DaDaFest International Congress
Disability Culture and Human Rights
The Bluecoat, Liverpool
Day One: 02 December 2014
Session One
Disability and Human Rights: Where Are We in 2014?
(Morning Plenary)
Page 2
Session Two
The Capacity of the Arts to Make a Difference
Page 32
Session Three
The Journey of Change: Impact Beyond the Arts
(Afternoon Plenary)
Page 56
Session Four
Unlimited: the Artist’s Voice
Page 94
Congress Poet - Roger Cliffe-Thompson
Pages 21 and 55
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Session One: Disability Arts & Human Rights:
Where Are We in 2014? (Morning Plenary)
Chair:
Jane Cordell, Chair of DaDaFest
Welcome: Cllr Erica Kemp, Lord Mayor of Liverpool
Speakers:
Allan Sutherland, ‘Disability Arts: the Journey So Far’
Rachel Kachaje, ‘View from the Global South’
Leroy Moore, ‘Expressing Rights through the Arts’
Carole McFadden, ‘How British Council is Supporting
Disability Arts Internationally’
Jane Cordell: Are you sitting comfortably? Can you hear me better than I
can hear me?
Welcome to Liverpool; welcome to a world first! Where better to have a
world’s first - the first ever - Congress of Arts, Disability and Human Rights?
A very warm welcome, especially to those who have come from across the
globe: from America, from Uganda, from Malawi, from Australia, from the
United States of America. The North West of England is the heart of
innovation, radicalism and integrity: where better to have an event like this.
In a moment I am going to have the pleasure of introducing the Right
Worshipful Mayor of Liverpool, but just to say first it is a fantastic to see you
all here. Being deaf and disabled, as we discussed at a recent DaDaFest
meeting, it is like being human, writ large. It forces us to examine what it
means to be a human and the rights to expression; the right to define who
we are is ours, is enshrined in the U.N. Convention on Human Rights. That
is in issue that has so far been ignored.
I hope that today you will get some new ideas, and meet some new
contacts, and I hope you will feel inspired and challenged to make new
connections. Go back out into your worlds with fresh thinking. I look
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forward to meeting you all. And I am now going to thank the Right
Worshipful Mayor of Liverpool, Erica Kemp, to come and welcome you
formally to the event. Thank you.
Cllr Erica Kemp: Good morning everybody.
First of all, can I thank you very much for inviting me here today, to speak
openly or just announce myself at the DaDaFest Congress.
People keep asking to me what the highlight of our year [ in office] has
been, and we cannot actually say there was one particular thing, but we do
keep referring back to Young DaDaFest where we laughed, we cried, we
smiled, frowned, we got angry, and it was actually for me an amazing
experience and a wonderful evening. And I know that today it will be during
this Congress an equally up lifting experience for all of us and I do
apologise that I cannot stay.
I think Liverpool is a particularly good city to embrace the concept of using
the arts as a vehicle for social change. And I am very proud of what we
have achieved in Liverpool, this year - for me - has been amazing and I
think Liverpool is actually very open and receptive to a lot of things.
As well as it being an honour for me to be Lord Mayor in general, in terms
of role it is a huge responsibility. And when I was first asked to be the Lord
Mayor anxiety really took hold of me. Could I do the job? What could I
bring to the role? Why me? Could I live up to it? Was I going to be the
first Lord Mayor that made a mess of something? And all my anxieties, my
lack of confidence. And I can do lack of self-confidence: if there was a PhD
in it, I would have no trouble in writing the 10,000 words. I am quite
genuine about that. I have learnt to use that as a spur to making sure that I
prepare for things and that I pay attention rather than being complacent,
but it is still there. As I was preparing for the morning, I thought ‘well, what
have you done? Well you have recognised that even though you have got
these anxieties that lack of self-belief you actually can bring something to
the role. You have got something to offer.’ I thought we all have
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something to offer in some way, don't we? I think that there is a need to
learn and I am now quoting from your [DaDaFest] website, it struck me very
much that it is summed it up beautifully that the multiple cultures that
disabled people express through the arts, need the space to be
acknowledged, debated, and heard. And I just thought that encapsulated
everything for me beautifully.
I, in fact, do have difficulties hearing. I cannot distinguish sounds: so, if
there is a background noise after a while that background noise will
become as loud, my brain will not distinguish the sound. I know that when
this problem first manifested itself I was well genuinely very upset by it
because I found I was disorientated. Merseyside Society of Deaf People
gave me a lot of help. You can do things; you can still be part of
something. It is not the end of the world. And so in my own small way I
have a degree of empathy here.
So, thank you again very much for what you doing, thank you for coming,
thank you for those who will be taking part today. It has been a pleasure
and a real honour for me to join in that chorus of shouting about the arts
being that medium for social change. So, let's shout it from the roof tops
today and if like me you're not a good tweeter then if you can do just one
tweet today about it, then that is great, and if you can do two that is a real
achievement as well.
So, have a great day, have a great Congress, thank you to all of you for
coming, and particularly, thank you to you who have helped make today
happen.
Thank you very much.
Jane Cordell: Thank you to Erica for that personal, frank and engaging
account. And now we have pleasure to hand over to Allan Sutherland, who
was once described as the first political stand up on disability arts. So,
welcome Allan.
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Allan Sutherland: Right. Everybody hear me okay?
In 1989 in a paper delivered to another conference at another festival, I
wrote,
“I think disability arts and disability politics are extremely
intimately connected. I don’t think that disability arts would
have been possible without disability politics coming first. I
also think that the development of a disability culture is the
most important thing that is going on in the disability movement
at the moment.”
In 1989, disability arts could not help but be political. Disabled people
faced so many barriers. Wheelchair users could not go out on their own
because there were no dropped curbs. There was only the most
rudimentary access to transport. You have seen Tony Heaton's ‘Gold
Lamé’1: that is a reference to the whole transport thing.
Deaf people were excluded from pretty much everything, by the lack of sign
interpreters, not to mention oralist education which actively worked to
prevent deaf children learning sign. Visually impaired people could not
participate in anything involving written materials because they were not
available in Braille or on tape or in large print.
In the United States in the 1960s black people fought for the right to sit at
front of the bus. In the UK, 30 years later, wheelchair users had to fight to
be able to get on the bus at all, a campaign recalled in my recent poem,
‘Song for a Recalcitrant Bus Driver’:
We fought for these spaces in midsummer heat,
Blocked all the traffic on New Oxford Street.
There weren’t any pushchairs patrolling that beat.
That’s why the lady needs the ramp.
We even had to identify for ourselves the fact that such things were
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externally-imposed barriers, a result of defective social organisation, rather
than just inevitable consequences of our defective bodies. This idea that it
is society which disables physically impaired people was first propounded
by UPIAS, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, and
subsequently developed by academic Mike Oliver into the Social Model of
Disability.
It is odd to find myself talking about access. I used to argue that disability
arts were about more than access, and it certainly was not just about
access to mainstream arts. It was about the right of disabled people to be
creators of art, the value of disabled people’s experiences as a subject for
art, and validity of performing to audiences composed of disabled people
without requiring the validation of the allegedly non-disabled.
But for people who wanted to work in the arts there were a whole set of
specific barriers. Arts buildings such as theatres and galleries tended to be
grand affairs with classical porticoes and steps up to the entrance, and no
ramps. It is no coincidence that much work in those early years took place
in venues such as community centres, and small local arts centres. They
were the places that you could get into.
