News from Artistic Director, Vici Wreford-Sinnott about a new programme of activities creating space to think about anti-ableist practices and creativity. I was recently awarded a project grant by Arts Council England to develop my new solo show - more of that another day - but alongside this work I am committed as ever to creating spaces to connect, develop and promote anti-ableism in the arts. Ableism is a default setting in the arts but it is also a choice - whether the claim is ignorance, not knowing where to start or budget constraints, it is still a choice. So I have created Sp@ce - Knowledge for Action for Change which consists of four creative writing workshops, 3 crucial conversations for disabled artists to connect and reflect (and possibly plot and plan) and a series of three Anti-Ableism Workshops for Arts Sector staff, boards and practitioners. They are taking place across March and April 2024 while I'm writing and preparing to rehearse the new show. I actively invite disabled artists from all communities to be involved so that intersectionality is at the forefront of our creativity and campaigns. Disabled Women's Monologues is a space for disabled women writers - all levels of experience welcome - to spend time in good company exploring the skills needed for monologue writing in your own voice. The sessions will be fun, supportive and accessible. There are three online sessions and one in person at ARC Stockton. The first workshop is on International Women's Day - what a perfect day to come together and be creative. Booking is through Eventbrite and there is a link to tell you more here but these are the dates so get them in your diaries. Places are limited. Friday 8 March - 2.00pm-4.00pm (online) Wednesday 13 March - 3.30pm-5.30pm (online) Monday 18 March - 1.30pm-3.30pm (online) Tuesday 19 March - 6pm-8pm (in person at ARC Stockton) FREE OF CHARGE Crucial Conversations Disabled Artists is a follow up to my previous Crucial Conversation series - which you can read here. They are time for reflection in accessible spaces where disability is a given. It's important to feel connected and to know that other people are having similar experiences to you, and also to share tips for survival in divisive times. We'll share our findings on our website and in our Disability Arts Online Blog. There is a chance to be really positive as we recall pivotal moments of change brought about by disabled people in the arts over the last forty-fifty years. Again dates are below with the booking link further down. Friday 15 March - 2pm-4pm - Collective Voices/Personal Labour Friday 22 March - 3pm-5pm - The Current Arts Environment Monday 8 April - 6pm-7.30pm - The Progress We've Made FREE OF CHARGE Anti-Ableist Practices in Art and Culture is a series of three workshops designed for the arts sector. I'm so excited about them so please tell your local venues, arts organisations and theatre companies about them. Venues and organisations these workshops are welcoming and supportive, and start from where you are. I really want us all to thrive and so it's vital to provide our allies and potential allies with the right information, as more harm than good can be done with ill-informed good intentions. We know there are good people in arts organisations who realise their work will be richer for including missing voices. We want to make that change lasting so have some great advice for exploring and understanding ableism and anti-ableist practice, along with guidelines for taking action which can be embedded into your organisations.
Friday 12 April - 1.30pm-3.00pm - Anti-Ableist Practices Friday 19 April 1.30pm-3.00pm - Disabled Narratives in Drama Tuesday 23 April 4.00pm-6.00pm - Cultural Equity Beyond Access PAY WHAT YOU DECIDE BOOKING You can get more information on our website here, where you will be directed to Eventbrite for booking. If anyone has any access problems with Eventbrite please email us directly at info@littlecog.co.uk An exciting world comedy premiere is taking place at ARC Stockton this month and it’s the brainchild of Teesside based writer and director Vici Wreford-Sinnott, bringing amazing women comedy writers and performers from around the country to showcase their work under the title of Funny Haha, A Comedy (R)Evolution. Vici was writer and director of Hen Night commissioned by the BBC in 2021 and she created one of the first disabled women- led production teams to create broadcast drama in the UK. Vici tells us, “Dreams really can come true. Funny Haha is proof of that! We’re a group of disabled women from all over England who are passionate about making people laugh. We originally got together not knowing where it would take us but three years later and we’ve got a comedy showcase and are launching a book of our work – in just two short weeks!” The writers initially got together after Vici put a call out on social media. She had invited the brilliant Rosie Jones to do a couple of comedy workshops to help survive the first lockdown and couldn’t believe how quickly it became fully booked. “The demand was huge – there’s obviously lots of very funny disabled women out there, and working with Rosie was amazing. People don’t realise all of her writing credits – she’d written for loads of comedy shows alongside her stand up career taking off, including The Last Leg, Harry Hill, 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown and Would I Lie to You.” Vici Wreford-Sinnott performing as her alter-ego Raquelle Squelch at a Disconsortia DIY Cabaret The Funny Haha group decided that they loved making each other laugh so much that they would stay together and become a writer’s room who met each week – other comedians, satirists and comedy writers were invited in to share their experience including Dolly Sen, Cheryl Martin, Francesca Martinez and Jess Thom. “Jess was part of one of the Writers Room projects we ran and we were delighted that she went on to be commissioned by Channel Four to write a comedy pilot”, Vici added.
The writers in the group are a mix of award winning writers and new cutting edge stand up artists and each of 8 writers will present a brand new piece of original work – JulieMc McNamara, Karina Jones, Honor Flaherty, Porcelain Delaney, Tanya Akrofi, Vici and two other Teesside writers India Robertson and Lynne McFarlane. “There will be something for everyone. Although we are writing as disabled women who want to explode negative stereotypes, we are all bringing something different – there’s stand up, comedy monologues, comic storytelling and character based work.” As well as a warm welcome for the public, the group are very excited to have invited many representatives from the comedy industry such as commissioners, programmers and producers from production companies and venues. Honor Flaherty from the group said, “We’re being bold, we’re putting ourselves out there – some of us are happy tucked away as writers and haven’t performed our work before, so this feels huge. We can’t wait to share it with you!” Another writer, Tanya Akrofi, told us, “We’re shaking off our invisibility and daring ourselves to be fierce. This group has so much to say and has such brilliant ways of saying it – come and join our gang!” Teesside writer Lynne McFarlane said of the event and the book, “The greatest comedy comes from truth, but why let truth stand in the way of a great fabrication. Biography or flights of fantasy, you decide. We’ve had so much fun working on this project that audiences will be able to feel it.” Main Theatre, ARC Stockton and Livestream 27 September 7.00pm Tickets are Pay What You Decide and the book will be available to buy on the night and afterwards from ARC Stockton BOOK TICKETS HERE - Funny Haha Comedy (R)Evolution - ARC | Stockton Arts Centre (arconline.co.uk) For interviews with Vici Wreford-Sinnott please contact email marketing@arconline.co.uk Full Circle is a team of dynamic, award winning, learning disabled theatre makers working in collaboration with artists from Little Cog Theatre Company to create professional exciting work for audiences to experience. In 2022 Full Circle performed their hugely successful production of Stomping Ground on a purpose built accessible theatre stage at Stockton International Riverside Festival. Many community groups were involved in the creation of Full Circle's follow up Our Stomping Grounds Festival at ARC in Stockton which was a two day festival celebrating learning disability culture. The company have always wanted to share what they do with wider learning disability communities in the area and after a successful programme of community workshops, including microphone technique for DJs and cabaret hosts, lyric writing, puppetry and portraiture the company are now offering an amazing 10 week introduction to performing arts course, which the group have been designing and is led by theatre director Vici Wreford-Sinnott. For ten Wednesdays from 13 September to 22 November learning disabled people can build their confidence, learn how to have stage presence, work as a team, and explore the vocal and physical skills performers need in lots of fun ways, all expertly delivered for learning disabled people in a bespoke way based on our expertise developed over many years. You don't have to have any experience, but we do ask that people are supported to apply using the attached form, but people can also get in touch with us directly if they'd like to. We will ask you for a bit of information including why you think this would be a good opportunity for you and then we'll invite you in for an informal chat. We only have 8 places available and so it's important to meet in advance to see if you think it's right for you, and so we can see whether we think the course would work for you. We imagine there will be a variety of people requiring different support involved and whilst we have support workers for the course, you would need to bring a support worker if you need one to one support. We love our social time too and all have a good natter over our packed lunches and over a coffee break in the day. You wouldn't need to buy any special clothing but we recommend that people wear loose comfortable clothing, such as jogging bottoms or leggings, a comfy tee-shirt and non-slip footwear. You can find out more in the links below which will take you to an Easy Read Document and an application form. Our contact details are in the info and please don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like more information. More information and the application form is here Easy Read information is here. IN/Visible Disabled Women’s National Arts Collective
in association with ARC Stockton, Arts Depot London and Little Cog Photo of Kim Tserkezie by Paul Stephenson A unique exhibition entitled On Whose Shoulders We Build is taking place at ARC Stockton at the end of this month to showcase the rich history of disabled people involved in the arts in the North East. Former Balamory star Kim Tserkezie, who played iconic Penny Pocket, is featured as one of a number of creative disabled people. Kim is now an award winning actor, presenter, writer and film producer, running her own production company Scattered Pictures and is a leading and influential voice in the campaign for greater representation of disabled people in the arts and media. Talking about her involvement in the exhibition, Kim said, "I'm so thrilled and honoured to feature in this exciting and important exhibition which demonstrates and celebrates the brilliant and diverse, yet often overlooked, contributions disabled people make to the arts". The exhibition’s Project Manager Vici Wreford-Sinnott, herself a disabled artist, said, “Disabled peoples’ contribution to the arts is often hugely underestimated and has been in the shadows for far too long. Black Robin is a disabled artist and film-maker with a phenomenal catalogue of records of this vibrant community. It seems vital to share them." Disabled people often feel that their voices are not heard, and often great ways to engage with the wider public is through the telling of stories – on stage, in comedies, in films, in portraits, creative writing, photography… the list goes on. Black Robin is creating a new archive to tell the story of the North East’s disabled artists and the initial phase of a website is up and running. He told us, “I’ve documented so much pioneering activity by disabled artists that it seemed wrong for it all to go dusty on a shelf. Arts Council England funded me to spend some time archiving the material and also drawing together an initial list of events – there are already over 100 disability arts events spanning three decades and we’re reaching out for more. We’d love to feature as much as we can.” In the meantime the exhibition shares a ‘wall of fame’ montage featuring many, many disabled artists, groups and events. There are tributes to some of the founders of the movement who are no longer with us, and we have a feature wall of 10 disabled artists from a range of backgrounds, some long established figures and others who are newer to disability arts, including Karen Sheader from punk band The Fugertivs, Paul James a Senior Associate at Live Theatre, international artist Gobscure and Candice Keenan from Teesside’s Full Circle learning disability theatre company. You will have to come along to discover who the others are and more about all of them. Vici said of Kim Tserkezie’s involvement, “We are so thrilled that Kim has been able to make time to take part. She is part of my own children's childhoods and was one of the first wheelchair users in children’s telly. And beyond that she is someone I admire enormously – she is incredibly talented, and also lends her voice to promote the equality of disabled people in film and TV. All of the artists featured are phenomenal. ” The exhibition opens to the public on 28 July and runs until 24 September – do check ARC for opening times. The organisers hope it marks the beginning of a new phase of increased profile and improved education about this important part of our region’s heritage. There is a sound recording of the exhibition for visually impaired people and there is also an online version of the exhibition for those unable to make it along. There is more information here On Whose Shoulders We Build - ARC | Stockton Arts Centre (arconline.co.uk) You have to check out this film from a live event by The Quips aka Cutter // Nash. I'm unashamedly biased because they kindly invited me to be involved and the other artists featured are just mega-brilliant. They put on a five star event!
Gareth Cutter and Gemma Nash held an artistic research project into how disabled artists and audiences are feeling about life in the arts now, after the whole world seems to think we can just go back to how it was before the pandemic. They invited artists to be interviewed and others to create artistic responses to the experience of the pandemic. The Quips culminated in a live radio broadcast which was an hour-long programme of pop and experimental music, political poetry and insightful interviews drawn from the queer and disability arts community which is now available here to tune in to. The live event was shared on YouTube through the Disability Arts Online Channel and you can see the buzz it created in the comments. There were interviews and artistic contributions from amazing people like Quiplash, Karl Knights, R. Dyer, Ruth Malkin, Sonia Allori and George Parker. And Cutter // Nash created some phenomenal sound and visual pieces in response to the experiences of the pandemic. Sonia Allori commented in the chat, "Being here is like collectively exhaling pent up anxiety saved up by us all for the last 2 years" and I would echo that. It felt like a very special event but I wonder who is listening to us. This subject and this work deserves a much greater audience. So please do share it - everyone in the arts needs to hear these voices and experiences. I can't speak more highly of Cutter // Nash for this - we really need to get people in the arts talking and thinking about these important themes too. Cutter // Nash were inspired by broadcasts such as the 1947 French radio show, ‘La Tribune de l’Invalide’, and ‘Gaywaves’, the 1980s British radio programme run in the era of Section 28, its a space for queer and disabled voices to explore the changes, challenges and opportunities brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, and send a message out to the rest of the world about queers disability narratives. More radical radio is needed - let's turn the volume up! There is a strong tradition of disabled women (inclusive of trans women), non binary people, and comedy in a variety of ways in the disability arts movement in the UK. And disabled men of course, many revolutionaries there too, but we wanted a space for specific things. It's a powerful way to shatter preconceptions of what and who people expect us to be. The list of pioneers who use comedy, humour and satire in their work includes Barbara Lisicki, Liz Carr, Mavis Dishcloth (aka Sue Vass), Francesca Martinez, The Nasty Girls, Triple Cripples - Olajumoke 'Jay' Abdullahi and Kym Oliver. Karen Sheader uses it in her songwriting, similarly Dolly Sen in her cultural interventions, JulieMc McNamara, Jess Thom and Rosie Jones. Tammy Reynolds, Amelia Cavello and Lady Kitt explore, celebrate and explode expectations with drag. As well as excellence in their artform these artists and campaigners bring about radical change, much needed in all disability communities. Through our Funny Haha projects we've met some incredible disabled women comedy writers, some of whom we share more information about below. Last year we ran a comedy writing course, which this year evolved into a comedy writing room. It has proved to be an invaluable space, where we have not needed to explain ourselves, where we have done our very best to be as accessible as possible, where we definitely have been covid safe, where we have reduced our isolation but where we have laughed and laughed and laughed - even at the dark stuff, in fact sometimes especially at the dark stuff. Culture is full of stereotypes of disabled women as passive, simpering, tragedy cases created by non-disabled people, and whilst we acknowledge the difficulties and oppression we face, we also celebrate our complexities as people. We celebrate them and champion greater platforms. We're not a side show - we are very firmly a group of people taking our own cultural agency in a climate where there is little support for this. Comedy is a brilliant tool of transgression and subverting the millennia old myths about disability. And of course the subject of sex came up - an ongoing shady taboo around disability. We've often been presented as non-sexual and disabled kids didn't get sex education at school as it was assumed it would never be relevant for them. This is recent by the way - not in the 19th century! Sex isn't the sole subject of the evening by the way - it inevitably pops up a few times, on our terms, but as I said before - we're celebrating all of our various complexities and the world we live in. There is sex, food, social media, growing up Northern, online dating, biscuits, carers, gynaecology, social media, being 'blind' drunk, politics, punk and lots and lots of laughs in the storytelling. We're holding an online sharing of the work of the writing room with 8 disabled women writers and performers - some will shudder at the mention of that last description but hey, there's a first time for everything. It's on zoom on Friday 24 June, 7.00-8.30pm. Bring a drink and some nibbles and enjoy the show. Tickets can be booked on eventbrite by clicking here and are on a pay what you decide basis - which means you just pay what you like after the event. Introducing the writers: JulieMc McNamara is an outspoken advocate for Disability-led cultural revolution and an award-winning writer, theatre and documentary filmmaker. Her work is driven by social justice and actively seeks out unheard voices from the political periphery. She is co-founder of the Disability film Festival with Caglar Kimyoncu (1999 - 2007) and co-founder with Isobel Hawson of the Disability-led theatre company Vital Xposure, where she was Artistic Director until 2020. She is also a survivor of Long Covid and currently socializes as a human condom to model spatial integrity and the inclusion of Disabled people in social spaces. She is presenting 'Bursting Your Bubble - When Dreams Turn to Dust'. Pronouns - She/ Her/ Sir Honor Flaherty is an aspiring disabled writer from Leicestershire. After a successful career in professional theatre production, she decided it was time to take her writing dreams seriously, so she successfully completed a MA in TV Screenwriting. She has had some moderate successes with published short stories, and co-written a short film called Pop. She was also a co-writer on a feature film called 50 Kisses, which was produced by London Screenwriters Festival. More recently she has completed the Comedy Lab Sketch Writing course with Soho Theatre, as well an array of courses with Little Cog, DANC, Theatre 503 and The Lyric, Belfast. She is currently part of Leicester’s Curve Theatre playwriting scheme. Honor is presenting Biccy-Wiki-Doodah. Tanya Akrofi is a writer and oral storyteller who has an ongoing fascination with fairytales and folklore. As a workshop facilitator for children and adults, her ambition is to reconnect all of us, with the healing power of oral traditions. Her inspirations range from the Anansi tales of her Ghanaian childhood, to Angela Carter to the local tales of the Lincolnshire countryside. She is a South London Gyal living in Lincoln. Pronouns - she/her/hers India Robertson is an artist and storyteller, using various techniques to entertain and sometimes inform. Her goal is to create innovative and comedic work with subtle political undertones to make the audience feel challenged, entertained, and refreshed. She is presenting 'Swipe Right'. Porcelain Delaney is a Performer/ Writer based in Salford. Whilst working as a performing artist Porcelain grew frustrated at the lack of characters and stories that reflected her and those around her, So she started writing to share lesser told narratives. Porcelain has completed courses with: The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and others. Her first play ‘Breeding Machine’ was longlisted by The Royal Court and awarded Arts Council England funding for development. Her second play ‘Nameless’ debuted in 2021 at DaDa Fest. Her Short story ‘Inspiring’ was longlisted by The Aurora prize for writing. She performed her monologue play ‘Reflection’ on BBC radio. She is presenting an extract from 'Breeding Machine' which is a longer solo show. Karina Jones is a visually impaired actor, aerialist, belly dancer and vocal coach from Wales. She trained at Liverpool Hope University and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She also works as a voice and accent coach, an audio description consultant and is a qualified NLP practitioner. Recent work includes performing in Macbeth at Leeds Playhouse, and Pride and Protest by Kaite O’Reilly for BBC Radio 4. Karina was invited to speak on audio description at the Riga International Circus Conference in Latvia. She was audio description consultant for the Young Vic’s production of The Secretaries. Through Extant Theatre Company’s Directors and Writers Pathway courses, Karina is currently developing her own work due to be showcased soon. A wealth of performance experience Karina has worked with a range of companies including Graeae Theatre Company, Original Theatre Company, Extraordinary Bodies and National Theatre Wales. karina is presenting an extract from her solo show in development 'Blind Drunk'. Lynne is an experienced writer, editor and proofreader who gained an MA in Creative Writing from The Open University. She has a long history in the publishing industry but now works in a freelance capacity as a writer. She will be reading her piece My Roots are Showing about growing up Northern, talking about her mam and dad and her. Vici Wreford-Sinnott was recently commissioned by the BBC to write and direct Hen Night, which is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer. She is passionate about creating new disabled protagonists and recent work includes the radio drama The UnSung with co-creators Mandy Colleran, Cheryl Martin, Caroline Parker and Jacqueline Phillips. She produced a number of lockdown productions including Funny Peculiar starring Liz Carr (BBC Silent Witness), Mandy Colleran and Bea Webster. She was commissioned by Spare Tyre to create A Site of Suitable Scale and continues to explore safe, accessible models of practice for the Covid-era for disabled practitioners. Her alter-ego, Raquelle Squelch, hosted the DIY Cabaret at ARC Stockton for Disconsortia, but she currently resting in some binbag dust at the back of the wardrobe. Vici is presenting her monologue 'Jean's On TikTok'.
