A Brilliant Time For A Change - An offer to North East England venues, theatre companies and organisations

Vici Wreford-Sinnott, a white woman in her fifties. She has blond spiky hair and has a red scarf round her neck.

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.

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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.