And when buildings made themselves accessible to the general public we
had to make the argument that disabled people do not just want to be
recipients of the arts, they want to be participants. Backstage has to be
just as accessible as front of house.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty for people who want to enter the arts was
finding training. There was, at the time, no legal requirement to provide
any sort of disability access. That is another thing that we had to fight for:
colleges were full of stairs, drama schools were - frankly - discriminatory,
effectively telling would-be students that they had not got the right sort of
body to become an actor.
Access is a human rights issue. Of course it is. It concerns the most
fundamental of rights. The right to leave your own house and go where
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you want to. The right of entry to public buildings, like theatres and
galleries and libraries. The right to education. The right to communication.
Even in the case of oralism the right to language itself. We have had to
fight for all these things and the art we have made has reflected that
struggle.
It was one of the earliest principles of disability arts that it should always be
accessible to everybody. And that has fed into what makes our work
distinct and creative. It produced disability cabaret, which created
opportunities for inexperienced performers coupled with an accessible
auditorium full of tables rather than rows of seats. It has produced a lot of
work, from Graeae and others where sign interpretation and audio
description became part of the performance. You have done a lot of
interesting experimentation on how to bring those things into the actual
performances.
Last night, watching Jess Thom's ‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’, I saw a
performer with Tourette's who works with a colleague who is both
co-performer and support worker, creating an innovative style of
performance that is fast, funny, and flexible.
And, of course, access has huge symbolic importance. If anyone wants to
say, ‘Why are you banging on about this? You're not in a wheelchair.’ I
say, ‘anywhere that makes it clear my partner is not welcome in the front
door, on equal terms, that can't be bothered to provide for the needs of my
friends or colleagues or any of the people I value and admire, is not a place
where I feel comfortable.’
A flight of steps at the front entrance, or a sign telling wheelchair users to
go to another entrance, gives a very clear message to disabled people; all
disabled people. They are like those signs you used to see in the windows
of 1950s boarding houses saying ‘No dogs, No Irish, No blacks.’
And at this point I would like to come to the ‘Bite The Hand That Feeds
You’ section of my talk, in honour of the late Paddy Masefield. Paddy
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worked in the arts all his life, and played major roles in the Arts Council’s
Disability Monitoring Committee, and the Arts Lottery Committee. Paddy
valued the Arts Council: he felt, as I do, that it was an organisation of major
value and importance. He also felt that we all had a responsibility to
criticise it whenever it went wrong.
In the 1980s the then Arts Council of Great Britain was based at 199
Piccadilly, a grand building with steps up to the front door, and no
alternative entrance. The significance being accorded to disabled people
and their needs was unmissable. Their next offices in Great Peter Street
had pretty good access. Not brilliant, as it was not a new build, but pretty
good. Disabled people were able to come and go on much the same basis
as the building’s other users.
And now, in 2014, unbelievably, they have moved to a building which has a
separate entrance for wheelchair users. To explain what is so
retro-aggressive, so shameful about that, let me quote someone I know.
She told me, “I went for a meeting at the new Arts Council office and found
there were steps up to the front door. I had to hunt around the outside of
the building until I found the bell for disabled people, then ring it and wait
for this little guy to let me in. I didn't say anything in the meeting I had gone
to. I was just too full of anger at what had just happened to me.”
The principle at stake is equal independent access. Everybody’s right to
come and go on equal terms with everybody else. In 1993, two decades
ago, the Arts Council published a report titled ‘In Through the Front Door:
Disabled People and the Visual Arts: Examples of Good Practice’. They
could not really do that now, could they?
And to anyone who says, ‘Well, she got in, what's the problem?’ I say,
‘What's wrong with the back of the bus? You get where you're going to,
don't you?’
Or let me quote from ‘Being Mortal’, the new book by Atul Gawande, who is
giving this year's Reith lectures. Discussing care of elderly people, he cites
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the philosopher Ronald Dworkin on the subject of autonomy:
‘Whatever the limits and travails we face, we want to retain the
autonomy - the freedom - to be the authors of our lives. This is
the very marrow of being human.’
So, when you make one section of a building‘s users ring a bell and wait
when other people do not have to, you don't just turn them into
second-class citizens, you rob them of a little bit of their humanity. I quoted
1950s boarding houses; my colleague made a different comparison. She
said, ‘It’s like having a big sign at the front door saying “we don't take
diversity seriously”’.
I cannot imagine that the Arts Council would have found it acceptable to
rent a building with a fundamentalist Christian landlord who demanded they
employ no gay people, or owned by Saudis who insisted any woman
working there must be accompanied by a male relative. And yet they think
it is acceptable to make wheelchair users use a separate entrance. We
used to make those sorts of comparisons a lot to get people to understand
why access mattered; I had not expected it to be still doing it in 2014.
If Sir Peter [Bazalgette] were here today I would say to him: I can
remember a time when this would not have happened. If Paddy Masefield
were alive and still advising the Arts Council, if Wendy Harpe was still
working there as Disability Officer, you would have been told at a planning
stage what I am telling you now. So I ask you, what has gone wrong in
your organisation that such voices are no longer being heard?
My more general point is that we have fought a lot of battles, but we have
to protect what we have won. The rights that we have gained are easily
eroded.
And, now, I would like to come back to disability culture. The idea of
disability culture had been introduced by Vic Finkelstein, a leading member
of the UPIAS, as a speech ‘Disabled People and our Culture Development’
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at the founding meeting of the London Disability Arts Forum in 1986. He
argued that a disability culture
‘… must arise out of the spontaneous desire of disabled people to
share our feelings, experience and desires, our lives and hates,
our pleasures as well as our sufferings, amongst ourselves. In
other words, we have to make the choice that we want to identify
ourselves as disabled people. We have to be willing to express
our separate identity. There can be no disability culture without
this freely made choice.’
Later that year he made a further speech, ‘Supporting the Cultural
Development of Disabled People Through the Arts’, to the National SHAPE
Network Conference. The SHAPE Network was a loose confederation of
charitable arts organisations for disabled people, all of which were led by
non-disabled people. It was starting at this point to go through a period of
upheaval as disabled people demanded that their local organisations
become disabled led: several of the first Disability Arts Forums had their
origin in this process. It is worth noting that our presence here today has
its origins in this upheaval, as Arts Integrated Merseyside broke away from
the SHAPE Network in 1986 to become the North West Disability Arts
Forum, which subsequently became DaDa - Disability and Deaf Arts - and
then DaDaFest.
Finkelstein argued that disabled people were an oppressed group, and that
all projects aiming to serve the needs of disabled people must be
accountable to disabled people as a group. He also specified that,
"We need to separate questions concerned with access to the arts
from questions concerned with the development and expression
of a disability identity through the arts".
To Vic Finkelstein that was essentially a collective identity:
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“Art forms which successfully translate the essence of disability
into accessible images reflect the collective, or social, experience
of disabled people. This is precisely what all good art is about i.e. being reflective and in tune with a collective social
experience.”
I disagree with Vic there. I have known people in the disability arts
movement who have expressed the belief that disability art is all about the
social model, as though we should be creating a kind of disability socialist
realism, massive murals of Stakhanovite wheelchair users. They were not
artists.
Personally, I support to the hilt artists’ right to be out of tune, dancing to
their own music. One thing that has repeatedly enriched disability arts has
been individual artists bringing their own experience, their own feelings, to
the public arena. It is expressed through their own distinctive arts practice,
whether that be Aidan Shingler making his very sophisticated sculpture
about schizophrenia, Liz Crow taking to her bed in an art gallery, Mat
Fraser creating ‘Thalidomide: the Musical’, or Kaite O'Reilly presenting her
own take on Frida Kahlo in ‘The Nine Fridas’.