Pronouns - she/her Crucial Conversations Crucial Conversations are a series of discussions created by disabled artist Vici Wreford-Sinnott to provide spaces to discuss important issues for disabled artists. There is an absence of these disabled-led spaces and we’d like to see more of them. We acknowledge the work of other disabled artists and disabled-led organisations also having similar conversations – we’d love to be able to collaborate and unify our voices in a continued show of strength to bring about change. These conversations are beginnings, are not endings, are not definitive and are not exhaustive – there are many, many voices which need to be heard. It is an honour to have been joined by those who could make it along on these occasions but there is also more to be done. Background This conversation – Disabled Playwrights’ Legacy in Print - Where Is It? - took place as the result of a twitter exchange last year between Vici Wreford-Sinnott and legendary playwright Mark Ravenhill. Mark put a call out for plays he could recommend to a colleague, and Vici suggested ensuring that plays by disabled playwrights were added to the list. And then began the search for published disabled playwrights. And whilst we were able to pull together a small list of fantastic works after twitter call outs, the sheer volume of work which has been written, performed, and toured but remains unpublished and therefore without the same legacy as our peers, hit home. Where are the published works young disabled people can see themselves reflected in, the plays which tell the stories of our lives, the authentic protagonists who excite, engage, taking us on either fantastical journeys or into gritty realities. And the ones which are published, do they all sit together somewhere as part of the canon, visible and celebrated? This conversation aimed to begin examining why our work doesn’t get published, and what we want to do about it as a community of writers. There had been suggestions in advance of publishing retrospectives in anthology form, talking to publishers, creating a script depository so that the unpublished scripts are available to read and potentially be performed by others. From the outset it was imp0ortant to be clear that this is a beginning, with none of those creating the space, in a position to resource a final outcome. We knew that actions may arise from the meeting but equally they may not. It was entirely dependent on who attended, what was discussed and whether people feel they have capacity to move things forward. You can still get involved This conversation is just a beginning and if you couldn’t make it along to the session it doesn’t mean you can’t contribute or get involved. You are invited to contribute responses to the questions asked during the zoom. There is more information on this here Playwrights in Attendance Huge thanks to the incredible playwrights who came along to share their views and experiences - Tanya Akrofi, Leanna Benjamin, Paula Brett, Laurence Clark, Robbie Curran, Daneka Etchells, Amy Evans, Matthew Gabrielli, Cheryl Martin, Ali McLean, JulieMc McNamara, Josh Merrit, Yaz Nin, Tom Ryalls, Fatima Serghini, Simon Startin, Jess Thom, Tom Wentworth, and Naomi Westerman. (No-one knowlingly left off this list and further names to be added as other contributions come in!) Introduction to the meeting Welcoming people to the meeting were Vici Wreford-Sinnott (writer, director, AD Little Cog) and Mark Ravenhill (playwright, AD King’s Head Theatre). Vici gave an overview of the meeting aims, what would happen and provided access information. She thanked Mark Ravenhill for his support of the conversation and introduced him. Mark Ravenhill, Playwright and Artistic Director and Joint CEO of The King’s Head Theatre Mark said it was an honour to have been invited to co-host and was pleased to have been able to support it with setting it up through the King’s Head Team. He thanked the team for their work. Mark talked about his early career as a playwright, how his very first couple of plays weren’t published and that he’s probably glad of that fact, feeling better about more developed works being published. Methuen published his first major play Shopping and Fucking and have published all plays since. Musicals and operas are different. He doesn’t doubt the transformative impact on a career that publishing can have and is aware that, while all publishers have slightly different criteria, publication is usually attached to a production and that most sales take place during the run of the play. The good news about this country is that more plays are published here than any other country and has been the case for about 35 years. The life and legacy of your play is totally transformed when your play is published, bookshops, libraries, schools, and Vici is spot on to see that the life of unpublished work is totally different. I’m aware that being published has made awareness of my work very different. Mark said that he was mainly here to listen and learn and looked forward to hearing the discussion. Guests We introduced our guests Matt Applewhite from Nick Hern Books and Katherine Murphy from Playography, a digital online resource, at the Irish Theatre Institute. They were here to give us an overview of their work and offer possible thoughts and reflections on the conversations. All of our guests’ work has real relevance to our conversation. Matt Applewhite – Managing Director and Commissioning Editor, Nick Hern Books. Matt started by thanking everyone for the invitation to come along to the conversation and acknowledged what a challenging few years we have all had. He said he was keen to listen to everyone’s thoughts and added that it feels like a time of opportunities for change on issues which affect the industry. NHB was established 34 years ago and have published about 1000 plays which are in print at the moment, and books about theatre written by and for practitioners. In a good year, NHB publish 80 to 100 plays. The main criteria is that the play is getting a professional production (a run of minimum 3 or 4 weeks). This is because it feels that partly through development, rehearsals and production the play is being activated by actors, directors, designers etc and so it becomes something that is ready to commit to the published page. With a published play, NHB is looking to create something to be read, performed and done so in quantities that make it feasible for them, given that play sales are small. Matt noted that a lot of things are trying to be balanced - artistic merit, long-term list building, a responsibility in building a canon of work. It means to some extent publishing is fairly reactive and reflective of what is on the stage. NHB hopes not to carry an unconscious bias about work being performed and over the last few years, there has been a focus on voices that have been marginalised. Theatres have also become more diverse. Matt said that they feel the responsibility to shape what dramatic work can be. And have had various discussions about an anthology of deaf and disabled writers and he mentioned publication of Crip Tales and the fact that Tom Wentworth, one of the writers, was present at this conversation. Matt said that there is more to do, work to be done and that he was looking forward to hearing all ideas from the conversation. Katherine Murphy - Playography Editor, Irish Theatre Institute Katherine thanked everyone for the invitation Vici and Mark for organising the event and gave an overview of how Playography works. It was developed and is managed by the Irish Theatre Institute and was set up around 20 years ago and is an online searchable dash database with two strands: Irish plays written and produced in English language and plays which are written and produced in Irish language. Each play contains name of playwright, synopsis, cast size and there are currently over 4,300 entries. Information is taken from the programme of opening night to keep the database consistent. Where this is not possible, information is taken from other sources such as a publisher or press cuttings etc. Pieces are gathered by a team of two who do the day to day running of the database. Then there is oversight from a board of co-directors, an expert advisory panel which engages with topics like what gets included on the data base and they help to consider whether a play is regarded as ‘professional’ and look at how to include digital theatre. The Advisory Panel changes every 5 years and tends to have playwrights, directors or academics on the panel. The parameters of the model and its management were set up 20 years ago. Digital e-plays are available for sale, with over 120 plays included. Where authors haven’t been published in traditional way, the work is available in a PDF and can be purchased for around 20Euro with 11.5E going to the playwright. This is a flagship program of the Irish Theatre Institute. The foundation of the project is to ensure plays can be discovered in the future, read and performed again. The database provides information about where to purchase a play (sometimes this is done via an email to a playwright or company), information about rights (both professional and amateur) and to allow for future performance opportunities. Katherine concluded by saying that, as we might guess, there are challenges in maintaining an extensive online play depository. The organisation has a lot to do in the way of accessibility and this discussion is happening already so they are looking forward to more discussion around this. The conversations We had 8 break out rooms considering four questions during the meeting, of which we have a longer set of notes. Each group was asked to bring three main points back to the collective. Question 1 - Given the low numbers of published works by disabled playwrights compared to what both what we know has been produced and what has been published by non-disabled peers, what do you think is behind this? What is our experience of submitting/not submitting work? Have we submitted our work and's not been accepted or have we not submitted work because we didn't think it was worth it? Group 1
Question 2 - For context, sometimes as playwrights, we work in different worlds of theatre – independently with a self-created company of colleagues, project funded perhaps, sometimes writing in isolation with a view to submitting to venues, companies and competitions, or we may have been commissioned by an established venues or company. Are we being supported to write – how and by who? And where do we get good critical feedback on the work? Group 1
Group 2:
Question 3 - Are there suggestions we could make to publishers about the unpublished body of work that already exists? Group 1 1. Conventional scripts aren’t always the best format – often we write performance texts, or challenge and push form. 2. We need informed disabled leadership in the publishing houses – people who get the value and relevance of work which has been missing. It would need really good marketing but could be done. 3. Photographs/ scripts/ plans/ recordings need to be disabled artist led Group 2
Question 4 - What other methods are there of raising the profile of the work and sharing it? A centralised library of published works? Pros and cons of a script depository for access to unpublished scripts. Group 1 We veered between the two questions.
Group 2
Conclusion to the meeting Matt Applewhite’s Concluding Comments and Advice. “It's just been really fascinating and fantastic, and a really important conversation. I hope it's just the start of it. As you said right at the start, Vici, 90 minutes was not going to seem like long enough time and it hasn't. I would just say that, you know, I was hearing about the barriers that there are to publishing which I would very much like to feel that we can play our part in dismantling. I mean I can only speak for ourselves, and we have a long way to go. I know that we're sometimes slow, with the best will in the world, we can't publish everything we get sent. We don't go out and solicit scripts often enough, but we do want to assure everyone here, and beyond, when you digest all the information from this meeting, that we want to read and respond to as much work as we possibly can. We need that to be in advance of the production, so that we can consider a publication alongside, but I was really interested by the ideas about ways we should think differently and market our work differently. And the idea that the published text isn't necessarily the best format for all sorts of work. There's just been so much food for thought for this which I'm going to take back to the team. Just to reiterate my door is always open – my email can be circulated to everyone when we send out notes and I’m happy for people to be able to contact me by email or by Zoom or phone or whatever means of communication is best for you. But finally, please keep writing. We need your stories, we need your voices. And thank you very much for everyone's contribution for having me along. Thank you.” Katherine Murphy’s Concluding Comments and Advice. “I'd just respond to a few bits and pieces in relation to a digital repository - the first was about the comment of not making the work available for free, which I totally and utterly understand and am on board with. And the copyright question, to address that from how it works at Playography. The information that's available online on Playography is only that kind of basic information available when you're advertising a play, with the addition of for example, extra members of the technical team, etc, and the information about the performance dates. There's no other copyrighted immaterial publicly available online. You have to purchase any play in order to physically get it and when you get an e-play there is a note about copyright included on every single script that goes out. In terms of subsidy, I absolutely think that is something worth exploring. I think in terms of developing a resource - a phased approach is probably best. I'm brought to mind of that old saying ‘how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time’. We broke down essentially the last 100 years into three phases, [and this was of all playwriting in the Republic of Ireland] - the first phase of research which covered about 50 years or so did take two and a half years to complete. So realistic time frames are crucial. The other thing is about the script possibly not always being the best model and the approach for published work is really interesting to include texts where you might find that otherwise they get lost in a moment in time. To preserve them. And the last thing I want to say and it's something I didn’t mention at the start but probably should have, is that one thing that in the founding of Playography, is that it's enabled to us look numerically at the canon and we have produced a number of findings reports now based on this, on things like writing in the Irish language, things like theatre for young audiences - one on disability is largely overdue and we will need to look ourselves at how we go forward with that. But I suppose it’s just to think about if you are looking back to kind of look forward, as it were, about measurement and about those figures, because when you have the facts and figures in front of you, it makes your case a lot stronger, and we have found that in the past. So that’s just a quick response anyway to a lot of great points raised and thank you so much for having me here today. I have really, really enjoyed hearing all of this and feel very invigorated going forward, so thank you.” Taking Things Forward
What Next? It might be a good idea to arrange another couple of meetings to discuss if there is a will to move things forward, discussing main themes of an exploratory phase and flag up some potential partners. With a view to a very tangible outcome and avoiding becoming an ongoing series of talking shops. We’d be mindful of everyone’s time and capacity. Please confirm to info@littlecog.co.uk if you’d like to attend a further chat. Acknowledgements – specials thanks again to all the playwrights, and to Mark, Matt and Katherine. The conversation took place online on 13 March supported by Little Cog, King’s Head Theatre and ARC Stockton. Thank you to Arts Council England the funding from which covered access costs for the meeting. Crucial Conversations were a series of discussions created by disabled artist Vici Wreford-Sinnott to provide spaces to examine important matters of the day, in response to the fact that the conversations just weren't happening with any level of scale and our voices are not incorporated into planning for the future in any meaningful way. Millions of disabled people from all of our communities are being left behind in the approach from the arts to a return to 'in person' art and culture. There is a serious absence of these spaces, these conversations and we’d like to see more of them. We acknowledge the work of other disabled artists and disabled-led organisations also having similar conversations – we’d love to be able to collaborate and unify our voices in a continued show of strength to bring about change.
