 Crucial Conversations are an essential disabled artist only online space to talk about important themes and experiences set up by writer and director Vici Wreford-Sinnott. "Disabled artists need spaces to come together and talk. It would be easy to spiral into the bleak exclusion and erasure we consistently experience but during Crucial Conversations this time around we are being encouraged to reflect and share our survival techniques and think about the moments that give us hope. We all need a personal manifesto of hope.
Vici is the final artist to give a provocation of hope to close this series of Crucial Conversations, along side the brilliant artist Dolly Sen. Vici has been part of the Disability Arts and involved in disability theatre for over 30 years. Her current practice based PhD research focusses on radical representations of disabled women in performance. Her work creates new disabled protagonists and disabled narratives to challenges what she has termed 'crip-taking': the cultural theft of disabled people's voices, stories and roles for disabled actors; and, the suppression of disabled-led work which unpicks social, historical and contemporary cultural ableism. We're thrilled to announce that Dolly Sen is one of our provocateurs for the conversation on 'The Current Arts Environment' on Monday 22 April 2.00-3.30pm. An incredible artist, Dolly subverts everyday experiences and accepted norms to magnify injustice and wrong-thinking. She is working class, Queer, interested in disability and the madness given to us by the world. Vici will talk about her work and provide a provocation on our experience of the arts environment as it struggles to rebuild during the latest stages of the pandemic, and how she maintains hope when there is so much uncertainty. We will ask: Where do we go from here and what is the message we'd like to send to those with resources and decision-making powers? We also look at our skills in positioning ourselves as equals. Rather than a negative spiral, which it is difficult to avoid, it would be great if we encourage each other to think about personal manifestos of hope to take away. About Vici Wreford-Sinnott Vici was commissioned by the BBC to write and direct her short film Hen Night creating one of the first ever pieces of broadcast British drama by a disabled women-led team. Films include Funny Peculiar starring BBC Silent Witness actor Liz Carr for Northern Stage and ARC Stockton, Siege was commissioned by Home Manchester and ARC Stockton Homemakers with her accompanying non-fiction series The Wrong Woman Discussions featuring four other disabled women performing in the public eye. Vici’s radio drama The UnSung was commissioned by Durham Book Festival, New Writing North and ARC Stockton. In 2023 Vici was commissioned by Live Theatre Newcastle to write with the love of neither god nor state for Three Acts of Love and is currently under commission to Live Theatre for her play Useless F*cker. Funny Peculiar and Siege are published by Salamander Street and with the love of neither god nor state was published by Methuen Drama in 2023. In 2015 Vici pioneered a significant model of disabled-led practice in a mainstream venue in partnership with ARC Stockton, Cultural Shift, which she has been invited to speak about internationally, and which it is hoped will roll out across six partner arts and cultural venues in the North East from 2024. Vici’s original theatre work includes Butterfly (Best One Person Play 2018 British Theatre Guide, National Tour), Lighthouse (bilingual piece in English and BSL, British Premiere ARC Stockton), Another England (National Tour), The Art Of Not Getting Lost (ARC Stockton and Northern Stage), Vote for Caliban (Northern Stage), Deadly Devotchka (Edinburgh Fringe), Moll Cutpurse: A Comedy for the 21st Century (UK and Ireland Tour). Vici has many directing credits and has mentored many disabled writers to bring their work to the stage. She is a long term collaborator with Full Circle, an ensemble of learning disabled theatre makers. In 2021 Vici was awarded the North East Arts and Culture Award for Outstanding Contribution to the arts in the region. Booking for Crucial Conversations - The Current Arts Environment Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. Access We have live captions and BSL interpretation for this event. Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. Crucial Conversations - Disabled Artists: The Current Arts Environment Tickets, Mon 22 Apr 2024 at 14:00 | Eventbrite You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG  We are thrilled to announce that the incredible British theatre maker, comedian, television writer, performer and campaigner Jess Thom is a guest provocateur in our Crucial Conversations For Disabled Artists Series of discussions. For this disabled artist-only space, we've invited Jess to speak on the theme of the power of collective voices in the disabled artist community and the personal labour, often in addition to our workload, involved in working in the arts. This conversation takes place online, is free to attend although you must book a place through Eventbrite and is on Monday 15 April 2024, 2.00-3.15pm. Today's conversation recognises the power of collective voices but wants to explore the personal labour we, as disabled people, put into this. For decades, much of sharing our voices was through direct activism or channelled through disabled people's development organisations. How do we get together, in the absence of meaningful resources and infrastructure to support us, and raise our voices when needed? There are so many examples in our history, in our today and in our tomorrows - but also need protection of time, energy and a shared load. Are there models we could develop in which we safeguard ourselves whilst still having an impact? At this conversation we will have two provocations - one from Jess Thom and the other from acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist Ashokkumar D Mistry. There will also be group discussions allowing us to take away ingredients for our personal manifestos of hope. We aim to use this time to avoid the spiral of negative 'knowns' and focus on ways forward, big and small. About Jess Thom Writer, artist and part-time superhero, Jess Thom co-founded Touretteshero in 2010 as a creative response to her experience of living with Tourettes Syndrome. She campaigns for disability rights and social justice and is on a mission to change the world ‘one tic at a time.’ Jess was commissioned to write Biscuitland by Channel Four which was fully developed and screened in their 2022 Comedy Blaps season, which premieres new and original talent. Jess has written in the mainstream and disability press including The Guardian, The Observer and Disability Now. In 2012 she published Welcome to Biscuit Land – A Year In the Life of Touretteshero, with a foreword by Stephen Fry. Jess is a regular performer at Glastonbury, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, DaDaFest, Unlimited Festival and Shambala. She made Broadcast from Biscuit Land as part of On Stage: Live from Television Centre for BBC4 in 2015. In 2018 her one-hour film Me, My Mouth and I was broadcast on BBC2 and went on to be screened in the USA, Russia, Chile, Switzerland and Canada. In 2016 Jess took her award-winning stage show Backstage in Biscuit Land on an extensive national and international tour including the USA and Australia. In the same year she received a Wellcome Engagement Fellowship, became an Arts Council England Change Maker and received an honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton. In 2017 Touretteshero hosted Adventures in Biscuit Land at Tate Modern as part of their Tate Exchange programme, and curated Brewing in the Basement at the Barbican Centre. She also débuted her critically acclaimed performance of Samuel Beckett’s short play Not I. In 2020 Jess took Not I to New York City as part of the Public Theater’s prestigious Under The Radar Festival where it received a glowing review in the New York Times. In 2018 Jess took her stand-up show Stand Up, Sit Down, Roll Over to the USA and Europe, hosted Heroes of the Imagination at the Southbank’s Imagine Festival, and Brewing in Battersea at Battersea Arts Centre. The year ended with Hacks for the Future, a residential theatre project for disabled young creatives in the Highlands in association with National Theatre Scotland. In 2019, Touretteshero received Elevate funding from Arts Council England, a programme which aims to strengthen the resilience of diverse arts organisations. Jess deepened her advocacy work and hosted several facilitated conversations around access for senior managers or organisations such as the Barbican and Shakespeare’s Globe. During the 2020 Coronavirus lockdown, Jess devised and delivered Digital Heroes of the Imagination with the National Youth Theatre and created a Pandemic Postcard for the Harbourfront Theatre in Toronto. Jess has spoken widely in the media about her life with Tourettes, including on Woman’s Hour, This Morning, and Russell Howard's Good News. She has given a TEDx talk at the Royal Albert Hall and features in the Annalisa is Awkward documentary on BBC Radio4. Find our more about Jess's work with Touretteshero here Booking for Crucial Conversations - Collective Voices/Personal Labour Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/845785285557?aff=oddtdtcreator Access All sessions have live captioning. Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG  We're delighted to announce that multi-award-winning writer and director Cheryl Martin will also be a provocateur at our first online Crucial Conversation reflecting on the progress we've made as a community of artists and activists.