Indeed, it has been one of the strengths of disability arts that, unlike
UPIAS, which defined its tasks very rigorously, it has always had fuzzy
edges, it has always been open to people who said, ‘Me too, I belong here.’
Thus, when the National Disability Arts Forum ran ‘Shelf Life’ - a writing
project for people with limited life expectancy - no-one involved had
foreseen that a key group of participants would be people who experienced
voices in their heads telling them to kill themselves.
So I would not really have fitted into UPIAS; I was part of other political
organisations at that time, the Liberation Network of People with
Disabilities. UPIAS was an essentially Leninist organisation which sought
to develop a single set of principles, a single analysis.
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Former members of UPIAS, including Finkelstein, had an important impact
on the organisational structures of Disability Arts. The Liberation Network
was a more libertarian organisation, and the artwork looked at ideas of
feminism and the gay rights movement to develop a personal politics of
disability. And it had much influence on the content of disability arts, partly
because many Network members were working artists, including figures
such as Nancy Willis, Keith Armstrong and Mary Duffy.
Two key concepts come from the Liberation Network: the first was that we
have not one identity as disabled people, but a multiplicity of individual
identities, dependent on our impairment and such issues as whether we
have been to special school. The second is the importance of personal
experience. Like the women’s movement, the Network felt the personal
was political: we found that listening to the personal experience of other
disabled people was an intrinsically politicising experience, and that has
transferred into the ideas of the Disability Arts movement.
Disability arts has been defined as “art that is informed by personal
experience of disability”. Sometimes that interplay is a subtle one. But
often that experience is represented with great strength and power, and the
experiences it reveals raises all sorts of Human Rights issues.
To take a couple of examples from interviews for my transcription poetry
work, I am thinking of Nancy Willis, who is roughly my age, who was told at
school she would not live long into adult life, had an abortion because of
that misinformation, and while on the operating table was pushed into a
previously unplanned hysterectomy. I am thinking of Jennifer Taylor's
feelings of having her children adopted because she was learning disabled.
We have plenty to talk about. And after thirty years of development we
have the talent and skills to make important work, because we did manage
to get that training, we did manage to lie our way into art schools by saying,
‘Oh, yes I can manage here, the wheelchair here and stairs here, no
problem’, or by setting up our own training programmes.
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Graeae is a training organisation as well. Just because training was not
available anywhere else, do not believe that Disability Arts is over and done
with; it continues to develop. For example, a few years ago, I was asking
the question, ‘How do we move beyond autobiography?’ And now we are
starting to see a wave of work in which disabled artists talk as disabled
people about other people: disabled voices talking with understanding and
sympathy about other people's disability. I am thinking about ‘Let Me Stay’,
Julie McNamara's play about her mother's dementia, and ‘Knitting Time’,
Colin Hambrook’s poems about his mother's descent into psychosis, and a
selection of performances being performed here tonight that might also
include my own work with transcription poetry.
I thought I could not finish, particularly in this Human Rights context,
without a word of warning. I spoke earlier about rights being eroded. A
wicked government is currently carrying out the worst assault on benefits in
living memory. The abolition of the Independent Living Fund means major
artists such as Katherine Araniello are faced with losing their
independence, and cuts in Access to Work are causing widespread
problems in disability arts.
Jo Verrent of Unlimited stated recently in the Guardian:
"Access to Work issues are affecting a huge number of our artists
who are getting simple, reasonable, essential support declined on
a weekly basis. We are having to pick up the pieces which means
money that should go to artists is having to go on access. Quality
will suffer, the ability of work to tour will suffer, the cultural shift we
have all worked so hard for will suffer."
Once again we have a fight on our hands.
Jane Cordell: Thank you for your insights and soberness; it's a reminder
for me to remember our heritage and where we are in the situations now
and where we have made progress.
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I am sorry, I have very disappointing news for you. If you look at your
speakers' programme, on page two you will see a picture of who should be
here: Rachel Kachaje, but sadly she was unable to get a visa to enter the
country. She sent us a copy of her speech. I am not from the African
south - sorry about that - but I will re-do a version of her speech.
Just a reminder to what is mentioned here: Rachel is a UN representative
of African women. So these are Rachel's words...
Rachel Kachaje: Disability limits access to education and employment,
and leads to economic and social exclusion. Poor people with disabilities,
mostly in the South, are caught in a vicious circle of poverty and disability,
each being both a cause and a consequence of the other.
One area where people with disabilities have significantly lagged behind is
the arts, even though we don't have reliable data at present, as not much
research has been conducted in this area. Each person with a disability
must have the opportunity to participate as fully as possible in expressing
their opinions, views and perspectives about their daily lives, and all the
other issues that affect society through arts.
There are four themes in the talk I would like to mention: the first is
community participation. Second: guidelines and standards. Third: the
development of what are called special measures. Fourthly: disability
copyright.
The first one is Community Participation: Historically, communities have
used art to advocate for or against social issues affecting their daily lives.
There is no denying that artists have played a very important role in
influencing political opinion, driving socio-economic agenda. In recognition
of the power of art, many Disabled Peoples Organisations today are using
artists to drive the disability agenda within communities. For example, the
International Day of People with Disabilities, the Federation of Disability
Organisations in Malawi (FEMODA) has included art to raise awareness
about issues of inclusion in communities.
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In terms of emphasising the impact of art, what has clearly been lacking is
the fact that people with disabilities have not been involved. It's not
because there are fewer artists with disabilities out there; it's rather
because there have not been many opportunities for them to enhance their
participation. That is why governments need to put in place appropriate
and flexible opportunities to give each individual the chance to fully
participate. Each person with a disability must be supported and
encouraged to participate and be involved in the community through arts.
The second topic is Guidelines and Standards: People with disabilities face
numerous barriers in realising the equal opportunities: environmental and
access barriers, legal and institutional barriers, and attitudinal barriers
which cause social exclusion. People with disabilities have the right to be
included in all aspects of life. In order to fight for their rights to inclusion,
they need to live in an environment in which they are empowered to
express themselves artistically.
So, there is the need to develop guidelines and standards that not only
outline the basics of how people with disabilities participate, but also
promote and drive approaches to improving the participation of people with
disabilities in celebrating arts. These guidelines also help to promote the
quality of artistic expression and using the arts as a way to examine
disability in relation to society, developing disability culture.
The Guidelines and Standards for Persons with Disabilities in Arts would
build on the International standards for upholding the rights of people with
disabilities, which were set out in the UN Standard Rules on the
Equalisation of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, as well as
principles of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Third topic: developing special measures: objective 5 of the Continental
Plan of Action for the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities (1999 to
2009) acknowledged the need to promote special measures for children,
young people, women and elderly people with disabilities. To achieve this
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the plan went on to stipulate that Member States should develop and
implement special measures to facilitate full and equal participation of
young people with disabilities in training, employment, arts, sports, culture,
science, and technology.
Historically disability is known to be something that results from the
limitations imposed on individuals from external factors, but the only way
we can begin to challenge this and prove that disability is not an inability is
to design special programmes and to enhance the opportunities for people
with disabilities.
A rights-based approach to disability and development implies a right to
self-representation, and these rights are best promoted by disabled people
themselves.
Topic four is on Copyright: currently, many laws, policies and guidelines
related to copyright and artists’ work do not cover disability or take into
account the specific interests of persons with disabilities, which makes
artists with disabilities more vulnerable and it makes it more difficult for
people to enjoy their work fully.