Not everyone could make the meetings but we invite all disabled artists to add their voices to these conversations - we need to get our voices and the exclusion we are experiencing out there. Disability drops to the bottom of everyone's diversity agenda and often isn't visible at all. Disabled people from a range of communities and backgrounds often experience double, triple and more discrimination whether that is in relation to race and ethnicity, gender identity, LGBTQIA+, age, multiple conditions, learning disability, mental health, neurodivergence, education routes, institutionalisation, benefits & employment status and class. We need unity and a cohesive voice. We have to be clear - these conversations hold only the power they are received with in the mainstream arts sector, funders and policymakers. Vici is not an appointed official of any kind, she is a freelance artist committed to community and collectivism. There is a much wider responsibility by those better resourced than we are. These conversations should however be seen as a call to action and an education to the arts sector. There is work to be done. These conversations are beginnings. They are not endings, are not definitive and are not exhaustive – there are many, many voices which need to be heard. It is an honour to have been joined by those who could make it along on these occasions and their eloquence, emotional labour is seen and valued, their voices heard. They are not whispers on the wind. Do not make them so. The aim of each meeting was to promote the space for people to come along, have a conversation, respond to a series of questions and then we would release blogs into the public domain to reflect the voices of those who attended, the transferability of their experiences to disability equality and access broadly and illustrate how they might inform future conversations. Such conversations need to be large scale, public, publicly funded, disabled led, and include the voices of disabled people from all communities. Disabled people should not be 'hand picked' - we need to hear diverse voices. To segregate disabled practitioners into national portfolio funded and independently funded is incredibly unbalanced and serves no one well, and has created division in the disability arts sector where there needs to be much more equality of representation and thinking. Disabled artists can still get involved and add your voices. The three conversations we held were: You can click on the links above to read the blog reportage of the conversations. We'd love you to add your voices to a campaign for change which includes involving disabled people in planning for the future of the arts, not at a fringe level but as significant cultural contributors. The questions each conversation posed can be found below for information and also in a document available here to download and email to us. Access Riders and Their Role in Disability Equality We looked at the scope and scale of disability in the UK and reminded ourselves that there are over 14.1 million disabled people living here from all communities and backgrounds. Disability is a huge umbrella term, which we acknowledge not everyone chooses to use to define themselves. We were thinking about the societal and systemic barriers anyone with a long term or lifelong condition experiences where accessibility is required. We talked about disability rights, community action, solidarity and disability pride. Group conversations focussed on :
You can access the access rider template and information here. Just what is the 'new normal'? This conversation was held because many disabled people feel they are left out completely of the return to 'in person' arts and culture activities, and are concerned that the lack of guidelines about safety for everyone has led to a mistaken perception of safety. A position of just getting on and 'living with covid' actually misinforms and hides the fact that many people just can't do that and are having to stay at home. It really does need further discussion as the arts face the biggest moral dilemmas in a lifetime. And the idea of any kind of normal is a complete misnomer. Normality is a construction to suit a dominant ideology that ensures difference of any kind is 'othered', distanced and removed. This isn't simply about disability equality, which is a big enough social phenomenon on its own, it's about how we are being manipulated to think and behave as a society, a so-called democracy where the arts should be at the heart of truth. When you add your voice to this conversation, you will see from the existing blog that peoples' responses in our 90 minute meeting fell into a series of headings, these weren't prescribed beforehand, so if new headings are needed please create them. The respondents were answering from their own perspectives and not there to represent everyone and everything. 1. What was the old normal like for disabled artists, reflecting on your experience and observation? 2. How would you characterise the last two years (the pandemic) in terms of disabled artists experiences of the arts? What changes did you experience? 3. What moral (and legal) dilemmas are the arts facing, or not facing, up to? 4. What do we need to fully participate – audiences, participants, artists, leaders? The question is what should arts funders, decision makers and artists be thinking about to make sure those shielding and living with Long Covid can be included? 5. Anything else you'd like to add. Disabled Playwrights' Legacy in Print - Where is it? This conversation aimed to examine the lack of disabled playwrights' work in print and how that impacts our artistic and cultural legacy as a result. We were to look at possibilities to redress the balance and to raise the profile of disabled playwrights' work. Vici Wreford-Sinnott (Theatre and TV writer/director, AD of Little Cog). We were joined by Mark Ravenhill who co-hosted (playwright and Artistic Director & Joint CEO of the King's Head Theatre), Matt Applewhite (Managing Director and Commissioning Editor, Nick Hern Books) and Katherine Murphy (Editor, Playography at the Irish Theatre Institute) and an amazing group of disabled playwrights, all credited in the blog. Question 1 - Given the low numbers of published works by disabled playwrights compared to what both what we know has been produced and what has been published by non-disabled peers, what do you think is behind this? What is our experience of submitting/not submitting work? Have we submitted our work and's not been accepted or have we not submitted work because we didn't think it was worth it? Question 2 - For context, sometimes as playwrights, we work in different worlds of theatre – independently with a self-created company of colleagues, project funded perhaps, sometimes writing in isolation with a view to submitting to venues, companies and competitions, or we may have been commissioned by an established venues or company. Are we being supported to write – how and by who? And where do we get good critical feedback on the work? Question 3 - Are there suggestions we could make to publishers about the unpublished body of work that already exists? Question 4 - What other methods are there of raising the profile of the work and sharing it? A centralised library of published works? Pros and cons of a script depository for access to unpublished scripts. Getting Involved and Adding Your Voice - document here ***Please note we are not a regularly funded organisation and these conversations were funded through a personal Arts Council projects grant to an artist. We do not have the capacity to deliver large scale national campaigns without support and resources. We need to be in this together, pulling together, building community, pooling resources and offering support. Crucial Conversations
Just What is the New Normal? Background This is the third in a series of Crucial Conversations with disabled artists. The first crucial conversation was with arts venues and organisations, presenting them with the Cultural Shift model of disabled-led practice in mainstream venues. We held a conversation about the role Access Riders can play in both easing the continued labour expected of disabled artists to explain and re-explain their access requirements to partners, venues, and commissioners. The more access riders we create, the more familiar the concept becomes to everyone, with a ripple effect towards increased accessibility in the arts. They can’t do that alone of course, but they can bring influence on the bigger picture. We also held a conversation co-hosted by legendary playwright Mark Ravenhill about the lack of legacy in print. News about that soon. All the Crucial Conversations have connecting points, and ultimately have created a space for disabled artists from all communities to talk about key matters of the inequalities and exclusion we still experience, compounded by a ‘return’ to the real world during a global pandemic. This is the report of a 90 minute conversation and is quite long. Why do we need to talk? So why is this conversation about the ‘new normal’ happening? As someone who has been shielding for two years, along with millions of other people, I have protected myself and others. However, the way the arts sector is behaving when the pandemic is still raging is just not normal. The arts are facing some of the biggest moral dilemmas in living history. Attempting to work in art and culture before the pandemic, we were a long way from reaching anything like equality for disabled practitioners. There seem to be other layers of things to consider now to avoid a two-tier arts sector. Spaces aren’t being created on big enough platforms for these conversations, with many disabled people saying that they feel silenced, ignored, guilty and worried about it affecting their careers if they speak out, so we are getting together anyway. You can still get involved This conversation is just a beginning and if you couldn’t make it along to the session it doesn’t mean you can’t contribute or get involved. You are invited to contribute responses to the questions asked during the zoom. There is more information on this here A call for allyship The responsibility is largely falling yet again onto the shoulders of disabled people to make our case. Aware of the emotional labour involved in talking about these matters in solution focussed ways, we decided to approach this conversation as reportage. And very much with a view to sharing this blog about the conversation with the wider arts world with an expectation of acknowledgement and action from publicly funded arts organisations. **Cue** – acknowledgement and action please. 1. Share this blog with a comment of support on social media, 2. Get in touch to arrange a bigger conversation, 3. Take affirmative action supported by disabled people, and 4. See this as both a learning opportunity and an opportunity to create something ground-breaking for arts and culture as we move forward. Joined up thinking strategies We need a national plan of action with suitable support for venues and organisations to develop their understanding of disability equality in practice, and to pay, largely freelance, disabled artists and practitioners for their time and expertise. We need some joined up thinking and to develop some models of excellence not exclusion! We saw for a while how the arts sector could adapt to new ways of working, learn new and relevant language, and respond to the needs of people in the pandemic. It even went a long way towards creating accessible opportunities online and disabled artists had access to people, events, and opportunities that they might not have had before. It was still far from perfect, but equality and access appeared to be finally on the agenda in many places. The voices of disabled campaigners were being heard in places that hadn’t previously listened. The return to real world events has been gradual, many venues offering social distancing and insisting on mask wearing, a handful continue to offer work online and there has been much talk of ‘new hybrid’ ways of working. And then what happened? Suddenly the ‘pandemic is over’ and we have to ‘live with it’. Millions of people are still shielding, many silenced and shouted down, many afraid to speak out as the times feel hostile to disabled people. We feel written off by the language around inevitability and we are being left behind. Many disabled people have no choice but to return to unsafe environments for financial survival or have to fight hard for safer environments. The moral dilemmas in facing the return need open discussion. There are legal obligations too. Provocation - Just what is it going to take to have an egalitarian cultural sector with the equal involvement of disabled people, reflecting our pluralistic nation? The conversation reportage The following four questions were posed for our conversation and you can read the points raised below each one. Although the comments are anonymised, it was important to us that they remain in the voices of those in the conversation. They are not exhaustive but strongly indicate that the arts sector cannot brush us into the dust under the carpet.
Everything has been gathered under headings and are presented as bullet points. It’s not scientific research but these conversations are important, and these voices need to be heard, with due consideration to the requirements of a whole community. 1. What was the old normal like for disabled artists?
2. How would you characterise the last two years (the pandemic) in terms of disabled artists experiences of the arts? What changes did you experience? Initially
Campaigning voices
Changes in access
Digital/Online
Practice
Funding and Financial Sustainability
Safety
3. What moral (and legal) dilemmas are the arts facing, or not facing, up to? Returning during a pandemic
Accountability
Penalties
Solutions
4. What do we need to fully participate – disabled audiences, participants, artists, leaders? The question is what should arts funders, decision makers and artists be thinking about to make sure those shielding and living with Long Covid can be included?
Acknowledgements – this online meeting took place on Friday 11 March 2022. A massive thank you to the disabled artists who attended this conversation: Sue, Austin, Mandy Colleran, Gareth Cutter, Honor Flaherty, Pauline Heath, Steph Robson and Tommy Watkin. Thank you to Black Robin for their separate comments for inclusion in the blog. Thank you to all the disabled practitioners having conversations like this across the country and campaigning for an equal return to the arts for disabled artists, audiences, participants and staff. Vici Wreford-Sinnott March 2022 info@littlecog.co.uk Funded by Arts Council England and supported by ARC Stockton. USEFUL LINKS FROM LITTLE COG Cultural Shift – Ideas for your venue and disabled people A Guide to Developing Access Riders Accessible Online Meetings Social Model, Disability Equality Ethos, Crip-Taking A guide to including disabled people in the performing arts. FROM SUE AUSTIN – Multimedia, performance and installation artist You can find out more about Sue’s work here: www.wearefreewheeling.org.uk www.immersedin360.com Review written by Aruna D’Souza having seen ‘Creating the Spectacle!’ exhibited during Radical Love Exhibition, (The Ford Institute, New York, June to August 2019): https://brooklynrail.org/2019/11/criticspage/Living-Without-Gravity Featured TED speaker - Ted talk presented at Talk of The Day on TED.com: https://www.ted.com/talks/sue_austin_deep_sea_diving_in_a_wheelchair/details?language=en Vici Wreford-Sinnott writes, "This is a call to action, as all the conversations are in this series are. Disabled Artists please develop Access Riders as tools of empowerment and activism so that they become common place, and that talk of access becomes common currency in employment and engagement in the arts. It's not the only thing we can do but it will be a part of a campaigning wave. We’re also calling for greater platforms for these conversations please. Share this information and contact us at Little Cog to discuss this further. We are being left behind at an incredible rate as the arts push forward."
This blog is written after a workshop on developing Access Riders. You can still get involved This conversation is just a beginning and if you couldn’t make it along to the session it doesn’t mean you can’t contribute comments for the 'points made' section. You are invited to contribute responses to the questions asked during the zoom. There is more information on this here Some voices are still completely missing from the arts aren’t they? It’s glaringly obvious and all of us know it, the whole arts sector I mean, but the parts that feel difficult, awkwardly shaped or like they might involve a bit too much thought are being quietly swept into the dust under carpets. It feels essential to me to create spaces where disabled artists can come together to talk where we are not silenced or hushed into embarrassment or guilt for talking about things we are still being excluded from. The important things about our experience and the spaces we feel left behind from. We see the rolling eyes and sighs – we just want to talk about the art too but there is too much in its way. There have been some huge disappointments recently as it dawns on us that only some members of our community are going to be involved in the arts going forward in current circumstances. A lot has to change. Again. Groundhog day for equality conversations. Real life exhaustion. Again. We have to ‘make a case’ and prove our worth for everything. Importantly in these conversations it is vital to note how far our community has come, the change we have campaigned for and the progress we’ve forged. The Disabled Peoples’ Rights Movement has existed for over fifty years but so few people know about this or acknowledge it. No-one is educated about it as it’s not included in any way in our education systems. It seems niche and insignificant but when we remember that 20-25% of our population consists of disabled people who experience barriers and exclusion every day, it really isn’t good enough. As a society, we still speak in hushed tones about disability as if it’s a tragedy, when in fact 70% of us will become disabled as we age as a natural part of life. It’s ridiculous that we don’t talk more about it and prepare a more accessible world. Instead, we’re still shutting people away. I was so lucky to be awarded an Arts Council England projects grant and to have continued support from ARC Stockton where I am an Associate Artist, to be able to put together my programme of Crucial Conversations and some artist development workshops in playwriting and comedy. More of them in future blogs. I have met with some incredible disabled people recently. I thrive in a safe accessible environment which is ‘disability comfortable’ and creative. I don’t live in a vacuum – ‘some of my best friends are non-disabled people’ – but I do love it when disabled people get together. It reminds me I’m part of something bigger and I’m keen to remind other disabled artists of that too. The first Crucial Conversation for disabled artists I held was about developing Access Riders. And of course it was about much more than that – reflecting on our community and its achievements, remembering we have peers and allies, and positioning the scope and scale of disability in the UK as a social phenomenon. An Access Rider is an effective tool to take control of our own access requirement communication with those we work with. We remove the ‘medical model’ perceptions that there is a list of things a disabled person ‘can’t do’ and replace it with a list of specific barriers which need to be removed to make the working environment accessible. Removing barriers has actually been the law since the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, replaced by the Equality Act in 2010 and yet we’re still having to come up with ways to make this an expected part of the terms and conditions of working with disabled people. We are put in the position of reminding venues, organisations, funders, partners and commissioners that access is a right and not a favour. Access Riders can take a while to put together, and they do involve emotional labour in their development and sharing. They are still a relatively new tool, certainly in large numbers, but they have the potential to create ripples of knowledge on an individual level where it still feels like a form of activism to create and present one, through to being a wave of a campaign in much larger numbers. Venues and organisations cannot continue to rely on small pockets of knowledge about disability equality as they arise, often where the disabled artist ends up being free educator into the bargain. Not fair, not right and not paid. As we began the creation of our Access Riders, we discussed access at both societal and personal levels, and how this translates into art and culture settings. This is not new information to the participants in the session or to any disabled people, but it seems not to be considered by the majority in the institution that is 'the arts'. The contents of this blog are not exhaustive but are derived from a 90-minute conversation. Imagine what more we could do with greater investment. The following points were made:
So – the evidence is here. This is the additional labour for disabled artists, and this is how incredibly insightful disabled people are into wider cultural equality, involvement, and genuine pluralism. Look at this insight in a short one-off, if somewhat, Crucial Conversation. This is a call to action, as all the conversations are. Disabled Artists please develop Access Riders as tools of empowerment and activism so that they become common place and that talk of access becomes common currency in employment in the arts. It will be a part of a campaigning wave. We’re also calling for greater platforms for these conversations please. Share this information and contact us at Little Cog to discuss this further. We are being left behind at an incredible rate as the arts push forward? You can find advice on creating an Access Rider here: Little Cog Guidelines on Creating an Access Statement/Rider Acknowledgement: Thank you so much to the disabled artists who took part in this conversation. Tommy Watkin, Liz Barker, Steph Robson, Matthew Needham, Eleanor Walsh, Midnight Memphis, and Olga Macrini. Solidarity always. Thank you also to all the other disabled practitioners and disabled-led organisations promoting access statements and riders and working hard in this area. Vici Wreford-Sinnott talks about three Crucial Conversations she is hosting as part of her Arts Council England funded project Transformers. There are some conversations disabled artists just need to have but there aren’t many spaces to have them. I’m hosting three conversations that I really feel are important to disabled artists at the moment. They’ve come about from conversations with other disabled artists about what is still missing for us. The conversations are free, accessible and are happening online. There is a session aimed at disabled artists wanting to create an access rider, one for disabled artists to talk about whatever the 'new normal' is presenting itself as for us, and the third is to be co-hosted with legendary playwright Mark Ravenhill, inviting disabled playwrights / writers of performance texts to discuss how few of our works end up in print and what we might do to preserve the legacy of those works. Developing Access Statements/Riders Tuesday 1 March 1.30-3.30pm THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT Disabled artists are taking control of ensuring their access requirements are known, acknowledged and met by partners, commissioners and collaborators. We see a regression in accessibility in our current times and so our aim to continue to keep these matters visible. Disabled people often have access requirements that there aren’t existing routes to communicate and share with employers, commissioners, companies and collaborators. This is a way to take control of ensuring your access requirements are shared, acknowledged and met. This is an area new to some artists and so we’d like to take some of the mystery out of it and provide a template for you to consider and adapt. Whether or not you choose to use the term disabled, if you have a condition or impairment which means you're at risk of discrimination and exclusion, where both unintentional and intentional barriers keep you out or make your practice difficult - you have RIGHTS. They are solid and enshrined in law. We hope that by introducing this into our own practice that organisation and partners will begin to use it in theirs, and really positive working environments and relationships are created. Having access requirements met is NOT the responsibility of the artist, and it is NOT the job of the artist to either provide free organizational access advice or solve an organisation’s access problems. An access statement is a tool to meet the access requirements of the artist it belongs to, and clear communication between the relevant people involved in a piece of work. In this session we’ll discuss our experiences of access, how we articulate our access requirements, what to include and what not to include in an access rider, when to use it and we’ll make a start on developing our own rider. The session will be facilitated by Vici Wreford-Sinnott who is a disabled theatre/screen writer/director, is Artistic Director of Little Cog and long-term member of the disability arts movement. This session is aimed at UK based disabled artists interested in discussing access for artists and creating an access statement / rider. If you book a place and your plans change please let us know so that we can offer a place to another artist. Thanks. Just What is the 'New Normal'? Friday 11 March – 1.30-3.30pm THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT Well we’ve made it this far and we saw for a while how the arts sector could adapt to new ways of working, learn new and relevant languages and respond to the needs of people in the pandemic. It even went a long way towards creating accessible opportunities online and disabled artists had access to people, events and opportunities that they might not have before. It was far from perfect but equality and access appeared to be on the agenda in many places and the voices of disabled campaigners were being heard in places that hadn’t previously listened. The return to real world events has been gradual, many venues offering social distancing and insisting on mask wearing, several continued to offer work online and there was much talk of ‘new hybrid’ ways of working. And then what happened? Millions of people are still shielding, many silenced and shouted down, many afraid to speak out as the times feel hostile to disabled people. Many of us feel written off by the language around inevitability and many of us are being left behind. We see many of our colleagues returning to real world events – many have no choice – but we really need to talk about this as we have a two tier society and a two tier arts landscape with the same missing voices still missing. The moral dilemmas in facing the 'return' need open discussion. Our community is split – the arts is a business and organisations, artists and venues need to survive this but how can we do that together. Covid hasn’t gone away, and the risks are still very high to many, many people – what is it going to take to have an egalitarian cultural sector with the equal involvement of disabled people. Let’s talk. This discussion is aimed at UK based disabled artists who want to talk about how we navigate the covid path at this stage. If you book a place and your plans change please let us know so that we can offer a place to another artist. Thanks. Disabled Playwrights' Legacy in Print – Where Is It? (soon but date tbc) Co-hosted by Vici Wreford-Sinnott and Mark Ravenhill Booking Opens SOON This conversation grew out of a twitter conversation last year between Vici Wreford-Sinnott and legendary playwright Mark Ravenhill. Mark put a call out for plays he could recommend to a colleague, and Vici suggested ensuring that plays by disabled playwrights were added to the list. And then began the search for published disabled playwrights. And whilst we were able to pull together a list of fantastic works after twitter call outs, the sheer volume of work which has been written, performed, and toured but remains unpublished and therefore without the same legacy as our peers, hit home. Where are the published works young disabled people can see themselves reflected in, the plays which tell the stories of our lives, the authentic protagonists who excite, engage, taking us on either fantastical journeys or into gritty realities. And the ones which are published, do they all sit together somewhere as part of the canon, visible and celebrated? So why doesn’t our work get published? Do we submit it? Do publishers think it’s a risk or that there isn’t an audience? And what do we want to do about this? There have been suggestions of suggesting publishing retrospectives in anthology form, talking to publishers, creating a script depository so that the unpublished scripts are available to read and potentially be performed by others. We realise not all writers of theatre describe themselves as playwrights and so for the purposes of this conversation it relates to performance texts for live performance. This conversation is aimed at UK based disabled playwrights, theatre writers, dramaturgs and theatre directors to open up a discourse around this subject – actions may arise from the meeting but equally they may not. It is entirely dependent on who attends and what we all discuss. If you book a place and your plans change please let us know so that we can offer a place to another artist. Thanks. Our friend Andrew Mclay is seeking an actor for his R&D of his new play Man High.
