically checking in with people with intellectual disabilities and giving you the chances to get your voice into these decision making rooms. I think the other thing that we have to balance it with or be careful about is that we don't ask you to do too much, right? We don't ask you to do everything, like be a voice for everyone with an intellectual disability.
Jonathan
I mean, that's, that's important, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. One thing I can say from my parent's perspective, when young was just a little tyke, and I was exploring what it will be like to be his dad and how I can support him the best. I spoke with a woman who had devoted her whole life to working with people with Down syndrome or a lot of the people that she had supported professionally over the years for people with Down syndrome. And I asked her what is Down syndrome? Like, what is it? What are people with Down syndrome like? What do I need to know about Down syndrome to be a good dad? And she thought for a moment, and she said, you know, they, when I think of all the adults with Down syndrome, that I know, I have to say that there's more difference between them, than there is difference between the rest of us and mind blown, because that suddenly changed, I kind of thought it was like this niche, this little side thing, but what she was saying, “no, we're the side thing, they are huge expanse of, of what their experience of life is like”. And you can even see that and something so crude and offensive as the intelligence quotient, right? The IQ test, it just opened my mind to the fact that when we say something like, “oh, we want to make this piece of, have this document available to people with intellectual disability, we'll just create an easy read version”, that whatever new version you've created, it's just for one small range of ability. You know, it's not for everyone, it's not, “oh, we've covered that we've covered everyone with intellectual disability because we made an easy-to-read version”. We have to realise that everyone has their own language that they speak and every person whether called disabled or divergent or normal, everyone has their own language that they speak.
Fionn
Yes. Yeah, that's right.
Áine
Yeah, I think that's a really good point about, well, two points really, first, valuing different types of intelligence because our school our education systems tend to put a lot of emphasis on academic intelligence, through tests like IQ tests, which is a, you know, a very small part of the picture in relation to how people are overall, right? But I think the other thing is about checking in with people to understand how they prefer to communicate. Do you want to give any examples, Fionn, for you? What makes it easier for you to understand people or to understand information?
Fionn
Yeah, well, one of them is to be able to rely on what I like to call the “information Dad” because he’s really good at giving me some like inputs and info and that.
Jonathan
Okay. I can also suggest that you re-define.
Fionn
Yeah, I do.
Jonathan
But also like, particularly when it comes to like policy documents or something. I mean, there are other versions or other ways to communicate information that you might like more. Yeah. You're not a big fan of the easy-to-read where they have the photos next to it and we find photos often don't make the thing that's being communicated more clear, it makes it actually less clear. Yeah. A photo of a person with a thumbs up doesn't really give a lot of new information, right?
Fionn
Or a picture of a friend that we know, a picture of them with the sentence. It’s pretty much the same thing, really.
Jonathan
But you do like videos. You like things that are explained where you can look at, you can watch someone's speaking and you can listen to their voice, and there's so much more information being conveyed that way. Yeah. And maybe better than videos is when you can sit down with someone it's not. It's not just me, but when you can talk it through with people.
Fionn
Yeah, a side by side course, like an activity thing.
Jonathan
Yeah, can I just say Áine, what we're demonstrating during this interview, is the way in which the two of us partner when we do things. And, and to be honest, I mean, I'm not the one who's labelled with an intellectual disability. But I also greatly benefit from talking things through with you, Fionn. And I think that we can show the world that we really need each other. We've talked about how we would like to get a college degree together.
Áine
Yeah. You know, you communicate in an interdependent way. And actually, when we think about what communication is, it has to work for both the person who is communicating. So for example, the person who was talking, or the person who's given a written document, but it also has to make sense for the person who's receiving the information. And if that doesn't happen, then you don't have communication. Yeah, universities really should, you know, the core should just be about gaining specialised knowledge and a subject of your choice.
I also wanted to touch on – sort of how advocacy by people with intellectual disabilities is described. And I wondered, what do you think about people with intellectual disabilities being called self advocates?
Fionn
To be a self advocate is a very good place to start, but then after advocating for yourself, you can also do like policy advocacy and community advocacy and peer advocacy, things like that.