Almost invariably, people with a print disability need print material
reproduced in a format they can access, such as large print copies or
Braille, or maybe a sound recording of somebody reading the text, or a
digital file that can be used by adaptive software. Making copies is one of
the exclusive rights of copyright owners. However, in many countries there
are no exceptions to copyright infringements which have been introduced
to allow copies to be made in accessible formats for people with a print
disability.
We need to put in place Copyright Laws, Policies, and Guidelines that
explain, for example, how and when copying for people with a print
disability is done, and how to meet those requirements. In order to help
publishers and other copyright owners develop material in accessible
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formats they need to be provided with information on how people with a
print disability use that printed material.
I will thank Ruth Gould and all the other organisers at DaDaFest for me,
Rachel, to speak on this important topic as it is an area that needs to be
promoted in all our lobbying and advocacy work.
It is an eye opener for me as an activist to start promoting arts and culture
in my advocacy work. I, Rachel, look forward to interaction with DaDaFest
in the future. My apologies for not presenting this in person, as immigration
systems let us down. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: I shall I try and mail a couple of people to see what
happened with the visa.
It's my pleasure to hand over to Leroy Moore from the USA - here he
comes.
Leroy Moore: How is everybody doing? I would like to start with a poem
song:
Politricks is in a mix, Politricks in the mix.
In 202 Olympics came and went
The media sold us one side
Corporations oppressive hand on the other side
A different message was sent
Even Hip-Hop got involved in the Paralympics
While London police punched and kicked
The Prime Minister says “that we are all in this together!”
Yeah, sure, many have to wonder
While he collects a paycheck
And with the other hand cutting disability benefits
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Going back to the days of Margaret Thatcher
Disabled people living outside cause our oppressor
The Conservative Party’s attacks
While the wealthy pats them on the back
Trying to bring back the ugly laws
Krip-Hop rapping about their flaws
Don't be fooled by Politricks, in the mix.
I would like to say thank you DaDaFest for having me here. Last night I
edited my speech so I hope it comes out right.
I am honoured to be here at DaDaFest’s International Congress on
Disability Culture and Human Rights. And also - being taught by a good
friend of mine, Patty Berne, about intersectionality in disability justice, plus
being a Black disabled straight man - I must begin by saying that disability
culture can't be talked about without picking apart what it, Disability Culture,
means when it comes from people with intersectional identities?
However I know my time is limited so I will get to my subject.
Krip-Hop Nation tag line is “Krip-Hop is more than music”. Krip-Hop Nation
was started 6 years ago and came from my experiences as a young black
disabled boy growing up in the late 70s and 80s in the white part of
Connecticut in the USA.
Always being the only Black disabled youth in almost anything I did: from
special education to being main-streamed, from playing with white nondisabled kids in my neighbourhood and to my early days in activism with
my parents, to my many years of volunteering in disability non-profits to
college classes. In all these experiences I always had the same question:
where were the other people who looked like me as a Black disabled young
man?
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With this continuous question of race and disability, along with my love of
poetry and music, I started to question the arena of music and performance
around the representation of musicians with disabilities, especially disabled
musicians of colour. Krip-Hop also says that people with disabilities have
history, art, culture. So, we use Hip-Hop/music/poetry but in a disability
justice way, and introduce our politics which we frame as the following:
“Are struggles and accomplishments, feelings and wants that our
community goes through, have reached or desires using Hip-Hop
/ the Spoken Word to express and to teach our history, culture,
activism, wants, needs and oppression as artists, poets, and
musicians with disabilities.
It is a building process from identity politics to self-empowerment to
seeing ourselves politically, culturally and intersectional, and speaking
and singing and rapping, and writing with an activist lens on what
affects us in our community, and in institutions and as allies, etc. We
are also recognising our ancestors and founders from the Blues to HipHop, knowing that we are building on what they built, and, at the same
time, we challenge parts of this foundation with voices, art,
contributions of those who have been left out or oppressed. We are
learning from Disability Justice (DJ), and we continue to incorporate DJ
in Krip-Hop Nation from what we put out in our music to the everyday
workings of the nation.
As an international network, we realise that many times we will not
agree and there will be conflicting politics, views and goals. However,
with that, we try to stay open for the growth of not only ourselves, but
for the network and our community. Although we believe and uphold
Disability Justice in our mission, we also are aware that we live under
capitalism and we all need to eat and survive. So we also see KripHop Nation as a venue where artists can display art, and receive some
monetary value or investment, travel opportunities in their career as
musicians, activists, journalists, authors and organisers.”
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We can't express our rights through the arts if we are too scared of obeying
laws to reveal our identity/culture. And this is why in our workshops we talk
about the process of internalised ableism and layout a path towards
disability experience expression, and not only individually but collectively,
historically through a political voice artistically, mixing it with other cultures.
Our events, music and products reflect the above. For example, Krip-Hop
Nation has put out the first ever CD of poetry and songs dealing with police
brutality against our community in 2012. And 2009 we held the first
Diversifying Hip Hop: Krip-Hop and Homo-Hop, bringing together Hip-Hop
artists who are disabled and artists who are queer, gay and lesbian. Now,
we are concentrating on a Krip-Hop Nation Africa Tour to network and
create. We have made deep connections to Hip-Hop artists with disabilities
in Africa.
We think that Krip-Hop, like Hip Hop, is the news of artists/activists with
disabilities. We have interviewed Hip Hop artists with disabilities for radio
and written media: Krip-Hop Nation has always used journalism to get our
message out there. We have written articles and been in newspapers in
South Africa, Italy, here in the UK, and, of course, the US. We have wrote
and spoken on police brutality, to budget cuts, and music on radio stations
and more. Last year we teamed up with Ronald, a journalist from Uganda,
to write about a single father raising two disabled daughters who were in
dire need for wheelchairs for them. The article that appeared in the San
Francisco Bayview newspaper, a black newspaper: led to a successful
online fund-raising campaign for the wheelchairs. Also that campaign led
to another campaign to pay for school tuition for his daughters.
Krip-Hop Nation is expressing justice through our music and organising and
journalism, but we is better than I. We have so much work to do with the
African Tour and so much more. Please help us express our justice.
Jane Cordell: I would like to welcome congress resident poet, Roger
Cliffe-Thompson, to come and read one of his poems to you.
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Roger Cliffe-Thompson: Good morning. Fantastic, isn't it? Already we
have had voices from three continents, absolutely fantastic. By the way, I
am okay with my copyright, but that was a really important point I thought:
for copyright for disabled people.
Allan said anger drives equality, Rachel said you have got to fight for your
rights, and Leroy uses poetry to push disability politics. And that is
absolutely new to me and brilliant.
My first point, by the way, I will come amongst you during the conference
and ask you for any quotes so I can try to get it altogether and get some
poems out for you. Leroy also said we celebrate our ancestors. Is that
right? And we have got an ancestor of the Disability Movement I want to
bring to your attention - and I am sure most of you heard of him - but it was
Edward Rushton. And I wrote this poem and I thought it would take us
back to the first step of the journey that we're on now:
The Old Dock, flapping sails, seagull cry,
smell of hemp and jute,
exciting times for a small boy bound to the sea at twelve.
At sixteen become one of Britain's hardy sons
fearlessly steering a damaged ship to safety from the Irish sea
it is the first indication of his inner call to action
responding to others in distress.
At seventeen he witnesses for the first time
a selfless act of love by his friend,
who drowns that he may live.
Does this drive his mutinous refusal to endure
the appalling conditions of slaves,
to feed them when no one else will,
even though he loses his sight in return,
(so young to be shrouded in nights black mantle),
yet, he is still bound to redressing man's inhumanity .