Freelance Trans Woman Actor required for 3 online script workshopping sessions. Playing Age early 30s, English speaking character About Man High Man High is a love story exploring what happens when people from marginalised groups connect. In the heat of awful abuse on the estate where he lives, Able, a wheelchair user, dreams of flying to the moon. As he plans his ascent, a woman desperate for sanctuary arrives on his doorstep, just as a shopping trolley is thrown through his window. Abel and Su are forced together, their circumstances demanding they remove all façade and are honest with each other. Their hidden pasts unfold as this beautiful story of connection is told. The piece is a two hander, with each actor playing a main character and multi-rolling other characters. Who We Are Looking For We are looking for an experienced actor who is a trans woman. We are ideally looking for someone who understands disability equality. Andrew McLay is a disabled actor, writer and director and has developed this script from a mix of personal experience, and research with trans women. The piece looks at unity through experiences of exclusion. We are interested to hear from South East Asian Trans Women Actors and welcome all applications. About the Job As well as workshopping the current draft of the script, we will invite feedback and comment on the character. There are three 2.5 hour zoom sessions, also requiring your own work outside sessions, provisionally scheduled for 24, 25 and 28 January 2022. Fee & Details The fee is £375.00 inclusive and is freelance – workshops will take place on zoom, so somewhere quiet to work undisturbed, a laptop or computer rather than a phone, and a good internet connection are essential. How To Apply Please email an acting CV with a link to a show reel or recent acting work, a headshot, and a short paragraph about a recent piece of work you are proud of to andrewmclay22@gmail.com by 12 noon Friday 6 January 2022. Image description - a series of five interconnected silver cogs. Bespoke Disability Equality Training and Ethos Statement Development for Theatre Companies, Venues and Arts Organisations Little Cog is offering a set of three disability equality sessions online to arts organisations wishing to increase their knowledge and improve their work involving disabled people. These are particularly useful sessions for increasing organisational knowledge around inclusion, diversity, equality and allyship.
It’s clear that disability equality is firmly on the artistic agenda but many arts organisations aren’t quite sure where to start. It needs to begin at your artistic heart with your senior executive, artistic and programming team, and we’re currently offering bespoke training conversations which will give you key information about disability culture and the history of disabled people, stereotypes and tropes to avoid, language and working accessibly with disabled artists. We need to work together to understand the authentic narratives which have been missing for too long. The sessions are designed and delivered online by disabled writer/director Vici Wreford-Sinnott, whose recent work includes BBC commissioned Hen Night – a digital short film about a young disabled women. Vici’s theatre work has toured nationally and she has been an active member of the disability arts movement in the UK for almost 30 years. Vici was recently awarded the Journal Culture Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in the North East for her work in disability equality. Workshops on offer 1. Disability Equality Training – An Introduction A 2 hour session covering the scope and scale of disability in the UK, disability history, stereotypes and tropes, ways of thinking about disability, disability culture and disabled-led arts today, language, access and allyship. Perfect for building your knowledge and confidence in this area, and you’ll be provided with some key links to useful resources. Suitable for your whole team. £450.00 2. Bespoke Disability Training and Artistic Conversation This session is delivered directly with you in mind. Meeting with your core artistic decision-makers the session covers much of what the Disability Equality Training session covers and then is integrated into a conversation about developing relationships, how you might incorporate accessibility into your processes and practice, how to build your knowledge about disabled-led work and disabled artists, and how you might begin to include disabled-led work in your programme. Perfect for thinking about how you can incorporate disability into your work with confidence and bespoke knowledge relating to how you work. £450.00 3. Creating a Disability Ethos Statement We can then move that on to discuss the creation of a bespoke Disability Ethos Statement for your organisation with five key achievable aims around disability equality for you to take forward. This would last approximately two hours online, with a draft write up of the ethos statement discussed sent to you afterwards to adopt or adapt. You would need to have taken part in either session 1 or 2 prior to this session. This is aimed at core members of your decision making team. Perfect for building knowledge, confidence and implementing tangible actions. £450.00 The Sessions The sessions would take place on zoom and last approximately 2 hours with breaks. Ideally, we’d like to deliver two sessions to you, including the development of a Disability Equality Ethos Statement as its something really tangible and gives you something to work from, but if you would just like to take the Disability Equality Training focussed session first that’s fine too. A Limited Number of Sessions Are Available - Get in Touch Disability Equality Sessions are available from November. For further information or to book sessions for your team, please do get in touch soon as we imagine there will be high demand info@littlecog.co.uk Nice things people have said
Image description - three portraits of disabled women. From top clockwise is Bea Webster a woman of dual heritage, Thai and Scottishwho wears pantomine make up with rosy cheeks, heavy eyeshadow and bright lips. She wears a dressing gown with a towel on her hair and is holding a sign saying 'Best Panto Ever'. Then there is Lisette Auton, a white woman with long brown hair, smiling and wearing a green t-shirt with dungarees. Finally is Miss Jacqui, a black woman with shoulder length afro hair and thin rimmed glasses. She is wearing a light pink hoody against a background of green leaves. As part of Staging Our Futures, a programme made possible by Arts Council England's Emergency Response Fund, Little Cog created three incredible commission opportunities for three incredibly talented disabled artists - Bea Webster, Lisette Auton and Miss Jacqui.
The time has come to share this new work in a live online premiere on 1 November at 5.00pm - who doesn't love a Sunday tea time treat? Bea Webster shares Dame Bevvy Crusher's Most Extraordinary Guide to Writing the Best Pantomime Ever, tbh. Miss Jacqui shares MMXX, and Lisette Auton shares Writing/Righting The Missing - A Choose Your Own Erasure Story R&D Little Cog's Artistic Director, Vici Wreford-Sinnott, dreamt up the Staging Our Futures programme as the company's response to completely unchartered territory. Vici says, "We knew the world had changed overnight, that everything was going to be different as we moved forward through the crisis for the arts and theatre. As disabled creatives we know how hard the fight has been over four decades to create an accessible and equitable arts envrionment. We didn't want to see the progress that had been made, also disappear overnight." The company knew it was time to stabilise, to be visible and to create opportunities for other disabled artists. Little Cog has always been strategic in it's approach to equality in theatre and this programme needed to have a range of elements. Vici continued, "As a company we knew we needed to create new work to challenge the narrative which had quickly developed around disabled people as a kind of blanket of vulnerability, as inactive and passive recipients of care. We're a vibrant group of individuals, living complex, interesting lives, and yes there are massive challenges in our society, many obstacles, barriers for, and appalling attitudes to disabled people. So we created a piece called Funny Peculiar featuring four dynamic disabled women to bust the myths of vulnerability whilst exploring the real risks we experience around inequality, for example in the loosening of lockdown, and in approaches to our healthcare and survival." The company wanted other disabled artists to be able to make work, to have time and space to explore. It's part of future-proofing. So a series of masterclasses was developed with guest artists sharing their skills online with disabled practitioners, which also meant disabled artists could stay connected and continue developing and sharing skills. Vici delivered two very successful Disability Equality Masterclasses for the North East film and theatre sector, and the three commissions were created. 'Liveness' has been a much missed ingredient as we have all social distanced and so Little Cog has hosted a number of live and online interactive events which have been very successful. "We all still need to connect, and we all still need to invest and exchange in performance and the arts, so part of our new commitment to artists and audiences is to find new ways to make that happen - to create a sense of connectedness through the work, and opportunities to engage and respond. And we've been blown away by the appetite for this and how much people have embraced our work in this area". Today someone told us "For me this is better than the real world in so many ways - I'm connecting with people I wouldn't otherwise, I probably wouldn't make the effort to go out in th cold and the rain, and it's all here, it's all safe and best of all it's all accessible in my own sitting room. I'm more connected to people now than I was before" - we think that's amazing. It won't be the case for everyone but is important to think about this for the inclusion and involvement of many disabled people in the cultural life of our nation. This premiere is the next stage in that process - so please follow this link for further information and to book your free places. Numbers are limited to make sure we have a high quality experience so please don't delay! A Little Cog, ARC Stockton and Northern Stage co-commission |
Mandy Colleran has been involved in Disability Arts since the 1980s. She was a founder member of the comedy trio No Excuses which produced the legendary piece Know My Place, still available to view on youtube. Mandy was also a founder of North West Disability Arts Forum, later becoming it's director. She won a Lifetime Achievement Award from Dadafest in 2007. She was involved in Kaite O'Reilly's In Water I'm Weightless for National Theatre of Wales and has had a long career as a speaker, feminist and campaigner for disability rights. |
Liz Carr is known to millions for playing Clarissa Mullery in the BBC's Silent Witness for 8 years but Liz is many things. She is an actor, comedian and disability rights activist. Others will know her from the Disabled/Deaf women’s comedy group, Nasty Girls or the BBC Ouch! podcast with Mat Fraser or her stand up with Abnormally Funny People, her Criptease routines or her passionate opposition to legalising assisted suicide through both campaigning and her creation of the show, Assisted Suicide - The Musical. |
Bea Webster is a deaf actor who trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is an actor, drag artist, writer and speaker on Deaf equality. She is currently in rehearsals with the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Winter's Tale, and starred in Red Ladder's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Kaite O'Reilly's Peeling which toured in the UK last year. Bea is passionate about classical and contemporary texts in English and BSL, has published a poem in both BSL and English titled Long Lost Lover, about her birthplace of Thailand. Vici is Artistic Director of Little Cog, writing and touring nationally a number of pieces of work including, Butterfly which was named Best One Person Play by the British Theatre Guide, Another England, Lighthouse and her recent commissions The Wrong Woman Discussions and Siege for ARC Stockton and Home Manchester can still be seen online as part of the Homemaker's commissions. She is a lifelong feminist and activist, regularly speaking and campaigning on disability rights matters and the role of culture and the arts in equality. She is a founding member of both Disconsortia and We Shall Not Be Removed. |
Change makes us feel refreshed, optimistic and energised for action.
Why not harness some of the opportunities afforded us by our strange new world and create islands of hope and energy in our work around change, through a different way of looking at things.
You work in the arts – you’re already an innovator. Why not take part in these unique Little Cog Masterclasses to look at how we begin to remove barriers to the arts for disabled people in our communities. We’d love to support you to understand what this can look like and share some simple things you can do to bring in richer stories and larger audiences of disabled people.
What has lockdown taught us and brought us about how we approach a safe re-opening of art ad culture, and where does art and culture now sit? Is it only in buildings or can we make local and local and global connections through the power of the digital. What might new models of practice look like?
And why is any of this important?
We all know the stats aren’t great around the representation of disabled people in employment on the arts, in getting work programmed and in being involved in organisational decision-making. We reckon you already know it’s time to take stock of disability equality practices in the arts, and to improve this we’d like to give you and your organisation some information and skills on how to do that. And we’ll also share how to tap into a rich seam of untold stories from new perspectives and build new relationships with us and other disabled artists.
Our Disability Equality Masterclasses are led by Little Cog’s artistic director Vici Wreford-Sinnott, who is a key figure and leading voice in the UK Disability Arts sector. The two Masterclasses are identical so you only need to sign up for one and they are aimed at North East England based venues, organisations, and companies and would be useful for artistic and executive directors, management teams, producers, senior decision-makers, and programmers. It will be supportive, non-finger pointing and solution focussed. And something that starts with a pub quiz can’t be that difficult to take part in surely!
Dates and Times
Tuesday 15 September 1.30-3.30pm
Tuesday 22 September 1.30-3.30pm
Some kind words from ARC, with whom we developed Cultural Shift, a complete model for embedding disabled-led work into the heart of your art.
“We were genuinely challenged to rethink and change the way we work with disabled people. New language, new approaches and gaining a new knowledge of disability that helped us understand why we need to do things a certain way, rather than just changing because we want to tick boxes. People have seen really brilliant work and had their own perceptions challenged by the work they have seen.”
Annabel Turpin, Chief Executive, ARC
If you are interested in a larger team taking part in these masterclasses, for example for your whole organisation or for a significant number of members of your team, we can schedule a separate session for you. There may be cost implications but we do have some subsidy to support this.
Booking Link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disability-equality-masterclass-with-vici-wreford-sinnott-tickets-11727931258
More about Little Cog here on our website www.littlecog.co.uk
Our latest production
Please encourage the people you work with to check out our Funny Peculiar online launch party on Thursday 24 September. Booking essential. Written and directed by Vici Wreford-Sinnott, this is Little Cog's latest lockdown production as part of their Staging Our Futures programme. The piece stars Liz Carr of Silent Witness fame, Mandy Colleran, a comedian and activist, and Bea Webster who is currently an associate of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Playwright's Studio of Scotland.
Zsa Zsa, Raquelle, Blanche and Cuba are in quarantine – four disabled women locked down, locked in, shut up and shouted down. While the rest of the nation is in meltdown, it takes a lot to phase this quartet. The new terrain is worrying and frustrating but these women are prepared - perhaps they have waited for a moment like this their whole lives.
In a sequence of four original, cross-cutting, witty and wise monologues, broadcasting from their own homes during quarantine, these women are myth-busters giving their all to expose the lie of vulnerability.
Image description - four portraits of disabled women. From left to right there are Liz Carr who is a white woman in her forties with a dark brown bob haircut, who is wearing a black top. Next is Vici Wreford-Sinnott, a white woman in her fifties. She has blond spiky hair and has a red scarf round her neck. Next to Vici is Bea Webster who is a woman of dual heritage, Thai and Scottish, with long brown hair and a red top. She is in her late twenties. And at the right is Mandy Colleran, a white woman in her fifties with long hair and a black top with butterflies on it.
