BITE Insight

Last year saw the first Parallel London event take place at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, an initiative established by innovision to celebrate difference and remove barriers, helping disabled people get active. One of the driving factors behind the initiative was that blind people are not allowed to participate in the London Marathon.

So innovision created the world’s first fully accessible, mass participation push or run event, open to all ages and abilities. The event has five runs: 10km, 5km, 1km, Super Sensory 1km or 100m, allowing participants to see how far they can push themselves. The first event in 2016 attracted 6,000 people and was shortlisted for the BT Sports Industry Awards – Participation Event of the Year alongside events like the London Marathon and I Am Team GB.

The initiative was launched off the back of a World Health Organisation insight that between 70 and 100 million people around the world are in need of a wheelchair. Parallel London supports the not-for-profit organisation Motivation: Freedom Through Mobility, highlighting the plight of people around the world who need, but can’t get, access to a wheelchair.

Last year was one of positive, albeit still slow, change in the representation of disabled people in the public eye. Channel 4 launched their Superhumans Wanted campaign during the 2016 Paralympic Games and Maltesers produced Looking on the Lighter Side of Disability, ads that actively represented disabled people. Incidentally, the Maltesers ads have been the most effective for the brand in the last ten years.

Off the back of a gradually shifting public portrayal, Parallel London is giving disabled people the freedom to get involved in physical competitions and to feel both included and represented. The purpose of Parallel London is to shift attitudes and, rather than focus on the impairment of a disability, become a celebratory event for everyone involved.