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Destitute and disabled, ignored by society,
Edward Rushton's determination to abolish oppression grows.
A bookseller, a poet, selling words of liberty,
protesting to heads of state and anyone who will listen,
"— he from peaceful plains
Where plenty dwells, and no curs'd white restrains,
Was dragg'd to slavery, torture, want, and toil."
And listen they did, with verbal and physical hostility.
Shot at for speaking out against all forms of injustice and cruelty;
shot at for speaking up for the right to speak freely;
shot at for speaking up against the pressgang Admiralty
and for those who would use violence against women.
Rushton somehow endured, grew stronger,
for his words turn to action as he makes friends with abolitionists
and helps them succeed in abolishing slavery.
He meets John Christie a blind musician, who motivates him to
open
the world's first school of music for the blind, so successfully,
that Lime St becomes crowded with blind musicians
using a tunnel Rushton built so they could cross to safety .
In 1814, ‘Unsung’, he goes quietly into the night.
No fitting epitaph, no public honour,
for the small boy who crossing the briny became scarred by the
sea,
which against all odd’s turned him into a giant of liberation.
And yet, and yet, though ‘Unsung’, Edward Rushton lives on.
His sons and daughters continue to fight intimidation, ridicule,
discrimination,
to 'stand up for the 96', to stand up against any form of
oppression,
for all discrimination is oppression.
22
The only thing that remains is public recognition for this
revolutionary,
who steadfastly refused to betray the ideals of his youth.
What would he think 200 years on?
There is still exploitation, poverty and discrimination,
but his school for the blind has spawned an International
Movement,
one which encourages equality and diversity and which celebrates
his extraordinary achievements today.
Jane Cordell: Thank you, Roger, for that burst of linguistic passion. I am
sure you enjoyed that, and I would like to welcome the next speaker from
the British Council, Carole McFadden. Welcome Carole.
Carole McFadden: I would like to explain a couple of things: one is who
we are - The British Council was established in 1936, and it existed to
create international opportunities for the people of the UK and other
countries, to build trust between them: and this is part of the cultural
relations remit. We are also the international organisation for educational
opportunities and cultural relations are actually through all our activities. At
the moment we have offices in 100 countries, and 220 cities, and our
programmes fall into three strands of activity: English Language, Arts,
Education and Society.
Our work in the arts - it might be good if I just explain, I am from the
Theatre and Dance department - and the global programmes reflect
innovation and the diverse nature of the UK's performing arts scene. My
work particularly is looking at contemporary dance, new writing, physical
and visual theatres, live art and street arts. And we do this through a range
of engagements and our team is looking at high quality work that we can
promote with partners in other countries through festivals and our own
programmes. But also we're looking for innovative speakers to talk on
platforms and conferences and also occasionally, when the work is very
expensive or too big to tour, we look at the artists to see if they can work in
23
a workshop environment and create a local version of the work. We also
fund delegations to come into the UK to key events: events like our own
Edinburgh showcase, the Unlimited festival, and other major events in the
UK.
So, I would just like to very quickly run through how we are supporting
disability arts internationally, and a copy of the presentation will be
available to everybody. It is another opportunity for us as an arts
organisation to present high quality work: and that is work that is really
interesting in the creative form, pushing the boundaries of what theatre and
dance practice can be. We're also very interested in work with the themes
and the ideas being explored, which lend themselves to debates around
cultural relations and this is part of our wrap around programmes. Also, I
mentioned the other strands of the activities, where we are working in
Active Citizens and Governance programmes and I am attempting - as are
my colleagues - to push UK arts into the centre of those programmes
because I believe that that can add value to conferences to see
inspirational work by live artists.
Also, the work in the disability arts sector allows us to explore interesting
themes and the status of disabled and deaf artists as part of the cultural
wrap-around. We work with local festivals and venues to address access
issues. I have been on quite a few reccies over the last couple of years,
and been horrified to see that in new state-of-the-art buildings, which have
just opened to the world, the access issues are very, very tokenistic. We're
also talking to these festivals about mentoring and volunteering schemes
for young people to be a part of that, and hopefully helping young people to
get involved in employment for arts and young people.
And I am delighted to say that we have an on-going partnership with
Unlimited, and we're offering our area of expertise which is support,
mentoring and international advice for UK artists. We have 30 years of
experience, we have a lot of experienced staff in the team: each of us has
a different geographical remit and so we are all available to every one of
you if you want to talk about touring to a specific part of the world.
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Every two years in Edinburgh we have a showcase of UK work. Usually
about 30 pieces of high quality work to which we invite promoters, festival
directors and programmers. The last one was in 2013, and we had just
under 300 international delegates who came to buy the work, but they also
come to identify artists to come to their country and create work, and again
people who can speak on panels and conferences. Our next showcase will
be August 2015 and we're already starting to work on that by encouraging
artists to apply to us, so that over the next few months we can get out and
see your work and then consider it for our shortlist, which will be
announced in February 2015.
We have been doing a lot of great work prompted by the Unlimited Festival
in 2012. One of my colleagues, Ben Evans based in Portugal, has applied
to the EU [Culture Programme] and received quite a bit of funding with a
group of countries to work as a consortium: there is Spain, Croatia, Greece,
I am sure there are a few I have missed out. And one of the great things to
come out of that is the Disability Arts International website. Now, I have put
the link up there because, please, click on it:
http://www.disabilityartsinternational.org/
We are encouraging UK artists to put their entries in and we're now
opening up internationally. I have come back from a holiday in Australia
and I happened to be there at the time of the Arts Activated Conference, so
we're encouraging Australia and other nationality artists to put their details
up there. We're working with local partners, local festivals, local arts
venues and organisations, and local governments to raise their awareness
of high quality art and the discussions being held in the UK at the moment.
We're doing this through our websites, our marketing tools, and funding
their attendance to events like this, the showcases and Unlimited: so we're
trying to get people travelling, meeting people, seeing work and networking.
I think it is important to put people together in the room and let the
conversations flow. Also, for us, I have to say that we have been doing a
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lot of work with disability artists over the last 20 years, but the Unlimited
programme in 2012 has been very exciting for us because it has allowed us
to plan long-term so that a lot of the projects now have a 2 to 3 year life
cycle. And of course, there is new work, new artists coming to the fore,
and I hope to meet lots of new people in the next two days.
So, please, let's have conversations. And I want to leave you very quickly
with just some quite nice visuals from some of the legacy work that we
have done over the last period of time.
This is the cover for the first arts and disability festival in Qatar, in
March 2013. It was a small-scale affair with four UK artists, but I am
delighted to say that that has sowed some seeds and we have got some
key people in the Government and corporate sponsors behind us now, and
we are working towards a major disability conference in Qatar in March
next year.
The next visual is a workshop scene: Jenny Sealey from Graeae Theatre
has been working with young people in Bangladesh who want to be
performers. And she is working with young people who are hopefully going
to create a company in the style - model - of Graeae and so that is very
exciting, and that is again over a 2 to 3 year trajectory.
Next slide is one taken of Rachel Gadsden, a visual artist. There was a
workshop in Bahrain, with disabled children at the gallery. This is a
particularly lovely picture and also I would say this particular project has led
to many other strands in Rachel's work, and I would urge you to see her
exhibition which is here at the Bluecoat because many of the pieces of
work have originated from this project.
And Brazil: Brazil is gearing up for the Olympics in 2016 in Rio, and we had
quite a big delegation to Unlimited in 2012: we had 52 international people,
last year we had 95 so the number's doubling. But they took a small
package of work from Unlimited and presented it as part of the Transform
Festival in the lead up to Rio. So, again, work by disabled artists will be a
26
major part of the Paralympic Games in Rio.