Occasional Freelance Speed Typist for Live Transcription £30 per hour
We are seeking a fast, efficient and accurate typist to create transcriptions of live conversations for our meetings. You will be proactive, enthusiastic and extremely reliable. All work is online so you need to be able to work from home.
We have a number of one and two hour meetings coming up over zoom platforms over the next three months, at different times of the day and occasional evenings, and require an extremely well organised person to create accurate live captions for us. It is not a regular time and day of the week and we would need to be able to call on you as and when required, although we can book a series of six advance sessions in immediately.
You do not need a qualification and it may be that you are a freelancer working in the arts. A knowledge of the arts would be useful but not essential.
You will be responsible for your own tax and NI as this is a freelance position. The rate of £30 per hour includes your prep time and a copy of the transcript after the meeting. We need someone who can start immediately please.
THIS POSITION IS NOW FILLED - THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR INTEREST.
We are seeking a fast, efficient and accurate typist to create transcriptions of live conversations for our meetings. You will be proactive, enthusiastic and extremely reliable. All work is online so you need to be able to work from home.
We have a number of one and two hour meetings coming up over zoom platforms over the next three months, at different times of the day and occasional evenings, and require an extremely well organised person to create accurate live captions for us. It is not a regular time and day of the week and we would need to be able to call on you as and when required, although we can book a series of six advance sessions in immediately.
You do not need a qualification and it may be that you are a freelancer working in the arts. A knowledge of the arts would be useful but not essential.
You will be responsible for your own tax and NI as this is a freelance position. The rate of £30 per hour includes your prep time and a copy of the transcript after the meeting. We need someone who can start immediately please.
THIS POSITION IS NOW FILLED - THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR THEIR INTEREST.
Staging Our Futures is an imaginitive artistic programe created by Little Cog to ensure that exciting new work by disabled theatre makers is created and is visible. It's more important than ever to champion and give a platform to disabled artists who are expanding the boundaries of how we work and what work is made. Staging Our Futures has been created by Little Cog during the coronavirus pandemic, supported through Arts Council England Emergency Response Funds. This whole episode has come as a massive shock to everyone and to theatre particularly. We see |
real difficulties and freelancers struggling and have nothing but solidarity. It has also been really impressive to see the very many responses both organisations and individuals have made. We are incredibly proud of the disability community who, again are finding ourselves disadvantaged and excluded from art and culture in its new digital form, have rallied and galvanised a brand new movement promoting accessibility, sustainability, visibility and equality.
As a theatre company, we were very concerned that a shut down of culture would mean that freelance disabled artists would be without work and a voice,and were committed to ensuring that our repsonse would be both to strengthen our organisation and our strategic role in the longer term, and also create artistic opportunities for artists through both Staging our Futures and Disconsortia's At The Table programme, with information on that to follow soon.
We've recently launched Funny Peculiar, written and directed by Vici Wreford-Sinnott and we are now delighted and excited to announce our three Staging Our Futures Commissioned artists.
We invited people to take part who defy expectations, question the world we live in and deliver powerful performance work. We want to support vibrant and pioneering artists who make work that provokes, excites and engages audiences. So when we talk about the future - let's ensure we future-proof the work of disabled artists and the environments in which they make and share their work.
The creation of these commissions comes at a time of massive upheaval in the arts and theatre worlds, and at a time of crisis for communities of disabled people. It is clear that there are calls for a change to a system that does not work for all. We want to change the system. We want to reframe the narratives around disabled people and our stories, and we want to give space to rethink what power means.
We are also delighted to announce and welcome the appointment of Robyn Keynes as Producer of the Staging Our Futures programme, who will be with the company until November, steering us through our various commissions, Funny Peculiar, a Masterclass Programme which includes materclasses by, with and for disabled artists and will present Disability Equality materclasses for the arts sector in the North East.
We're proud to introduce you to Lisette Auton, Miss Jacqui, Bea Webster and Robyn Keynes.
As a theatre company, we were very concerned that a shut down of culture would mean that freelance disabled artists would be without work and a voice,and were committed to ensuring that our repsonse would be both to strengthen our organisation and our strategic role in the longer term, and also create artistic opportunities for artists through both Staging our Futures and Disconsortia's At The Table programme, with information on that to follow soon.
We've recently launched Funny Peculiar, written and directed by Vici Wreford-Sinnott and we are now delighted and excited to announce our three Staging Our Futures Commissioned artists.
We invited people to take part who defy expectations, question the world we live in and deliver powerful performance work. We want to support vibrant and pioneering artists who make work that provokes, excites and engages audiences. So when we talk about the future - let's ensure we future-proof the work of disabled artists and the environments in which they make and share their work.
The creation of these commissions comes at a time of massive upheaval in the arts and theatre worlds, and at a time of crisis for communities of disabled people. It is clear that there are calls for a change to a system that does not work for all. We want to change the system. We want to reframe the narratives around disabled people and our stories, and we want to give space to rethink what power means.
We are also delighted to announce and welcome the appointment of Robyn Keynes as Producer of the Staging Our Futures programme, who will be with the company until November, steering us through our various commissions, Funny Peculiar, a Masterclass Programme which includes materclasses by, with and for disabled artists and will present Disability Equality materclasses for the arts sector in the North East.
We're proud to introduce you to Lisette Auton, Miss Jacqui, Bea Webster and Robyn Keynes.
| Lisette Auton Lisette Auton does stuff with words: disabled writer, activist, poet, spoken-word artist, actor, theatre-maker and creative practitioner. She is an award-winning poet who is widely published and is known for her energised performances in the spoken word scene. Lisette is a Penguin WriteNow mentee and has completed her first novel. She was the 2019 Early Careers Fellow for Literature at Cove Park supported by the Fenton Arts Trust, and is on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction. Lisette works with many creative collaborators to create unique and innovative cross artform works which have featured at MIMA, Kirkleatham Museum and online. She is currently Assistant Producer for Disconsortia's At The Table programme. Lisette has performed at Northern Stage, ARC, The Southbank Centre and the Sage, in pubs, in a crypt, at festivals, indoors, outdoors, on a bridge and in a launderette. She uses her platform as a performer, writer and theatre-maker to make the invisible visible. www.lisetteauton.co.uk Miss Jacqui Miss Jacqui is a spoken word artist, songwriter, theatre-maker and facilitator. She knows a lot about working with the cards that you are dealt. Especially because she is someone who always tries to challenge societal perceptions about what it actually means to be a black woman with a disability. “When you are a minority in a minority in a minority, you have no choice but to stand out.” – Miss Jacqui Miss Jacqui’s love for theatre started when her mother signed her up to an inclusive drama group when she was 13 to get her out of her introverted shell; and she never looked back. Miss Jacqui's love for Spoken Word/Poetry came about when she joined 'Poets Platform' led by Kat Francois. Miss Jacqui honestly believe that creativity is a universal language. Miss Jacqui has worked with Halfmoon Young Peoples Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, National Youth Theatre and Roundhouse just to name a few. Miss Jacqui has performed at various locations like the Paralympic Team Welcoming Ceremony as well as the Opening Ceremony. “I want to break as many stereotypes as possible when it comes to me being a black woman with a disability.” - Miss Jacqui Bea Webster Bea Webster is a deaf actor who trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is an actor, drag artist, writer and speaker on Deaf equality. She is currently in rehearsals with the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Winter's Tale, and starred in Red Ladder's Mother Courage and Her Children, and Kaite O'Reilly's Peeling which toured in the UK last year. Earlier in lockdown Bea took part in Vici Wreford-Sinnott's The Wrong Woman Discussions, featuring five disabled women performance makers talking about their experiences, transgressing expectations and bringing agency for disabled women to performance. Bea is passionate about classical and contemporary texts in English and BSL, has contributed to BBC Social, has hosted several events, and has published a poem in both BSL and English titled Long Lost Lover, about her birthplace of Thailand. Robyn Keynes Robyn is a theatre producer and general manager with over nine years of experience across the subsidised, commercial and independent theatre sectors. She has worked for companies including the National Student Drama Festival, commercial producers Smith & Brant, and new writing company HighTide. She has produced plays, with a particular focus on new writing, alongside musicals, events and festivals. |
The work produced from the commissions will be shared online on 1 November 2020, but we will be releasing artist profile features of all commissioned artists, staring with Lisette talking about her phenomenal Writing/Righting the Missing work - a piece looking at the world through a new lens, without fear. Lisette said of her commission plans, "I want it to be radical, wild, challenging, quiet, kind and brave. I want it to push me as a performer and a writer. I want it to be creatively accessible, built in as part of the creative process right from concept."
We'll be launching our Masterclass programme soon and you'll be able to see Funny Peculiar with Liz Carr, Mandy Colleran, Bea Webster and Vici Wreford-Sinnott broadcast online from 31 August 2020.
We'll be launching our Masterclass programme soon and you'll be able to see Funny Peculiar with Liz Carr, Mandy Colleran, Bea Webster and Vici Wreford-Sinnott broadcast online from 31 August 2020.
Lisette Auton is an incredibly talented, insightful and go-getting part of a new generation of disabled artists. We are delighted to welcome her guest blog, which comes to us as a reflection of an earlier blogpost, detailing Lisette's experience of the inaccessibility of the digital world.
Image Description - Lisette Auton, white with freckles, 40 years old, short brown hair, holds her purple stick across her body threateningly and wears a purple t-thirst with the slogan ‘Disability is not a bad word’. Her face is all screwed up, teeth bared, wondering what on earth is going on. Photo Credit: PaperBoat Photography by Laura Tindall
Little Cog's Artistic Director, Vici Wreford-Sinnott, recently compiled A Guide to Hosting an Accessible Online Meeting and is actively putting its contents into action where and when possible, and encouraging others to do the same. The guide has now been accessed hundreds of times online. We were delighted to have Lisette's support for a recent Disconsortia zoom meeting with features for people with screen fatigue, screen overwhelm, neurodivergence and for people who might be new to zoom. We communicated well, and in detail, in advance and this is how it went.
I was commissioned by the wonderful ally, Luxi Ltd, to write a blog post entitled ‘The Inaccessibility of the Future (or, What to do when you just can’t Zoom)’ in which I wrote about my experiences of trying to access online meetings, and my worries about how and why lots of people were being left behind and what we could do about it. Everything still stands, still worries me, especially tech poverty, access to broadband, and having a safe space at home, having a home! There is so much we take for granted when creating a new world online. These still need to be solved.
But for me, personally, I had a breakthrough. Nothing has changed whatsoever with my access needs, unsurprisingly, but what has changed is my awareness of what I need to ask for, for me, to make it possible.
I’m learning that dark sunglasses means that some meeting spaces without the zoomy yellow box work better – Microsoft Teams and Google Meets and Skype. But these are still harder to access for many, don’t provide the same facilities, and are therefore not the go-to which is Zoom. I completely understand and get that – access is also about making the actual getting into a meeting as easy as possible, which Zoom does well. It’s that pesky yellow box in group meetings that’s still breaking me. I realised that if I didn’t have to see that pesky box…
I began to state my needs. I will not be looking at the screen, will be relying purely on audio. Please could you ask if people could introduce themselves by name, or could you introduce them, so that I am able to situate myself in the conversation, and if there are any slides, could I see them in advance, or could you briefly describe them? Everyone said yes, dead easy, of course. Hurrah!
Not everyone did it.
I was commissioned by the wonderful ally, Luxi Ltd, to write a blog post entitled ‘The Inaccessibility of the Future (or, What to do when you just can’t Zoom)’ in which I wrote about my experiences of trying to access online meetings, and my worries about how and why lots of people were being left behind and what we could do about it. Everything still stands, still worries me, especially tech poverty, access to broadband, and having a safe space at home, having a home! There is so much we take for granted when creating a new world online. These still need to be solved.
But for me, personally, I had a breakthrough. Nothing has changed whatsoever with my access needs, unsurprisingly, but what has changed is my awareness of what I need to ask for, for me, to make it possible.
I’m learning that dark sunglasses means that some meeting spaces without the zoomy yellow box work better – Microsoft Teams and Google Meets and Skype. But these are still harder to access for many, don’t provide the same facilities, and are therefore not the go-to which is Zoom. I completely understand and get that – access is also about making the actual getting into a meeting as easy as possible, which Zoom does well. It’s that pesky yellow box in group meetings that’s still breaking me. I realised that if I didn’t have to see that pesky box…
I began to state my needs. I will not be looking at the screen, will be relying purely on audio. Please could you ask if people could introduce themselves by name, or could you introduce them, so that I am able to situate myself in the conversation, and if there are any slides, could I see them in advance, or could you briefly describe them? Everyone said yes, dead easy, of course. Hurrah!
Not everyone did it.
Do you know what hurts more? Going through the faff, the time, the emotional labour, the wondering if you’re making a fuss, the being told that’s dead easy of course and within two minutes of being there going, ‘Oh. I’m not welcome after all.’ Not having a clue what’s going on. Being right on the margin, again, quietly leaving, again.
Do you know what it also makes you do? Stop trying. Because even though yes does mean a yes, and the people are wonderful, trust is now gone and hurt is thwacking you around the heart bits. So it’s easier just to ignore invitations and withdraw.
I’m Assistant Producer for DISCONSORTIA, an incredible collective of North East England disabled artists. We needed to get together. The approach was made to me with kindness, with curiosity, with I do not want you to feel pressured, with we will work it out, HOW can we work it out, so that you can be there, can be present.
I was scared. Of being let down again. I nearly said an outright no. Then screwed courage to the sticking place and said yes, but this is why I’m scared, this is how it hasn’t worked, I can’t go through that again.
I was listened to, heard, supported, and we came up with a plan. Which you know what, was really bloomin’ easy.
As well as me being audio only, we have Deaf members so we use a sign language interpreter, we have people who prefer not to speak, we have timings to stick to just like everybody else, and you know what? We only went and bloomin’ did it. IT IS POSSIBLE.
I booked the sign language interpreter a week in advance, I asked for advice. We had a pre-meeting to get together before the main one and make sure the tech was working, and time to ‘pin’ each other so that they stayed large and visible when everyone else arrived. I used keyboard shortcuts to take part. The meeting was Actively Chaired. People’s microphones were turned off on arrival and the chair explained why – so that we could take time for the sign language interpretation, so that everyone could be involved, and that we could meet everyone’s needs. The chair asked for raised hands or a raised hand via a keyboard shortcut in order to contribute. The chair introduced everyone by name. None of the magic was lost, it was wonderful and joyous, and we even finished on time.
Everyone was included, valued, took up space in each and their own way. I cried when I left. Because it was possible, it is possible.
Ask. If you ask, listen. If you say yes, do it.
I ended my last blog post like this, and it’s still just as applicable now:
“We are creatives. We are used to problem solving with no money, no time, and the audience about to enter…
Could we please work this out together? Work out the future together.
Make sure no one is left behind, make sure no one is missing.”
Do you know what it also makes you do? Stop trying. Because even though yes does mean a yes, and the people are wonderful, trust is now gone and hurt is thwacking you around the heart bits. So it’s easier just to ignore invitations and withdraw.
I’m Assistant Producer for DISCONSORTIA, an incredible collective of North East England disabled artists. We needed to get together. The approach was made to me with kindness, with curiosity, with I do not want you to feel pressured, with we will work it out, HOW can we work it out, so that you can be there, can be present.
I was scared. Of being let down again. I nearly said an outright no. Then screwed courage to the sticking place and said yes, but this is why I’m scared, this is how it hasn’t worked, I can’t go through that again.
I was listened to, heard, supported, and we came up with a plan. Which you know what, was really bloomin’ easy.
As well as me being audio only, we have Deaf members so we use a sign language interpreter, we have people who prefer not to speak, we have timings to stick to just like everybody else, and you know what? We only went and bloomin’ did it. IT IS POSSIBLE.
I booked the sign language interpreter a week in advance, I asked for advice. We had a pre-meeting to get together before the main one and make sure the tech was working, and time to ‘pin’ each other so that they stayed large and visible when everyone else arrived. I used keyboard shortcuts to take part. The meeting was Actively Chaired. People’s microphones were turned off on arrival and the chair explained why – so that we could take time for the sign language interpretation, so that everyone could be involved, and that we could meet everyone’s needs. The chair asked for raised hands or a raised hand via a keyboard shortcut in order to contribute. The chair introduced everyone by name. None of the magic was lost, it was wonderful and joyous, and we even finished on time.
Everyone was included, valued, took up space in each and their own way. I cried when I left. Because it was possible, it is possible.
Ask. If you ask, listen. If you say yes, do it.
I ended my last blog post like this, and it’s still just as applicable now:
“We are creatives. We are used to problem solving with no money, no time, and the audience about to enter…
Could we please work this out together? Work out the future together.
