Crucial Conversations Disabled Artists Need To Be Having

 
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.
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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.