The last slide, showing a visual, is just of a debate which we held at
Unlimited at the Southbank this year and I’m delighted to say these were
five artists from five different countries, who have worked internationally
since 2012. And they were coming together to share their experiences:
some of it good and some of it not so good, but there are always learning
points to be made. Most of the negative things are actually about access
issues, so I know that has been mentioned already this morning.
I want to leave you with this very last slide. These are just some of the
legacy projects which are in development. The first one I have already
mentioned: conferences in Qatar in March, which we're working on now.
So secondly Rio 2016, again, that is something that we're going to be
presenting work in, and we have a portfolio of new projects coming on
board in Singapore, Burma, Mexico, Ireland and Senegal. And I am also
delighted to say that the number of applications from disability theatre and
dance practitioners for the showcase has increased enormously.
The very last word I want to say: last week we had the terrific news that
Stop Gap, who were performing in the Algiers International Contemporary
Dance Festival - that is a mainstream dance festival - took second prize so
I want to say I think that the opportunities for people to work internationally
are very exciting. I think that UK artists and international artists learn from
each other's practice, and it does help the British Council to continue its
work in the arts. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: Thank you. We will be taking a break shortly, but could I
ask Leroy and Allan to come up and form a panel? We now have a chance
to ask couple of questions.
And we also have the pleasure of having Julie Newman, from the UK
Disabled People’s Council, who will also join the panel.
Audience Member 1: Hiya. How are you guys over there? This is to the
27
guy who is talking about Krip-Hop, of Hip-Hop also. I love it, I do a bit of
rapping myself and I was very inspired about what you said, and I am very
also much against racism and prejudice.
Do you think that this kind of thing, what you’re doing and what I am doing,
will continue to spark people's imaginations and keep moving forward?
Leroy Moore: Yes, I think we want to rely on the base line for it but what
we do, we will do a lot more: you know, with triumph over racism and
ageism and ableism, and I have to do a lot more. And I believe that really
getting into people's faces and getting into corporations faces, and, you
know, advice for people in Brazil with the Olympics going, we will be critical
with it.
You know, I was here in the UK before the Paralympics: I told the
audience, be critical, don't just take the money and smile, but be critical.
So we need to be more critical. Inspiration is great but it only goes so far.
Audience Member 1: Cool. Thank you very much.
Audience Member 2 [Liz Porter]: It is Liz Porter here. Thank you very
much, some very provocative talks there; and it did not really surprise me
that the kind of theme is to keep fighting for what we want, for equality
rights and access. I don't know how to quite phrase this, but it is quite
interesting to think about access and what that means for participants or
performers, venues and producers.
I want to say firstly, thank you very much for providing audio description for
this conference: it is one of the first times that I have actually been at a
conference where audio description has been provided, it makes a
tremendous difference. When we experience good practice access
provision, whatever that might be - British Sign Language interpretation,
audio description, wheelchair ramp, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera - our
expectations are raised. But how do funders - how do we get the message
across to funders and the powers that be - that access costs when we're in
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this time of austerity cuts? How do we push this agenda to say, ‘Actually, it
costs, and many, many people producing art are just not yet understanding
that it costs’? How do we get that point out there? What would you
suggest we could do?
Jane Cordell: Thank you. Big question. Access. How do we push the
access agenda? Julie, do you want to start?
Julie Newman: That is an easy one, isn't it? That was sarcasm, sorry.
I think that the first thing we always have to do is to ensure that every grant
application - every time that we are looking for funding for any event, any
festival, any meeting - we always have access as part of the core funding.
The core costs have to be met.
As some of you know, I work with Ju Gosling at Together! 2012 CIC, the
not-for-profit organisation in East London, and we were really privileged to
have Krip-Hop Nation come down to our festival a couple of nights ago.
But one of the things that we always say is that our events are free; and we
get into a lot of bother with potential funders for that. And, again, the
justification for that is that people do not have money: if you are disabled
and you're on a limited budget you cannot go round spending £5 [for
events]. For some of us £5 is nothing, but for others of us it is our food, it is
our electricity, it is our communication, whatever.
We have to keep bashing on, not just for ourselves. I mean, at the moment
I am using a wheelchair, but that does not mean that I am not going to - in
every grant application that I put forward - insist that audio description is
part of it. Insist that British Sign Language interpretation is part of it. Insist
that captioning is part of any film festival that we take part in, and if there
are no captions on the films then at least we have British Sign Language
interpretation alongside those films.
We have to work alongside of each other; we're not isolated, we're part of
the same movement. We're part of the same body. If we do not support
29
each other, who is going to support us?
Jane Cordell: Maybe Carole and Leroy? Carole first.
Carole McFadden: I mean, it is a complicated and thorny issue in terms of
international touring because obviously in different cultures the level of
access provision is not always good. But we are trying to run workshops
by UK practitioners to talk about this. For the disability conference in
Qatar, you know, we hope to do a reccie to find out what is needed and
required. In terms of the artists touring internationally, in terms of the
covering costs for support workers, we have actually asked people to factor
that into the budget as well. Everything that we tour internationally we don't
fund 100%: we have to work with local partners so we stitch together the
costs from a variety of sources to spread the budget. But it is a big issue
for us. It does limit where we take people, you know, but slowly and surely
that we're trying to address it and raise this as an important issue.
Allan Sutherland: I think it is worth making the point that the best access the most innovative access - is likely to be found within disability arts
events, because although mainstream arts organisations have got a lot
more money to spend, we care a lot more about getting it right. I think we
also - if we talk about mainstream arts organisations - I think that we need
to say to them ‘pull your finger out’. I do get so sick of hearing people from
mainstream arts organisations saying, ‘Well, we would like to do good
access but we cannot afford it’ or ‘it is too difficult’.
I used to be chair of an organisation which had an annual budget of
£60,000, and all our events were fully accessible. So, if we - if London
Disability Arts Forum - could do it on that and DaDaFest can provide
access on the funding it gets, why can't major organisations with vastly
more amounts of money than that actually provide decent access? Just do
it. That is all. Don't come whining to us, ‘it is so difficult’. No it isn't; it just
takes commitment. It is just takes being bothered about it.
Which is… it is one of the ways that you get that is actually - as with the
30
point I made about the Arts Council, and why I devoted so much space to
bang on about that - is that you need to have disabled people in your
organisations at a senior level, because that is the way that it will happen.
If there is not anybody in your organisation representing disabled people who actually knows what it is all about - you’re going to do a bad job. We
need to tell people that again and again and again. Pull your finger out, get
disabled people involved, and spend what it takes. If you're an
organisation that is receiving funding from the Arts Council - from the
taxpayer - well, if you're taking disabled people's taxes and organising
events that disabled people cannot get into, you're stealing from us. Don't
do it!
Leroy Moore: And, you know, in the US with another project I am involved
in, ‘Sins Invalid’, we make relationships with small private funders. And
those relationships grow: we were a part of a group who were very vocal me in the paper and a few people with disabilities who are part of reading
the proposals at [name] Foundation - teach people the ways which
disability justice can have a framework, and I think that it is hard work to
build up those relationships. But once those relationships are built, in such
small foundations it changes the whole culture of the Foundation.
That was about four years ago, and now the Foundation knows about
disability justice, it knows about accessibility and always has a pot
accessible for us. Now [there is] not only accessibility for people [with]
autism and accessibility for people that have environmental illness. So it is
not only [about] physical accessibility, either.
So, my request is to make relationships with small funders and keep on
having that relationship, and hopefully that they will change the culture
institutionally.