Make sure no one is left behind, make sure no one is missing.”
About Lisette
Lisette Auton does stuff with words: disabled writer, activist, poet, spoken-word artist, actor, theatre-maker and creative practitioner. She’s an award-winning published poet, a Penguin WriteNow mentee, recipient of an Early Careers Residency for Literature at Cove Park, and on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction. She uses her platform as a performer, writer and theatre-maker to make the invisible visible. www.lisetteauton.co.uk
Lisette Auton does stuff with words: disabled writer, activist, poet, spoken-word artist, actor, theatre-maker and creative practitioner. She’s an award-winning published poet, a Penguin WriteNow mentee, recipient of an Early Careers Residency for Literature at Cove Park, and on the TSS Publishing list of Best British & Irish Flash Fiction. She uses her platform as a performer, writer and theatre-maker to make the invisible visible. www.lisetteauton.co.uk
The title of this piece is both a deception and a truth. Disabled people like me are often the recipients of benevolece in art and culture. At a time of risk in the arts, as we all struggle towards some kind of recovery and sustainable presence, here is a 'guide' to being better than benevolent. Vici Wreford-Sinnott
A version of this article was published by TheatreArtLife a global platform for all things theatre thinking.
A version of this article was published by TheatreArtLife a global platform for all things theatre thinking.
I’ve now been living in isolation for four months due to the global pandemic. Quite an experience fraught with both challenges and opportunities. Opportunities for meaningful change if only the right voices can be heard in the right places.
Economic pressures around the world have meant that many governments are loosening their lockdowns. That has happened quite rapidly in the UK where I am based, and where really, we’ve had a succession of vague and mixed messages about how to keep each other safe. Frustrated by isolation and restricted lives, people are hungry to be ‘free’ and ‘back to normal’. And so now, we see lots of people taking big risks with their own health and lives, and those of others.
I’m scared. I am a disabled woman: a lifelong activist, theatre director and playwright, screenwriter, punk (as in rock), and a reasonably confident person but I don’t mind admitting, I am scared. If I get this, Covid 19, I’m gone. I’m gone, mainly because I am a disabled woman and I won’t get the same treatment non-disabled people do. I won’t get the same opportunity to fight it and live. Neo-liberal societies don’t value the lives and contributions of disabled people. We’re viewed as ‘less than’, and certain powerful ideologues would rather have a ‘cleaner species’. Scary stuff and a bit confusing, especially as most members of the human race are going to become disabled as we age. It’s a natural part of life.
What does all of this have to do with involving disabled people in the performing arts then? That’s what I’m writing about about: A Guide to Involving Disabled People in the Performing Arts. First of all – performing arts? Isn’t that just a bit of frivolous fun? What possible difference can that make to peoples’ lives? And second of all, on reading that this was going to be a ‘guide’, you might expect me to write a quick to-do list of accessibility tips and tricks. Which actually I can do at the drop of a hat. It’s as easy as a click of the fingers, listing items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, there you go, practical steps – done and dusted.
Only if we think back to my first paragraphs, and the backdrop I’m writing this against, in the UK two-thirds of people who have died in the pandemic so far, have been disabled people, and disabled women are 11 times more likely to die based on current statistics. The narrative created around ‘vulnerability’ and ‘underlying conditions’, has made it sound as if our deaths are inevitable. Expected and accepted. Yes, disabled people may be more susceptible to the impact of the virus, but the greater threat is that we are triaged and our care decided before we even get ill. Frailty scores are embedded in health professional training even if they are not spoken of as such. We’re not a priority. The ‘who will get a ventilator discussion…’
This means that all life is not perceived as equal. And it’s a story that has been repeated throughout history, from the Romans putting disabled children out on the hillsides to perish as they were deemed useless, through to compulsory or coercive sterilization programmes of disabled women across the world, through to not bothering to count the deaths of learning disabled people due to covid.
This is why it is important, critical in my opinion, to involve disabled people in performing arts, in theatre, in TV or film is actually a vital means of staying alive. It’s where we have visibility in culture and it’s where we get to tell our stories. Without that we are completely invisible. More at risk.
The civil rights movements of disabled people across the world have always been about our status, our value and worth as human citizens. We fight to be seen as equal, and treated as equal, in society’s systems and structures. Our low status is embedded in our national psyches because of historical and cultural misrepresentation - shown as deficient, less than, less able, tragic, useless.
Economic pressures around the world have meant that many governments are loosening their lockdowns. That has happened quite rapidly in the UK where I am based, and where really, we’ve had a succession of vague and mixed messages about how to keep each other safe. Frustrated by isolation and restricted lives, people are hungry to be ‘free’ and ‘back to normal’. And so now, we see lots of people taking big risks with their own health and lives, and those of others.
I’m scared. I am a disabled woman: a lifelong activist, theatre director and playwright, screenwriter, punk (as in rock), and a reasonably confident person but I don’t mind admitting, I am scared. If I get this, Covid 19, I’m gone. I’m gone, mainly because I am a disabled woman and I won’t get the same treatment non-disabled people do. I won’t get the same opportunity to fight it and live. Neo-liberal societies don’t value the lives and contributions of disabled people. We’re viewed as ‘less than’, and certain powerful ideologues would rather have a ‘cleaner species’. Scary stuff and a bit confusing, especially as most members of the human race are going to become disabled as we age. It’s a natural part of life.
What does all of this have to do with involving disabled people in the performing arts then? That’s what I’m writing about about: A Guide to Involving Disabled People in the Performing Arts. First of all – performing arts? Isn’t that just a bit of frivolous fun? What possible difference can that make to peoples’ lives? And second of all, on reading that this was going to be a ‘guide’, you might expect me to write a quick to-do list of accessibility tips and tricks. Which actually I can do at the drop of a hat. It’s as easy as a click of the fingers, listing items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, there you go, practical steps – done and dusted.
Only if we think back to my first paragraphs, and the backdrop I’m writing this against, in the UK two-thirds of people who have died in the pandemic so far, have been disabled people, and disabled women are 11 times more likely to die based on current statistics. The narrative created around ‘vulnerability’ and ‘underlying conditions’, has made it sound as if our deaths are inevitable. Expected and accepted. Yes, disabled people may be more susceptible to the impact of the virus, but the greater threat is that we are triaged and our care decided before we even get ill. Frailty scores are embedded in health professional training even if they are not spoken of as such. We’re not a priority. The ‘who will get a ventilator discussion…’
This means that all life is not perceived as equal. And it’s a story that has been repeated throughout history, from the Romans putting disabled children out on the hillsides to perish as they were deemed useless, through to compulsory or coercive sterilization programmes of disabled women across the world, through to not bothering to count the deaths of learning disabled people due to covid.
This is why it is important, critical in my opinion, to involve disabled people in performing arts, in theatre, in TV or film is actually a vital means of staying alive. It’s where we have visibility in culture and it’s where we get to tell our stories. Without that we are completely invisible. More at risk.
The civil rights movements of disabled people across the world have always been about our status, our value and worth as human citizens. We fight to be seen as equal, and treated as equal, in society’s systems and structures. Our low status is embedded in our national psyches because of historical and cultural misrepresentation - shown as deficient, less than, less able, tragic, useless.
Dominant culture, the thing that preserves the status quo no matter how ugly and unequal it is, tells the stories of disabled people in film, TV and theatre as great tragedies, which are to be overcome or destined to have desperately sad endings. We’re the butt of jokes or we’re there as the foil to a main protagonist’s story. Dominant culture just hasn’t been interested in re-telling or challenging these stories with disabled people at the helm. But this makes so little sense – again if most of us will become disabled as we age, and if as much as 20-25% of the population consists of disabled people (as it does where I live), why do we repeat the same old stereotypes, the same old narratives, reinforce our ill-informed historical beliefs and terrify each other that it’s not a life worth living to be disabled?
The stories dominant culture tells are never, ever led by disabled people. The producers, directors, writers, designers and actors in production companies, in broadcasting organisations and in our theatre venues are rarely disabled people. Of course, we have fought for space and set up companies ourselves but due to the societal encoding of disability as deficient, we are under-resourced and given lesser spaces. It’s rarely high-profile work. Arguments are put forward that it’s because ‘you’re not famous – they need big names’. Well, we’ll never be big names if we aren’t involved, included and given leadership and decision-making roles.
It’s not about being a big name for most of us though. It’s about moving towards a point where statistically we are represented more proportionately to the percentage of society we make up. Recent diversity research undertaken by Arts Council England revealed disgraceful statistics about levels of diversity in employment in English arts.
The stories dominant culture tells are never, ever led by disabled people. The producers, directors, writers, designers and actors in production companies, in broadcasting organisations and in our theatre venues are rarely disabled people. Of course, we have fought for space and set up companies ourselves but due to the societal encoding of disability as deficient, we are under-resourced and given lesser spaces. It’s rarely high-profile work. Arguments are put forward that it’s because ‘you’re not famous – they need big names’. Well, we’ll never be big names if we aren’t involved, included and given leadership and decision-making roles.
It’s not about being a big name for most of us though. It’s about moving towards a point where statistically we are represented more proportionately to the percentage of society we make up. Recent diversity research undertaken by Arts Council England revealed disgraceful statistics about levels of diversity in employment in English arts.
Image description - a close up on the side profile of a young woman's face taken through the wire patterns of a swing garden chair. She has dark hair and brown eyes and is looking thoughtful but ready for action if needed. It is moody and atmospheric. The actor is Philippa Cole playing Rat in Another England by Vici Wreford-Sinnott. Photo Credit Kevin Howard.
Involving disabled people in the performing arts has to begin by acknowledging the historical misrepresentation and stereotyping that is present in much of the canons of theatre and film. We can’t keep telling those old stories in those old ways. And we have to address institutional and structural ableism – the discrimination and exclusion of disabled people at all levels in the arts. We’re not novelties and curiosities for non-disabled actors to ‘extend their range’ and contort their bodies into Oscar winning roles.
I’ve been talking a lot about ‘crip-taking’ lately. Another film has come out, American I think, and launching in Europe soon, which has cast non-disabled people as disabled characters. Cultural theft. Taking our voices, taking our stories and taking our roles. It has to stop. Surrounded by phrases like ‘heart-warming, inspiring and special’ – we are not your entertainment! It ultimately means we die first in pandemics. Please join the dots and see the cultural journey our thinking as societies takes. What it reinforces and perpetuates. Where it ends up.
Disabled people know very well the non-disabled puffed-up-chested affrontery at suggestions that non-disabled people should not impersonate and mimic us. Cries of ‘surely that is precisely what acting is where one can play anyone when one is acting’, or, ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘next we’ll be saying that only boxers can play boxers and only teachers can play teachers’. It’s not about that at all. It’s about the baggage you didn’t know you had, already telling you that our lives are only worthy of impersonating and making a novelty or a tragedy of. That work, those films and theatre shows where non-disabled people crip-take, do nothing to change our status, to challenge the stereotypes about us, put us any higher up anyone’s list of priorities, and or reveal anything of our cultural richness. There are things about us you don’t even know, and if you don’t know them, the cultural landscape is a lie. We are not telling or reflecting the truth about who we are. We are hiding it.
And please don’t tell me that there are no disabled producers, directors, writers or actors out there. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and have worked with some of the most talented, insightful, innovative, trailblazers in our world who will one day achieve recognition. Dominant culture just doesn’t know where to look – or perhaps it does, and then chooses to look the other way. Why is that?
So, back to the questions. Why do we involve disabled people in the arts? Because we have amazing stories to tell, and we have to stop cultural theft, stop crip-taking. It perpetuates inequality.
And, how do we involve disabled artists in performing arts? We involve disabled artists at every level, from the very beginning. Look, okay, here’s the access stuff, the list, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The access stuff really is the basics, we shouldn’t have to tell you about it as it’s been legislation for decades, and it is constant emotional unpaid labour to us to be educators.
As it happens, we can tell ya a lot of the practical stuff in our sleep and do a quick budget projection on the side. Lift and level access, BSL interpreters, audio description, neurodivergent accessibility and relaxed environments, regular breaks, adapt rehearsal rooms and rehearsal methods, stop holding workshops, auditions and rehearsals and training up or down flights of stairs, ask us what our access requirements are, remember we’re not frail or going to cry at our own misfortune. Remember that we know what we’re doing, we’re professionals. We love sex and Elvis and whisky and cake just as much as you do. We are producers, directors, writers and actors. We are cultural leaders already, we are actors already – but because of society’s ‘less than’ view of us we don’t get invested in. And no thank you, I don’t mean we want another meaningless training course or development initiative. We want tangibles, we want the work, but somehow things flip around and we always have to be ‘more than’ to get a shot.
I’ve been talking a lot about ‘crip-taking’ lately. Another film has come out, American I think, and launching in Europe soon, which has cast non-disabled people as disabled characters. Cultural theft. Taking our voices, taking our stories and taking our roles. It has to stop. Surrounded by phrases like ‘heart-warming, inspiring and special’ – we are not your entertainment! It ultimately means we die first in pandemics. Please join the dots and see the cultural journey our thinking as societies takes. What it reinforces and perpetuates. Where it ends up.
Disabled people know very well the non-disabled puffed-up-chested affrontery at suggestions that non-disabled people should not impersonate and mimic us. Cries of ‘surely that is precisely what acting is where one can play anyone when one is acting’, or, ‘political correctness gone mad’ and ‘next we’ll be saying that only boxers can play boxers and only teachers can play teachers’. It’s not about that at all. It’s about the baggage you didn’t know you had, already telling you that our lives are only worthy of impersonating and making a novelty or a tragedy of. That work, those films and theatre shows where non-disabled people crip-take, do nothing to change our status, to challenge the stereotypes about us, put us any higher up anyone’s list of priorities, and or reveal anything of our cultural richness. There are things about us you don’t even know, and if you don’t know them, the cultural landscape is a lie. We are not telling or reflecting the truth about who we are. We are hiding it.
And please don’t tell me that there are no disabled producers, directors, writers or actors out there. I’ve been doing this for thirty years and have worked with some of the most talented, insightful, innovative, trailblazers in our world who will one day achieve recognition. Dominant culture just doesn’t know where to look – or perhaps it does, and then chooses to look the other way. Why is that?
So, back to the questions. Why do we involve disabled people in the arts? Because we have amazing stories to tell, and we have to stop cultural theft, stop crip-taking. It perpetuates inequality.
And, how do we involve disabled artists in performing arts? We involve disabled artists at every level, from the very beginning. Look, okay, here’s the access stuff, the list, the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The access stuff really is the basics, we shouldn’t have to tell you about it as it’s been legislation for decades, and it is constant emotional unpaid labour to us to be educators.
As it happens, we can tell ya a lot of the practical stuff in our sleep and do a quick budget projection on the side. Lift and level access, BSL interpreters, audio description, neurodivergent accessibility and relaxed environments, regular breaks, adapt rehearsal rooms and rehearsal methods, stop holding workshops, auditions and rehearsals and training up or down flights of stairs, ask us what our access requirements are, remember we’re not frail or going to cry at our own misfortune. Remember that we know what we’re doing, we’re professionals. We love sex and Elvis and whisky and cake just as much as you do. We are producers, directors, writers and actors. We are cultural leaders already, we are actors already – but because of society’s ‘less than’ view of us we don’t get invested in. And no thank you, I don’t mean we want another meaningless training course or development initiative. We want tangibles, we want the work, but somehow things flip around and we always have to be ‘more than’ to get a shot.
Image Description - one female learning disabled actor in drab grey uniform is in the foreground of the photograph, with seven other actors are behind her in a line in identical costumes. A giant image of the foregounded actor is projected on to a huge screen at the back of the stage. It is taken form the stage show called The Keepers by Full Circle Theatre Company.
Over the years, when we were given spaces, sometimes we needed safe spaces to play to each other, and other times we needed studios and bigger stages. The danger was that we’d only end up inhabiting specific spaces which can be a double-edged sword. Niches and ghettos and silos. We have needed those spaces to support each other, to grow our craft but we also deserve the investment of greater scale. Not everything has to be on huge stages, intimate work is as important and impactful but it needs to be well resourced. I feel I’ve worked hard and earned a main stage large scale production but the argument will be ‘risk’. Not everything is about scale, but sometimes when you are under-represented it has to be factored in. And not in diluted mainstream work but in genuinely disabled-led work. I hope the clock of change is ticking playmates.
To involve disabled people in the performing arts we have to remove the inaccessible people running inaccessible institutions, venues and companies with inaccessible attitudes. And we have to ask you to check your privilege, every day, and leave your ego at the door, whichever community you are from, as we seem to bottom of everyone’s priority list. See us, talk to us, involve us and invest in us.
In isolation in lock down, I have had two small commissions to write two new plays and created an online digital short film. I am making slightly bigger digital piece which will be broadcast online in August with three amazing actors, examples of phenomenal British talent. I have been commissioned for two new pieces of work. I have commissioned three disabled artists through my company Little Cog and a disabled artist led collective I work with has just created 15 mini-commissions with disabled artists. There are a lot of us out here making fantastic work. Very little of this will get national arts coverage. It just doesn’t get the profile because the baggage attached to the word disabled. Thirty years, and barely anyone in theatre in my own region knows my name. Or if they do, they don’t talk to me.