Cheryl has recently taken up her tenure as Artistic Director of Red Ladder Theatre Company. Alongside her work writing and directing award-winning theatre productions, Cheryl has also fulfilled a variety of roles including supporting writers and practitioners at Contact Theatre, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, and Oldham Coliseum. Cheryl has also worked with Community Arts Northwest on a series of community plays, devised with, and starring mostly women refugees and asylum seekers. In 2015 she co-founded LGBTQ+ Global-Majority performance arts company Black Gold Arts, a celebration in choreography, writing, directing and cabaret, which was part of the Eurovision cultural festival. Black Gold Arts recently won the Best Event category at the Manchester Culture Awards for its free outdoor arts festival at The Whitworth in 2022. In addition to being an Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre assessor and judge, Cheryl was also Co-Artistic Director of Manchester’s grassroots Global-Majority-led publisher and writer development company Commonword and is Co-Director of Manchester Pride’s Candlelight Vigil. The Progress We've Made feels rebellious & radical, given the current social and cultural backdrop, but we're going to revel in our successes, and come away refreshed with ingredients for our personal manifestos of hope. Booking for Crucial Conversations - The Progress We've Made Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. Crucial Conversations - Disabled Artists: The Progress We've Made Tickets, Mon 8 Apr 2024 at 18:00 | Eventbrite Access Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG  We are delighted to announce that the next of our Crucial Conversations provocateurs is the distinguished artist Ashokkumar D Mistry. Ashok is a writer and visual artist working in a range of disciplines including paint, digital art, and film. He works individually but much of his work happens either alongside or in collaboration with others. He is a neurodivergent, multidisciplinary artist, writer, researcher, activist & curator working in the UK and internationally. Subverting technologies and ideologies, he challenges conventional ways of making & viewing art. The second on our series of Crucial Conversations for Disabled Artists is on the theme of Collective Voices / Personal Labour which takes place online on Monday 15 April, 2.00-3.30pm.
Today's conversation recognises the power of collective voices but wants to explore the personal labour we, as disabled people, put into this. For decades, much of sharing our voices was through direct activism or channelled through disabled people's development organisations. How do we get together, in the absence of meaningful resources and infrastructure to support us, and raise our voices when needed? There are so many examples in our history, in our today and in our tomorrows - but also need protection of time, energy and a shared load. Are there models we could develop in which we safeguard ourselves whilst still having an impact? At this conversation we will have two provocations and group discussion allowing us to take away ingredients for our personal manifestos of hope. About Ashokkumar D Mistry Ashokkumar Mistry is a Leicester-based artist, practitioner and researcher. Ashok’s research scrutinises differences to expand our understanding of the human condition that includes impairment and disability. His work is dialogic; encouraging interaction and debate. In an economy of inattentive distraction, his work asks us to pay close attention. By working against the insistence for consistent and reducible product, Ashok issues a challenge to cultural institutions and actively seeks to reshape expectations. Ashok unsettles the mythology of national identity and focuses on the ways in which symbols and images are encoded and naturalised. His work often alights on the entanglement of cultural transmission and mistranslation. Archival images are embellished, remixed, edited and decontextualised to interrogate their latent ideologies. “His words and work — with its swift detours and provocations, its messiness and expansiveness — offers us a productive disorientation. It upends assumptions about good taste, about where things fit or don’t, about what is good and bad.” From Swift Detours - George Vasey. Ashok is co-founder of the Disability in British Art (DIBA) research group within the British Art Network, has delivered lectures relating to arts and disability at UK universities, and is an associate of DASH Arts’ Future Curators Programme. Currently Ashok is a founder member of two disabled artists collectives, ONYX collective and Comrades Mistry has been commissioned to write for British Art Network, Shape Arts and Unlimited. Ashok has also been an Associate Artist with and has written extensively for Disability Arts Online and has also been a Fellow of the International Association Of Art Critics (AICA-UK). Booking for Crucial Conversations - Collective Voices/Personal Labour Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/845785285557?aff=oddtdtcreator Access Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG  Crucial Conversations are an essential disabled artist only online space to talk about important themes and experiences. We don't get many opportunities to connect communally any more but many of us need to know we're not alone, especially when our social and cultural backdrop is as challenging as it is at the moment.