Jane Cordell: I want to say that something like 15% of the UK's economy
is generated by the arts. Arts create money if it is given the opportunity; a
little thought from me. See you soon, thank you very much to our panel.
31
Session Two
The Capacity of the Arts to Make a Difference
Chair: Liz Carr
Speakers:
Dr Janet Price, ‘Disability & Sexuality’
Dr Laurence Clark, ‘Using Comedy to Change Minds’
Rachel Gadsden with Zahra Al Dhamin & Safiya Al Bahlani,
Saudi Arabia & UK Visual and Performance Artists
Jo Verrent, ‘Positive Initiatives UK’
Jane Cordell: Welcome back. A great actress - your name goes before
you - I want to share Liz Carr.
Liz Carr: Yes, thank you very much. Good afternoon, hello! I do feel like I
am at a gig, though, so it might take a while to get me away from the
microphone. But this is not my job today: my job this afternoon is to
introduce the next session.
So, it's a bit of a thrill really for me to introduce the next session, which is
about the Capacity of Arts to Make a Difference. I was thinking about this a
couple of days ago, and I thought: it's not a question, it's a statement, isn’t
it? We absolutely have no doubt, and I am thinking about particularly
things that Allan said this morning about the history. The history of
disability arts in the UK dates at least back to thirty odd years, and I feel
honoured to hear about that history. I think that is what this Congress is
about: it is about where have we come from, where we are now and where
we intend to be in the next ten, twenty, thirty years. And we will be here. I
am sure it will not be easy, with the way things are, but I am sure we'll
survive as much as we have in the last thirty years. So, that is what excites
me.
This is a full stop moment. Not a question mark. What is the capacity of
the arts to make a difference, and what all the speakers I am about to
32
introduce have in common; and that they have made, great, great
movements themselves to create change through art in terms of disability
art.
I would firstly like to just introduce - I would like you to give a very warm
introduction - to Dr Janet Price the Vice Chair of DaDaFest. She is an
academic and a social justice activist, but she will tell you all the many
things she is. So please welcome, Dr Janet Price.
Janet Price: Thank you. This might be a piece of queer Crip speech, but I
am afraid it's not going to be a performance piece because I am talking
about sexuality and the difference of art to make a difference in relation to
sexuality, so you can all breathe out now – or not, depending on your
perspective of this one.
Liz, who is chairing this session, said many years ago that for disabled
people their sexuality can be part of their deepest pain as well as their
greatest pleasures. Disability art is powerful and nowhere does it have
more power than when disabled people use it to address issues of their
own sexuality, to look at the different ways in which their disability identities
may relate to their sexual identities. Now, these two images were from
DaDaLesque: the first one is from DaDaLesque one year and the other
one, the bearded lady, was from Corpo Illicito.
But hidden behind the denial of sexuality has been a tide of violence,
sexual abuse, insult, and silencing that has been inflicted upon disabled
people by individuals and organisations, even by the state. For example
we are becoming increasingly aware of how, when the Nazis identified
disabled people for elimination - “useless eaters” as they called us, who
should not be allowed to breed - there was a very clear fear of our
sexuality, our potential for reproduction. A fear demonstrated very strongly
in Liz Crow’s work, ‘Resistance’: she showed both in the film, and in her
presence on the plinth in Trafalgar Square, just how powerful the impact on
that was upon us and how strong the fight back against it needs to be.
33
But disabled people have discovered there is a powerful way of challenging
the fear of silences, of speaking against all the abuse and healing the
scars. I think one of the ways we have to move is to actually get to know
our own bodies - our very widely different bodies - and our minds, and to
begin to acknowledge their inherent beauty: of welcoming the various ways
of being sexy as men and as women, that does not fit with the normative
straight white fixed images that we see before us.
Tanya Raabe has been a very powerful advocate for many of us because
she does such great nudes. She shows those bends and those creases
and those curves: the fluidity and the movement. I think seeing those wellknown disabled and not so well-known disabled people, as she draws
them, she demands that we see the beauty of them rather than shrinking
from them in fear. I love particularly her stack of moving images because
you can play with them like you would a child's toy: you turn them into
different sorts of figures that fit with how you think about sexuality. She
runs life classes, so she encourages people to take the courage to actually
look at their own bodies, to look at other bodies more closely, to actually
expose themselves and to see it not as exposure but as a welcoming of
what they have.
People have been talking about Rachel [Gadsden]'s work in the festival,
but I wanted to mention briefly some of the previous work she did which I
think fits very strongly with this work around sexuality. She went to South
Africa and worked with a group called the Banbanani Group, who were HIV
activists, and they had been doing body mapping: working against the
stigma of HIV / Aids. So we can see here, both in the facial images and
swirling curves of the work that Rachel has done, just how they had begun
to take that process of living with HIV: of marking the limits, of tracing the
contours and thinking about their bodies as they perceived them. Moving
them on and challenging the ideas of contagion and the fear that
accompanies it, and challenging the people around them to rethink their
ideas of HIV.
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I think the more that we see - what we are seeing from Rachel and
colleagues' images - is that people do not experience their bodies as a
singular fixed thing; we have not only one relationship with the world but
our relationship with the world is always changing. I think as Allan was
saying, we have to be aware of the ways in which our relationship shifts:
we can't just fit into one model. I think with sexuality this is particularly
important.
These are some images from two pieces of work: some by Marlene La
Roux, a South African woman, it is called ‘Look at Me’ and in this the
disabled women who were part of the work spent a day receiving beauty
treatment and hair care and support with dressing, or undressing, for them
to be photographed by one of South Africa’s best known photographers.
And the images that emerged showed strong confident women with
disabilities, many women of colour amongst them. They were images that
worked at the intersections of these women's identities: sexual beings as
disabled beings. And the process had clearly been one of revelation to the
women themselves, who never felt themselves to be beautiful, to be
women, to be women who really were understood as women. They were
always disabled and that somehow took away their femininity. One woman
even said, "I felt like a princess", and you could see it in her whole
demeanour: somehow this day had changed something for her.
It may seem that it is reaffirming normative notions of womanhood but, as I
said - if you have never had that - that is actually something incredibly
important. But I think there was something very important in the way that
DaDaFest hung these works.
[Indicting to images on slide] So we have got the works of Marlene La Roux
- and the other people around her down the passageway - and then across
in the room next door were the works by Sunaura Taylor, which were
showing the whole way that disabled people's bodies have been
medicalised and commodified, making us naked and then measuring us; so
different from Marlene’s laughing face. There is a wonderful one of her on
35
the cliffs with no clothes on and just a prosthesis, and it is fabulous, she is
really revelling in the woman that she is.
Film also plays a really important role in representation of sexuality and
disability. One of my favourite films is ‘Sixth Happiness’ from Firdaus
Kanga: now it is early, but it still has such strong messages for us. There
he is, this young man, who has been made completely abject by the
treatment from his father, and then this God-like lover moves in - [indicates
to image on slide] there they are sitting on the bed together - and makes
him feel sexy: they go dancing, they go swimming and hang out in the
showers together, and you can see this young man coming into a sense of
his own sexual being.
The piece from Mat and Lisa - the film they did together a few years ago Mat told a wonderful story about this: they climbed up the stairs and
climbed into bed together and he said they were being filmed kissing and
there were about twenty people in the room, as there are in filming studios it does not matter how naked you get, they still all hang around - and they
kissed and Mat said there was deathly silence, you could have heard a pin
drop. And when he looked around, he said, everybody was just standing
there [pulls facial expression of astonishment], and they said ‘Oh, we’ve
never seen two disabled people kissing before.’ Get over yourselves
people!