I’m proud to be a disabled person – to say so is a political act. An act of resistance and a disruption to the status quo. The disabled people who have done this before me paved the way for change in the way that myself and other activists are doing for future generations. One day the societal penny will drop – our work will be seen, valued and invested in. We see it, we are excited by it and we are a massive audience for genuine work where disabled people are leading and centre-stage.
Get in touch and let’s talk this through.
As I’ve now had a couple of weeks to process 12 of the most amazing, challenging, inspiring and fulfilling days of my career, I’ve put some words together. There are a lot of words, its probably more than one blog, but this experience has had a massive impact on me. Attending Directors Lab North and Luminato Festival in Toronto was an absolute privilege. DLN is an invaluable space to explore the complexities of a range of theatre practices from across communities from across the world. It is important to me to ensure that a disabled voice is at the table, making change happen, and that I’m both sharing and learning. Vici Wreford-Sinnott
This is a previous blog from 2018
This is a previous blog from 2018
Image description - Sarah Kitz is in the foreground of the photo, deeply concerned, with binoculars around her neck. She is performing in Out The Window written by Liza Balkan and directed by Sarah Garton Stanley, at the Luminato Festival Toronto, 2018. In the background a number of police officers are crouched over a figure. Photo by Kyle Purcell. Out The Window by Liza Balkan, Directed by Sarah Garton Stanley. A Luminato Commission in partnership with the Drama Centre Toronto
Land Acknowledgment
I want to support and honour the land acknowledgement of Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, acknowledging the sacred land on which we gathered and operated, as the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, The Seneca, the Mississaugas of the New Credit, and any other nations who cared for the land in its history.
The territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and I was grateful to work in the community, on that territory.
Context of My International Visit to Canada
I’m not a natural navel gazer, nor do I boast about opportunities afforded me, but I genuinely have always dreamed of going to Canada. I’m choosing to record and archive my experience as a disabled practitioner, and aim to contribute to discourses around, a) the equal status of disabled citizens and any injustices I witness or experience, and b) the equal status of the autonomous voices and artistic contribution of disabled people on many levels, in varying ways, across culture.
About 18 months ago, I decided that I wanted to explore some international possibilities, but then I didn’t even know opportunities like Directors Lab North in Toronto existed. Being selected to attend, in many ways, felt like I was risk-taking, with no other self-identifying disabled people attending, without a history of disabled people attending, to my knowledge, and not really appreciating the circumstances that both disabled and non-disabled artists in Canada and the US make their work – the systems and structures available to them.
And in honesty, I wasn’t sure whether what I have to offer was of value in this new context. There is a cyclic experience I encounter, where, as an artist from a less represented community, with historically less opportunities open to us due to societal prejudices and systemic failings, we must take on the role of both artist and educator, of both creative and campaigner, of both diplomat and activist. In diversity terms, not to in any way to diminish anyone else’s experience of discrimination and oppression, disability, because of all the social and historical baggage attached to common perceptions, usually finds itself at the bottom of everyone’s priority list. It’s often so difficult to get past the word ‘disability’, so conflated is it with inability, illness and incapacity. As a direct result of this conflation, in my own experience, it feels like disability is the only ‘other’ which the mainstream feels it can, wittingly or unwittingly, legitimately continue to represent as ‘less than’.
As I have said on many occasions, disabled artists are some of the most exciting and innovative people creating work today, as we challenge form, challenge content and absolutely challenge the dominant artistic status quo. And yet, often, due to the baggage, our work is perceived as ‘less than’ and you can see the shutters coming down once the word disability is introduced to artistic discussions. I remember chatting to a senior member of Arts Council staff about contemporary theatre in the UK, who literally glazed over once I mentioned that I work in disabled-led arts, took out his phone to check messages mid-conversation. Less than.
I have been able to reflect that I am at a shifting point in my career as an artist and as a voice within disabled-led arts working towards artistic and cultural equality for our community. If I can speak out, and this is just for me, I have a responsibility to do so. And I am driven to make the best, most compelling, powerful, meaningful, relevant work that I can, with thoughtful and analytical practice.
One of the most exciting elements of Directors Lab North and of the Toronto Luminato Theatre Festival (which, along with the British Council also supported our programme) was the theme of activism and what role activism has on the creative life of an artist. Right up my street. Invaluable.
The Theme of Activism
All 28 of us directors had answered a question on our application forms about whether it is necessary for the role of an artist to also be an activist, and if so, how do we do this effectively and theatrically without alienating an audience? We were all so different in many ways, those forms must have made for very interesting reading. These are matters I face daily in my practice – making sure the activism is in the form of excellent art, and discovering new ways to get audiences to both engage and invest in the work. It was such a luxury to see work at Luminato, to discuss it, to share practice, to meet guest speakers and practitioners and to explore different approaches.
Specific discussion points which have stayed with me relate to questions about
I’ll blog separately about some of these discussions and the learning involved.
In a hugely conflicted world, it is essential to speak out, to be accountable and to build bridges. Artists have an important role to play in the conversations about society, humanity and, in these difficult times, resistance. And also to be a community. It’s not enough for me to stand on the shoulders of the disability rights movement, to sit back and observe the world, take public funding and make out of context, status quo serving, socially apolitical, comfortable and privileged work. I’m also going to be really careful that my work does not conflate disability with illness and ability, and I will not perpetuate existing stereotypes and tropes that exist around disability. So my practice is careful, considered and challenges me.
Cultural differences
It became apparent immediately that there were cultural differences between US, Canada, European and UK participants that perhaps none of us had given much thought to in advance. And there were a variety of intersectional differences between all of us wherever we were from. It took a while to acclimatize to each other and to work out what we didn’t know about each other. It was both a huge and beautiful learning process. There were matters of communication – politeness versus enquiring questions, straight talking versus diplomacy, diversity versus mainstream, political versus apolitical, political versus entertainment, perceptions of construction of identity including gender, disability, LGBTQI, social class, race and age. All genuinely fascinating and the impressive thing was the level of genuine mutual respect amongst the group. The word ‘versus’ was removed from the discussion.
We realized that all of the six UK based directors, not exclusively, were all mission led. We all make work for a specific purpose which is socially engaged. Other directors were perhaps led by a particular theory of practice, or a specific form, and others were jobbing directors, often working as unpaid assistant directors for the experience as an accepted part of the existing hierarchy. It was fascinating to see how our discussions unfolded and then also how are practice was shared and demonstrated. And we were able to have conversations about some of the fundamentals of a rehearsal room – do we do warm ups, how do we do them, why do we do them and also, how much table work do we do, if any, depending on our training and our approach to the process. We rarely get to spend time in other directors rehearsals so this was really interesting. I learned so much that I will continue to use.
One of the biggest cultural differences was of course the role of indigenous artists activism, artistry and protection of the true history of indigenous people in Canada and their experiences at the hands of settlers. One of the guest directors who presented to us was the amazing Jill Carter, Assistant Professor, Centre for Drama, Centre for Indigenous Studies, University of Toronto. She talked with passion about the representation of indigenous women, and characters created by both non-indigenous people and indigenous artists. It was absolutely fascinating. I could happily have spent the whole day with her. We also got to see a production called bug by Yolanda Bonnell, a queer performer and playwright of Ojibwe and South Asian descent, hailing from the Fort William First Nation Indian Reserve in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The piece was haunting and challenging on many levels, with Bonnell playing many women, and weaving the creation story throughout. Bonnell was captivating as she moved from character to character with great skill and expertise. Though painful, the piece concluded with hope for future women and the safeguarding of the land. It was brilliant to be part of discussions involving such strong women.
High Impact Work
Two pieces of work had a really big impact on me, in quite different ways. I’d say both were politically urgent pieces – often where I position my own work – delivered and followed up in quite different ways. The first was Burning Doors by Belarus Free Theatre who had combined forces with Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina – a pulsing, visceral and physical piece sharing stories of persecuted artists, living under dictatorship, who will not be silenced. It was powerful and relentless in its anger and fire. For me, the intensity is shocking, and then sadly numbing, the audience breathing a sigh of relief when it is over but not really knowing what to do with its new information. ‘Isn’t this where we clap enthusiastically, perhaps give a standing ovation and then go to dinner?’. We didn’t have to wait long as we were choreographed into being videoed chanting ‘Free Sentsov’, Oleg Sentsov a film maker in a Russian prison for alleged acts of terrorism and currently on hunger strike, by one of the productions co-directors Natalia Kaliada. It was fascinating and challenging and has given me lots to think about. I spoke with Natalia Kaliada the next day as part of our DLN session which I’ll blog about separately.
The second piece I saw had an impact on me that I don’t think I’ve previously ever had in a theatre. It was the most moved I have ever been by a piece of theatre. Out The Window by Liza Balkan and directed by Sarah Garton Stanley tells the real story of the death of Otto Vass, a man with mental health problems, after being physically assaulted by four police officers outside a 7-11 store. Liza Balkan saw the last minutes of Otto Vass’s life out of her window. The piece uses verbatim interviews and court transcripts, a physical and visual style, and artist and activist Syrus Marcus Ware drew a portrait of Vass throughout the first two acts of the piece. So although Vass’s voice is not heard, his presence is respected and felt. I loved the piece from the beginning but in the third act, all actors dropped their characters and presented as versions of themselves, they invited people to eat with them and they talked about other people in portraits who had the same experience as Otto Vass. And the Bruised Years Choir sang Everybody Hurts. I have never experienced survivors of mental health problems or the families of those with mental health problems singing to those of us who know what they meant, ‘Hold On, hold on’. They were singing it to me, to a member of my close family who couldn’t hold on, and to a close friend who also found the struggle of holding on too great. God it was so powerful. The humanity of that. The kindness. Reaching out. I couldn’t speak for two hours after the show but kept replaying it all in my mind. More to come about the impact of this on me as a person and me as a practitioner. But isn’t it wonderful to be part of the community that can do this to other people, can communicate humanity, share kindness and reach out.
A massive thank you to British Council Canada, Directors Lab North and the whole team there, ARC Stockton UK and the Luminato Festival Toronto for this unbelievable experience. And a huge thank you to my fellow labbies - we united!
I think we all came away from Directors Lab North changed in some way – more questions, inspired, fired up, more confident about our voices, and keen to find new directions and develop new collaborations. This activists door is always open.
I want to support and honour the land acknowledgement of Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, acknowledging the sacred land on which we gathered and operated, as the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, The Seneca, the Mississaugas of the New Credit, and any other nations who cared for the land in its history.
The territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and I was grateful to work in the community, on that territory.
Context of My International Visit to Canada
I’m not a natural navel gazer, nor do I boast about opportunities afforded me, but I genuinely have always dreamed of going to Canada. I’m choosing to record and archive my experience as a disabled practitioner, and aim to contribute to discourses around, a) the equal status of disabled citizens and any injustices I witness or experience, and b) the equal status of the autonomous voices and artistic contribution of disabled people on many levels, in varying ways, across culture.
About 18 months ago, I decided that I wanted to explore some international possibilities, but then I didn’t even know opportunities like Directors Lab North in Toronto existed. Being selected to attend, in many ways, felt like I was risk-taking, with no other self-identifying disabled people attending, without a history of disabled people attending, to my knowledge, and not really appreciating the circumstances that both disabled and non-disabled artists in Canada and the US make their work – the systems and structures available to them.
And in honesty, I wasn’t sure whether what I have to offer was of value in this new context. There is a cyclic experience I encounter, where, as an artist from a less represented community, with historically less opportunities open to us due to societal prejudices and systemic failings, we must take on the role of both artist and educator, of both creative and campaigner, of both diplomat and activist. In diversity terms, not to in any way to diminish anyone else’s experience of discrimination and oppression, disability, because of all the social and historical baggage attached to common perceptions, usually finds itself at the bottom of everyone’s priority list. It’s often so difficult to get past the word ‘disability’, so conflated is it with inability, illness and incapacity. As a direct result of this conflation, in my own experience, it feels like disability is the only ‘other’ which the mainstream feels it can, wittingly or unwittingly, legitimately continue to represent as ‘less than’.
As I have said on many occasions, disabled artists are some of the most exciting and innovative people creating work today, as we challenge form, challenge content and absolutely challenge the dominant artistic status quo. And yet, often, due to the baggage, our work is perceived as ‘less than’ and you can see the shutters coming down once the word disability is introduced to artistic discussions. I remember chatting to a senior member of Arts Council staff about contemporary theatre in the UK, who literally glazed over once I mentioned that I work in disabled-led arts, took out his phone to check messages mid-conversation. Less than.
I have been able to reflect that I am at a shifting point in my career as an artist and as a voice within disabled-led arts working towards artistic and cultural equality for our community. If I can speak out, and this is just for me, I have a responsibility to do so. And I am driven to make the best, most compelling, powerful, meaningful, relevant work that I can, with thoughtful and analytical practice.
One of the most exciting elements of Directors Lab North and of the Toronto Luminato Theatre Festival (which, along with the British Council also supported our programme) was the theme of activism and what role activism has on the creative life of an artist. Right up my street. Invaluable.
The Theme of Activism
All 28 of us directors had answered a question on our application forms about whether it is necessary for the role of an artist to also be an activist, and if so, how do we do this effectively and theatrically without alienating an audience? We were all so different in many ways, those forms must have made for very interesting reading. These are matters I face daily in my practice – making sure the activism is in the form of excellent art, and discovering new ways to get audiences to both engage and invest in the work. It was such a luxury to see work at Luminato, to discuss it, to share practice, to meet guest speakers and practitioners and to explore different approaches.
Specific discussion points which have stayed with me relate to questions about
- who can tell the stories of people from diverse communities (whatever the mist screen of ‘diversity’ actually means), a concern and sometimes indignation for some non-diverse artists to feel they couldn’t explore these other peoples’ stories with authenticity
- the impact of access considerations on a non-disabled artists work, some real concerns about how to publicise trigger warnings, and make work accessible without artistic compromise.
- whether we want audiences to think or feel, this was a fascinating, at time binary discussion but really interesting to hear other directors thoughts on this and it gave room to discuss what we want to share with our audiences
- the roles of politeness and agency in theatrical settings, from the word go, in both the first theatre show we went to see which was largely ‘no-choice’ audience participation, and our first guest director, the differences between polite respect for someone’s position either as an artist or as an audience member, and sincerely intended enquiring questioning about supporting new and diverse stories to be developed in mainstream settings became evident. Again, we didn’t know what we didn’t know about each other.
- And crucially important to me is my ongoing research into how internationally acclaimed artists describe or ‘pitch’ their work to reach audiences and persuade programmers of the value of their activism as works of art.
I’ll blog separately about some of these discussions and the learning involved.
In a hugely conflicted world, it is essential to speak out, to be accountable and to build bridges. Artists have an important role to play in the conversations about society, humanity and, in these difficult times, resistance. And also to be a community. It’s not enough for me to stand on the shoulders of the disability rights movement, to sit back and observe the world, take public funding and make out of context, status quo serving, socially apolitical, comfortable and privileged work. I’m also going to be really careful that my work does not conflate disability with illness and ability, and I will not perpetuate existing stereotypes and tropes that exist around disability. So my practice is careful, considered and challenges me.
Cultural differences
It became apparent immediately that there were cultural differences between US, Canada, European and UK participants that perhaps none of us had given much thought to in advance. And there were a variety of intersectional differences between all of us wherever we were from. It took a while to acclimatize to each other and to work out what we didn’t know about each other. It was both a huge and beautiful learning process. There were matters of communication – politeness versus enquiring questions, straight talking versus diplomacy, diversity versus mainstream, political versus apolitical, political versus entertainment, perceptions of construction of identity including gender, disability, LGBTQI, social class, race and age. All genuinely fascinating and the impressive thing was the level of genuine mutual respect amongst the group. The word ‘versus’ was removed from the discussion.
We realized that all of the six UK based directors, not exclusively, were all mission led. We all make work for a specific purpose which is socially engaged. Other directors were perhaps led by a particular theory of practice, or a specific form, and others were jobbing directors, often working as unpaid assistant directors for the experience as an accepted part of the existing hierarchy. It was fascinating to see how our discussions unfolded and then also how are practice was shared and demonstrated. And we were able to have conversations about some of the fundamentals of a rehearsal room – do we do warm ups, how do we do them, why do we do them and also, how much table work do we do, if any, depending on our training and our approach to the process. We rarely get to spend time in other directors rehearsals so this was really interesting. I learned so much that I will continue to use.