We have invited a number of incredible disabled artist to give provocations to get our conversations started, we'll discuss what we've heard and then anonymise and publish our findings and disseminate to leaders in the arts. We're thrilled to announce that Dolly Sen is one of our provocateurs for the conversation on 'The Current Arts Environment' on Monday 22 April 2.00-3.30pm. An incredible artist, Dolly subverts everyday experiences and accepted norms to magnify injustice and wrong-thinking. She is working class, Queer, interested in disability and the madness given to us by the world. Dolly will talk about her work and provide a provocation on our experience of the arts environment as it struggles to rebuild during the latest stages of the pandemic, and how she maintains hope when there is so much uncertainty. We will ask: Where do we go from here and what is the message we'd like to send to those with resources and decision-making powers? We also look at our skills in positioning ourselves as equals. Rather than a negative spiral, which it is difficult to avoid, it would be great if we encourage each other to think about personal manifestos of hope to take away. About Dolly Sen Dolly wants to disrupt systems that produce that programming called oppression, not through trojan horse viruses but with my little ponies on acid with a little sadness in their hearts. Dolly is a writer, visual artist, sculptor, public artist and filmmaker. Dolly has been a child alien in the Empire Strikes Back, written over ten books, screwed a lightbulb into the sky, sectioned the DWP, recited poetry in a tree, given a website a psychotic episode, tripa-dvisored a psychiatric hospital, visited California’s Death Row, dispensed an Apocalypse Loyalty Card, created a madvert calendar, worn a wandering womb with a clitoris hat to examine misogyny in medicine, turned fanny prints into a Rorschach test, given Alexa a mental state examination, created Bedlamb, shouted at Freud’s couch, made films about the lived experience of psychosis, galvanised people to Help the Normals, sold nothing on Ebay, subverted 100s of other things and in the process spanked normality’s bottom. Dolly's website is here Dolly Sen – spanking reality arse since 2000 Booking for Crucial Conversations - The Current Arts Environment Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. Access We have live captions and BSL interpretation for this event. Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. Crucial Conversations - Disabled Artists: The Current Arts Environment Tickets, Mon 22 Apr 2024 at 14:00 | Eventbrite You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG  We are delighted to announce that the first of our Crucial Conversations provocateurs is the eminent artist activist Caroline Cardus, who has created ground breaking disability art for over 20 years. She works collaboratively as well as individually, to tell stories of lived experience from disability and feminist perspectives. The first in the Crucial Conversations series - The Progress We've Made - takes place online on Monday 8 April, 6.00-7.30pm.
Based on Caroline's experience and her approach, we've invited her to provide us with a provocation about the progress we've made as disabled artists. It’s a preservation approach to avoid spiralling into the usual negatives we know and experience daily, but to take a breath and take hope from the progress we’ve made as individuals or as a movement - perhaps reflecting on key moments in our community's history. As disabled artists there are so few meeting points to come together to get a sense of community and reduced isolation, so Crucial Conversations are created as a space to do just that. We're conscious that both our social and political backdrop is incredibly challenging, and that working in the arts can feel harder and harder. These issues need addressing on a national and systemic scale and usually its over to us and our labour to do that. That's not what this conversation, on this occasion, is about though. It's to give us space away from that. It feels rebellious and radical, but we're going to revel in our successes, individual, personal, and communal. In spite of everything, we are amazing and all the change that has happened for disabled people is because of our community's dogged determination. So if you're fed up of the overwhelming negativity we experience, this is a space to remind ourselves of our strength and power. What hope can we take from this going forward? How do we sustain ourselves? It's important to reflect in this way to gather strength and remind us of our value, especially to each other but also to the wider cultural landscape, to create personal manifestos of hope to move us forward. About Caroline Cardus Caroline Cardus created her ground breaking protest art piece The Way Ahead, provocatively launching it on 1st October 2004 when new anti-discrimination legislation was introduced in the UK. Since then, the exhibition has been continual demand as a Disability Art protest piece. It is now part of the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA). Caroline has been artist in residence at BALTIC in Gateshead as recipient of the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary, and more recently has worked with Tate Modern, the Wellcome Foundation and was part of 30 disabled artists taking part in a nationwide DaDa intervention in galleries called We Are Invisible, We Are Visible (#WAIWAV) funded by DASH Arts. Her intervention, FED UP, was shown at Milton Keynes Gallery. She is a member of the IN/Visible Disabled Women's Arts Collective and also works as a creative producer, advocate and mentor for other artists. You can find our more about Caroline here Bio — carolinecardusartist.com Booking for Crucial Conversations - The Progress We've Made Crucial Conversations are disabled only spaces - please do not book a space if you are not a disabled person. Disabled artists can book for this event on Eventbrite here. Crucial Conversations - Disabled Artists: The Progress We've Made Tickets, Mon 8 Apr 2024 at 18:00 | Eventbrite Access Please book as soon as possible if you have access requirements and do tell us what you need in your booking form on Eventbrite. Thank you. You can find out more about other Crucial Conversations and provocateurs on our website here. Knowledge Action Change - LITTLE COG |
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