Jonathan
Yeah. So unfortunately, what we've heard is that people with intellectual disability and autism are often labelled, whatever they do when they speak about change, are called self advocates. And it's used as kind of a belittling, a sort of a left-handed compliment, right?
Fionn
Yes.
Jonathan
So it's so it's actually intentionally or, well, I'm sure some people weaponize it and use it against people by saying, oh, you know, look at that self advocacy you're doing, that’s so great. And it's, it's really not the way it's used. Because we were talking about like, well, what is self advocacy? We realised what anybody that's influential in the world has to be a good self advocate, to begin with. Right?
Fionn
Right.
Jonathan
And no one calls Elon Musk a self advocate, but he's probably the world's greatest self advocate.
Fionn
Yes, I would definitely think so.
Jonathan
So really, when were the example of the Down Syndrome act, yeah, say what that is?
Fionn
Yeah. It's out as a private member's bill. And, and under making this Down Syndrome bill, and it got passed but both houses, the House of Commons on the House of Lords, and recently got signed by the Queen of England guide Royal Assent, and it’s now officially the Down Syndrome Act becuase of it all.
Jonathan
And you were one of five members, founding officers of the Down Syndrome policy group who have Down Syndrome, five out of the total body of 15. It's not a DPO, right? It's not a majority led by people with Down syndrome, but five out of 15 is pretty unusual. It's a step in the right direction. And you did a lot of work, including four visits to Westminster and meeting 107 MPs. Shaking hands, meeting ministers and doing amazing work. Yeah. And then people say, “wow, you made a great achievement. It's the biggest Down Syndrome-specific human rights legislation in the world. Yeah. What a great self advocate you are.”
Fionn
Hmm [sounds skeptical]
Jonathan
And we laugh because Fionn is not a citizen of England.
Fionn
No.
Jonathan
And of course, this act only affects people in the UK. So how can you call that self advocate, see if Fionn doesn’t receive any benefit? Just because of having Down syndrome is not even not even in that country? So it was advocacy? Yes, it was policy advocacy, and it was a gift to people who you can relate to? Because you have Down syndrome. Yes.
Áine
Yeah. And I think you made a really good point at the beginning there, Fionn, as well, saying that self advocacy or advocating for yourself, is important and is perfectly valid, but that when people are using the word self advocacy to mean something else, or to kind of put people with intellectual disabilities or autistic people in a box, and say that they only do this form of advocacy, then, unless that's actually how those people themselves choose to describe themselves, then it's not really fair.
Jonathan
Advocacy is a rainbow of different types. And if you say someone who has intellectual disability can do one kind of advocacy, that's where the problem is.
Áine
When other people rather than people from a particular identity group, use a term against use the term self advocacy against you, rather than letting you define it. And, and that comes back to what you were both saying about people with intellectual disabilities, you know, all being different, and some people can choose to identify more with the term self advocacy, and some people you know, don't. And I think that's important as well, to not put everyone into the same box.
[Music - short acoustic guitar interlude]
It's been great having this conversation. I wanted to finish on a hopeful note. So I wanted to ask, when all the advocacy is getting quite hard, advocacy of any kind. And you know, when it feels like the world is very hard and unfair as a disabled person, what is it that you love about your work? And what is it that keeps you going?
Fionn
Good question. Yes. I suppose what keeps me going out are two things. Number one, life itself. And number two, my family.
Jonathan
What about music? Would you put music in there too?
Fionn
I definitely would. Yeah. Music, a good part of my life, and I love music. And yet, I love life itself, and discovering new things every day, basically.
Áine
Keeping on learning and the relationships with family and music. Well, thank you so much, Fionnathan, to you both for talking to me. I learned a lot and I really appreciate your time.
Jonathan
Thank you for having us. It's been a pleasure.
Fionn
Yes, thank you, Áine.
[Áine speaks over acoustic guitar music]
Áine
Thank you so much for listening. Tell your friends to subscribe to On Our Terms wherever they listen to podcasts.
The featured song is Come Here by disabled performer and activist Dennis Queen.
Podcast cover art and visual design by disabled illustrator Hatiye Garip.
The first season of On Our Terms is hosted and produced by me, Áine Kelly-Costello, for the European Network on Independent Living.