One of the biggest cultural differences was of course the role of indigenous artists activism, artistry and protection of the true history of indigenous people in Canada and their experiences at the hands of settlers. One of the guest directors who presented to us was the amazing Jill Carter, Assistant Professor, Centre for Drama, Centre for Indigenous Studies, University of Toronto. She talked with passion about the representation of indigenous women, and characters created by both non-indigenous people and indigenous artists. It was absolutely fascinating. I could happily have spent the whole day with her. We also got to see a production called bug by Yolanda Bonnell, a queer performer and playwright of Ojibwe and South Asian descent, hailing from the Fort William First Nation Indian Reserve in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The piece was haunting and challenging on many levels, with Bonnell playing many women, and weaving the creation story throughout. Bonnell was captivating as she moved from character to character with great skill and expertise. Though painful, the piece concluded with hope for future women and the safeguarding of the land. It was brilliant to be part of discussions involving such strong women.
High Impact Work
Two pieces of work had a really big impact on me, in quite different ways. I’d say both were politically urgent pieces – often where I position my own work – delivered and followed up in quite different ways. The first was Burning Doors by Belarus Free Theatre who had combined forces with Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina – a pulsing, visceral and physical piece sharing stories of persecuted artists, living under dictatorship, who will not be silenced. It was powerful and relentless in its anger and fire. For me, the intensity is shocking, and then sadly numbing, the audience breathing a sigh of relief when it is over but not really knowing what to do with its new information. ‘Isn’t this where we clap enthusiastically, perhaps give a standing ovation and then go to dinner?’. We didn’t have to wait long as we were choreographed into being videoed chanting ‘Free Sentsov’, Oleg Sentsov a film maker in a Russian prison for alleged acts of terrorism and currently on hunger strike, by one of the productions co-directors Natalia Kaliada. It was fascinating and challenging and has given me lots to think about. I spoke with Natalia Kaliada the next day as part of our DLN session which I’ll blog about separately.
The second piece I saw had an impact on me that I don’t think I’ve previously ever had in a theatre. It was the most moved I have ever been by a piece of theatre. Out The Window by Liza Balkan and directed by Sarah Garton Stanley tells the real story of the death of Otto Vass, a man with mental health problems, after being physically assaulted by four police officers outside a 7-11 store. Liza Balkan saw the last minutes of Otto Vass’s life out of her window. The piece uses verbatim interviews and court transcripts, a physical and visual style, and artist and activist Syrus Marcus Ware drew a portrait of Vass throughout the first two acts of the piece. So although Vass’s voice is not heard, his presence is respected and felt. I loved the piece from the beginning but in the third act, all actors dropped their characters and presented as versions of themselves, they invited people to eat with them and they talked about other people in portraits who had the same experience as Otto Vass. And the Bruised Years Choir sang Everybody Hurts. I have never experienced survivors of mental health problems or the families of those with mental health problems singing to those of us who know what they meant, ‘Hold On, hold on’. They were singing it to me, to a member of my close family who couldn’t hold on, and to a close friend who also found the struggle of holding on too great. God it was so powerful. The humanity of that. The kindness. Reaching out. I couldn’t speak for two hours after the show but kept replaying it all in my mind. More to come about the impact of this on me as a person and me as a practitioner. But isn’t it wonderful to be part of the community that can do this to other people, can communicate humanity, share kindness and reach out.
A massive thank you to British Council Canada, Directors Lab North and the whole team there, ARC Stockton UK and the Luminato Festival Toronto for this unbelievable experience. And a huge thank you to my fellow labbies - we united!
I think we all came away from Directors Lab North changed in some way – more questions, inspired, fired up, more confident about our voices, and keen to find new directions and develop new collaborations. This activists door is always open.
Vici Wreford-Sinnott is founding Artistic Director of Little Cog, a disabled-led theatre company, and is Co-Founder of Cultural Shift, a strategic artistic platform for disabled artists. A leading voice in the Disability Arts and disabled-led arts movements, she has been selected by the British Council Canada and the Lab's organisers to attend Directors Lab North in Toronto.
NB This blog has featured previously on Vici Wreford-Sinnott's older blog page and British Council's blog.
NB This blog has featured previously on Vici Wreford-Sinnott's older blog page and British Council's blog.
I've got a couple of lists on the go, there are 14 tabs open on my lap top, a suitcase open with good intentions and kids to feed within the next hour.
I’m in that pre-adventure terror haze. And I am about to have an adventure. I’ve been lucky enough to be selected by the British Council Canada and Directors Lab North (Toronto, Canada) to attend a 28 strong, 10-day theatre directors laboratory. 28 artistic directors from all over the world and I am one of 6 UK directors attending, all bringing different technical and philosophical approaches to theatre.
I’ve never been to Canada (though is has long been a dream) and I haven’t met any of the other directors before. As far as I know, none of the other directors are self-identifying disabled people – although I will obviously do my research to check out the fellow crip-stats and report back in my return blog. It’s a very exciting opportunity – we’ll be attending workshops, talks, presentations, an arts festival, theatre shows, art form and critique discussions, some us are leading sessions and there is a mysterious playwrights project so there is going to be lots of learning, exchanging and informing. It’s not often to be afforded the time and space for professional and creative development, so this feels like a real luxury.
And it’s quite daunting. Wondering where I’ll fit, are my/our stories and aesthetics interesting to this new audience, and will it be accessible and comfortable. I’m reassured to note that many of the other directors are all from diverse backgrounds – many of us are probably striving to ensure that amazing stories of often hidden people and cultures are given a place in our flagship theatres. And it’s clear that within so-called ‘diversity’ there is much innovation in the way that we reach and engage audiences, informing our practice. I’m looking forward to discussions in this area, and how and why we make theatre relevant in the 21st century in the midst of a technical and digital revolution. What is it about a live exchange that gives theatre its rich power and how does that translate in the modern world?
Practitioners attending are actively engaged in bringing about increased understanding, and social and cultural change, so I know there will be many notes and experiences to share. Everyone will bring a different voice, sharing practice and both introducing and learning new techniques and practices. And we will inevitably become an international network of practitioners – what a brilliant opportunity.
Oh and as for access, so far the British Council and the organisers of the Lab could not have done more to meet my access requirements…from the every-day things, to the extent of spotting that one of the outdoor festival events available to us is standing only and are solution seeking rather than saying ‘oh sorry, you can’t go to that one’. So far, so good. If I had time to pinch myself I would, but things need crossing off these lists and that empty suitcase is staring at me. I’ll keep you posted.
I’m in that pre-adventure terror haze. And I am about to have an adventure. I’ve been lucky enough to be selected by the British Council Canada and Directors Lab North (Toronto, Canada) to attend a 28 strong, 10-day theatre directors laboratory. 28 artistic directors from all over the world and I am one of 6 UK directors attending, all bringing different technical and philosophical approaches to theatre.
I’ve never been to Canada (though is has long been a dream) and I haven’t met any of the other directors before. As far as I know, none of the other directors are self-identifying disabled people – although I will obviously do my research to check out the fellow crip-stats and report back in my return blog. It’s a very exciting opportunity – we’ll be attending workshops, talks, presentations, an arts festival, theatre shows, art form and critique discussions, some us are leading sessions and there is a mysterious playwrights project so there is going to be lots of learning, exchanging and informing. It’s not often to be afforded the time and space for professional and creative development, so this feels like a real luxury.
And it’s quite daunting. Wondering where I’ll fit, are my/our stories and aesthetics interesting to this new audience, and will it be accessible and comfortable. I’m reassured to note that many of the other directors are all from diverse backgrounds – many of us are probably striving to ensure that amazing stories of often hidden people and cultures are given a place in our flagship theatres. And it’s clear that within so-called ‘diversity’ there is much innovation in the way that we reach and engage audiences, informing our practice. I’m looking forward to discussions in this area, and how and why we make theatre relevant in the 21st century in the midst of a technical and digital revolution. What is it about a live exchange that gives theatre its rich power and how does that translate in the modern world?
Practitioners attending are actively engaged in bringing about increased understanding, and social and cultural change, so I know there will be many notes and experiences to share. Everyone will bring a different voice, sharing practice and both introducing and learning new techniques and practices. And we will inevitably become an international network of practitioners – what a brilliant opportunity.
Oh and as for access, so far the British Council and the organisers of the Lab could not have done more to meet my access requirements…from the every-day things, to the extent of spotting that one of the outdoor festival events available to us is standing only and are solution seeking rather than saying ‘oh sorry, you can’t go to that one’. So far, so good. If I had time to pinch myself I would, but things need crossing off these lists and that empty suitcase is staring at me. I’ll keep you posted.
Disability Equality Ethos Statement
Little Cog is a proud part of a disability arts and culture movement to end ableism and to end cultural theft by crip-taking (see definition below). We are committed to promoting and championing an understanding, and the incorporation, of a Disability Equality Ethos in the art and culture of the nation. It will require rigourous examination and investigation of what this would mean in both policy and practice in our current systems.
We promote disabled-led work and demand that the arts and culture sector in this country talk with us about what precisely this means and how it can be implemented across all publicly funded venues and organisations.
Little Cog works in specific artistic and strategic ways to actively programme and deliver new and increased opportunities by, with and for disabled people at all levels in the arts. We are working to ensure our cultural landscape is vibrant and proportionately representative of the disabled people living and working in our communities.
We want the content of work, whether produced in the largest galleries or on the largest stages, to be scrutinised for its perpetuation of age old and dangerous stereotypes and tropes around disability and disabled people. It is essential that 21st Century Britain brings an end to crip-taking (see definition below).
We want to see changes to inaccessible activities in inaccessible buildings run by inaccessible people with inaccessible attitudes. We want to see meaningful change now to arts systems and structures.
Our broad aims are:
Through our artistic policy, Little Cog is committed to supporting work which is contemporary in its approach and relevant to peoples’ lives today, whilst clearly locating how the past has shaped our contemporary societal views on disability and disabled people.
Thinking About Disability in Different Ways
Social Model of Disability: We are working to the Social Model of Disability which was developed by disabled people. The social model says that disability is caused by the way society is organised, rather than by a person's condition or difference. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people. Such barriers include physical, sensory, neurodivergent, information and attitudinal barriers and solutions include accessible buildings with level access and lifts, British Sign Language, and infra-red or induction loop hearing access, relaxed spaces and practices, guide or assistance dog access, braille, large print and audio information, and a change in attitudes and practices by increasing understanding of disability and disability equality. We aim to work with disabled people of all ages and from across all communities.
Other models of disability: The way that society views disability has been informed by charity and medical models of disability which both suggest a deficit version of a human being, needy and something being ‘wrong’ with a person who can’t look after themselves. The social model directly challenges those perspectives and provides solutions for society to be less disabling. Disability studies are evolving new models of disability to either build on and sometimes reject the social model of disability. Our current view at Little Cog is that all of this new thinking is both critical and essential, but society has not yet changed or moved beyond the demands and soultions of the social model. It can be summed up as disability is the lived experience of discrimination and barriers. The model does not deny the daily lived experiences we have with our conditions but offers solutions to systemic ableism.
Disabled-led: For us the term disabled-led is not about a 51% / 49% ratio of disabled board members. It is about the ethics and practice of ensuring work by, for, with or about disabled people is led by disabled people from conception to planning to delivery to evaluation. A way of working that ensures art and culture is informed, managed and delivered by disabled people. Disabled-led needs to become a permanent fixture in all art and culture – organisations, venues, funding, networks, infrastructures – and not as a transient fad as diversity priorities change or come and go. Disabled people can not be expected to continually re-make the case across lifetimes and careers in the arts to successive changes in personnel in positions of power.
Self-defining: We also realise that many people with conditions do not identify themselves as disabled, for many reasons, but sometimes due to the negative stigma attached to ideas around ‘disability’. This is part of an ongoing conversation. We believe that in order to achieve equality for disabled artists, practitioners, professionals, managers, participants and audiences, it is necessary to use definitions about disability, although we do not expect people to change how they choose to define themselves.
Crip-taking and the ethics of who gets to tell disabled peoples’ stories
Crip-taking is cultural theft. It is ablesim. It is the sustained historical and cultural mis-representation and exclusion of disabled people, our value and contribution. It is erasure. It is the dilution of our identities and experiences in systemic oppression. It is the taking of disabled peoples' voices, stories and roles.
A major driving force behind our work is about the ethics of who tells the stories of disabled people. We firmly believe that work with a disability focus must be disabled-led and that artists creating work about disability are disabled people. We expect disabled people to fill the roles of disabled characters and we expect artists and companies to cast disabled people in roles where disability is not necessarily a focus of the production. Otherwise it is cultural theft.
We expect to see an end to ‘crip-taking’ and the ableist practice of taking our voices, stories and roles.
Little Cog is a proud part of a disability arts and culture movement to end ableism and to end cultural theft by crip-taking (see definition below). We are committed to promoting and championing an understanding, and the incorporation, of a Disability Equality Ethos in the art and culture of the nation. It will require rigourous examination and investigation of what this would mean in both policy and practice in our current systems.
We promote disabled-led work and demand that the arts and culture sector in this country talk with us about what precisely this means and how it can be implemented across all publicly funded venues and organisations.
Little Cog works in specific artistic and strategic ways to actively programme and deliver new and increased opportunities by, with and for disabled people at all levels in the arts. We are working to ensure our cultural landscape is vibrant and proportionately representative of the disabled people living and working in our communities.
We want the content of work, whether produced in the largest galleries or on the largest stages, to be scrutinised for its perpetuation of age old and dangerous stereotypes and tropes around disability and disabled people. It is essential that 21st Century Britain brings an end to crip-taking (see definition below).
We want to see changes to inaccessible activities in inaccessible buildings run by inaccessible people with inaccessible attitudes. We want to see meaningful change now to arts systems and structures.
Our broad aims are:
- To create dynamic, passionate and powerful work which transforms our understanding of how the world, and our view of disability and disabled people, has been shaped
- To challenge centuries old myths and mis-representations of disability and disabled people which have led negative perceptions
- To involve disabled people in the arts at every level
- To proactively work with partners in the arts to challenge and change the systems and structures which prejudice the equal involvement on disabled people on disabled-led terms
- To consistently challenge ourselves, our thinking and our practice and to inspire that in others
Through our artistic policy, Little Cog is committed to supporting work which is contemporary in its approach and relevant to peoples’ lives today, whilst clearly locating how the past has shaped our contemporary societal views on disability and disabled people.
Thinking About Disability in Different Ways
Social Model of Disability: We are working to the Social Model of Disability which was developed by disabled people. The social model says that disability is caused by the way society is organised, rather than by a person's condition or difference. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people. Such barriers include physical, sensory, neurodivergent, information and attitudinal barriers and solutions include accessible buildings with level access and lifts, British Sign Language, and infra-red or induction loop hearing access, relaxed spaces and practices, guide or assistance dog access, braille, large print and audio information, and a change in attitudes and practices by increasing understanding of disability and disability equality. We aim to work with disabled people of all ages and from across all communities.
Other models of disability: The way that society views disability has been informed by charity and medical models of disability which both suggest a deficit version of a human being, needy and something being ‘wrong’ with a person who can’t look after themselves. The social model directly challenges those perspectives and provides solutions for society to be less disabling. Disability studies are evolving new models of disability to either build on and sometimes reject the social model of disability. Our current view at Little Cog is that all of this new thinking is both critical and essential, but society has not yet changed or moved beyond the demands and soultions of the social model. It can be summed up as disability is the lived experience of discrimination and barriers. The model does not deny the daily lived experiences we have with our conditions but offers solutions to systemic ableism.
Disabled-led: For us the term disabled-led is not about a 51% / 49% ratio of disabled board members. It is about the ethics and practice of ensuring work by, for, with or about disabled people is led by disabled people from conception to planning to delivery to evaluation. A way of working that ensures art and culture is informed, managed and delivered by disabled people. Disabled-led needs to become a permanent fixture in all art and culture – organisations, venues, funding, networks, infrastructures – and not as a transient fad as diversity priorities change or come and go. Disabled people can not be expected to continually re-make the case across lifetimes and careers in the arts to successive changes in personnel in positions of power.
Self-defining: We also realise that many people with conditions do not identify themselves as disabled, for many reasons, but sometimes due to the negative stigma attached to ideas around ‘disability’. This is part of an ongoing conversation. We believe that in order to achieve equality for disabled artists, practitioners, professionals, managers, participants and audiences, it is necessary to use definitions about disability, although we do not expect people to change how they choose to define themselves.
Crip-taking and the ethics of who gets to tell disabled peoples’ stories
Crip-taking is cultural theft. It is ablesim. It is the sustained historical and cultural mis-representation and exclusion of disabled people, our value and contribution. It is erasure. It is the dilution of our identities and experiences in systemic oppression. It is the taking of disabled peoples' voices, stories and roles.
A major driving force behind our work is about the ethics of who tells the stories of disabled people. We firmly believe that work with a disability focus must be disabled-led and that artists creating work about disability are disabled people. We expect disabled people to fill the roles of disabled characters and we expect artists and companies to cast disabled people in roles where disability is not necessarily a focus of the production. Otherwise it is cultural theft.
We expect to see an end to ‘crip-taking’ and the ableist practice of taking our voices, stories and roles.