The wonderful Julie McNamara, and the stories she tells us - the stories we
need to hear - and there are so many I could touch on; ‘Pig Tales’ is a
classic from her about the young girl growing up who really wants to be a
young boy. But actually one of the most effecting for me is ‘The Knitting
Circle’: this group of ageing people who have lived their lives in an
institution, and their only way of coming together and talking is through
Julie's subversive, feminist, advocacy knitting circle group, and the stories
that they tell about the abuse, and the ill treatment, and the sexual violence
they have experienced. But she finds a way of sharing that with us that
opens it up, enables us to listen to it and then makes us recognise the
value of the stories that we can hear through these people: because there
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are so many people with mental health problems, with learning disabilities,
it is so easy to think they do not have a sexuality that is worth recognising.
All of us have sexuality and for all us it is vitally important to our sense of
self.
This is a piece that is very dear to my heart: it is from a group of friends that
I have worked with for over twenty years now in India. They primarily had
worked around sexual and gender rights, and I started banging on their
door and muttering at them, and they recognised that actually even
amongst them they had a lot of disabled people already in the movement,
but they weren't actually talking about disability rights and sexual rights
together. Being an organisation that never does things by half, they did
some very large pieces of research about violence against women particularly against marginalised women - and then they brought all these
women together in a big Conference in Nepal. At this Conference they had
disabled women, they had lesbians, they had single women, they had
trans-women, they had women with HIV, they had sex workers: they went
the full gamut, and they made art a central part of that Conference. There
was dance there, there was photography, there were art workshops: it was
recognised as being crucial to how people expressed themselves. So
watching disabled people dance - whether it was whirling wheelchairs
doing a Sufi Dance, or whether it was an artist from the USA doing the
brilliant piece of dance - disabled people, disabled women, were right at
that centre of that work.
They said it was interesting the conversations that people had: a disabled
woman sitting next to a sex worker, and the sex worker going, ‘Oh, I didn't
know disabled women got so sexy, and you really have sex?’ and the
disabled woman saying, ‘I have never sat next to a sex worker, that I know
of, before.’ And just breaking down those barriers, and they are now
working together and they recognise there are things they have in common.
I think that is one of the crucial lessons we have to take away from this: one
of our strengths is with the other movements that we work with, with the
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other groups, the other organisations and the people. We cannot stay a
silo; the world is too nasty, too against us to do that.
I just wanted to finish on the last slide celebrating Leroy [Moore]. He
mentioned ‘Sins Invalid’, the organisation that he also works with alongside
Krip-Hop, but it is the most wonderful organisation and they go out there,
disabled people of colour, queer people, gender-variant artists. Look at
their website, look at some of the work they do, because they bring
together individuals and communities to fight and create space and
recognition. I think this recognition - self-esteem - we need to start actually
claiming who we are, finding ways of expressing that, and working
together, using such wonderful diversity amongst us. There is clearly
disability diversity and I am bet there is a lot of sexual diversity amongst us;
it is one of our strengths and we need to work with it together.
Liz Carr: The very wonderful Dr Price. Thank you so, so much Janet.
So, I’m going to move on because the speakers can say what they have to
say so much better than me. We have looked at sexuality and that is
actually a great reminder of just even a fraction of the work that disabled
people have made over the last few years, all over the world, that touches
on that as a topic.
I next want to welcome Dr Laurence Clark, who of course uses something
very different, and something that Janet touched on as well, and that is
comedy: the use of comedy to bring about change and how he has done
that. I am sure you know him locally, and nationally as well, and I would like
to introduce Dr Laurence Clark.
Laurence Clark: Hi, so the title I was given is ‘Using Comedy to Change
Minds’; and if you will forgive me I am going to talk about me because it is
what I know best!
I first started doing stand up - it says here in 2002, but Ruth corrected me
last week and she is right - it was 2001 at DaDaFest. And at this time I
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started to get into Disability Rights and getting into the Movement, and I
would read a lot of really academic, inaccessible books about people like
Mike Oliver, Colin Barnes and Vic Finkelstein. And although they were
great, I found myself thinking it was a pity that they were so inaccessible to
many disabled people. So, at least to begin with, I saw stand-up as a way
of communicating some ideas around Disability Rights to a wider audience.
Now, I grew up in the eighties and early nineties when, for a period at least,
stand-up comedy became cool: it became like the new rock 'n' roll, but it
was rock 'n' roll for geeks. Before I became a comic, I worked at a
University doing a PhD in Computer Science, so I guess I fit that stereotype
quite well.
All through that time I was a wannabe a comedy writer, sending off
unsolicited scripts to places like the BBC but getting nowhere. Then the big
revelation for me was when I saw the comedian Dave Gorman, and what
blew me away was the fact that he used multimedia: he used slides and
images and video, he used sound clips and it made me realise that stand
up does not have to be one person talking on stage. So that really inspired
me to have a go myself, and I think I was a bit paranoid as well, that
nobody was going to listen to someone that speaks like me for a long
amount of time, so multimedia enabled me to break that up.
So the first stand-up I ever did, at an event organised by DaDaFest, was
about two subjects that are like - kind of - obsessions that I keep returning
to: charity and Jimmy Saville.
Comedy has always thrived on breaking taboos, so charity - and criticising
charity - has been quite a big source of humour of mine over the years.
And before the scandal emerged about Jimmy Saville, for years I used to
do corporate events where, at the end - this sounds so wrong - but for
years, my big finale was I would get the Chief Executive, whoever was in
charge, I would get them up on stage and dress them in a wig and a track
suit, and give them a cigar and make them present me with a Jim'll Fix It
badge!
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And everyone could be Jimmy Saville: I had female Jimmy Savilles, I had
black Jimmy Savilles, I had gay and lesbian Jimmy Savilles, I even had
little kids... but with the benefits of hindsight, it does all seem quite wrong
now.
But breaking taboos still very much works. The other week I was at the
Stand Comedy Club in Newcastle for the weekend, and I was a bit stuck for
what to do because I could not do all the multi-media stuff, and I just
started by pulling out my Jim'll Fix It badge and that was it, we were away
again!
I’m never going to grow out of it really.
So, being a wheelchair user, comedy clubs are a bit of an issue because
they tend to be in places like cellars and attics and even if you can get in
there, often you get in but you can't actually get on the stage. I was telling
Liz the other day: about a year ago I did a club in London, I was particularly
nervous because it was being filmed for ‘Despatches’ on Channel 4, and it
was a makeshift stage and what I didn't realise was that it was not fixed in
any way. And someone tipped me back to get the front wheels on, and
then pushed me to get the back wheels up, and as they pushed me and I
went forward the whole staged moved across the floor into the audience.
It was the most undignified way of getting on to stage you have ever seen,
and when I finally made it onto the stage I had lost the audience, even
before I had started - even before I had said a word - the fact that they had
seen me struggle in that way; I lost their confidence even before beginning.
So, quite early on I focused on things other than comedy clubs. Edinburgh
Fringe, at least to start with, was a way of finding an accessible venue that
at least you were with other comics, and there in the mainstream. My first
show at Edinburgh was called ‘The All-Star Charity Show’ and it sent up
telethons like Children in Need by presenting a prank appeal I called ‘Stars
in Need’ on behalf of the celebrities like Esther Rantzen, etc. I did alright,
40
so the next year I went back with a show that I called ‘The Jim Davidson
Guide to Equality’.
At the time, Jim Davidson had cancelled a show because of wheelchair
users in the audience, so I did a show where I vowed to cancel if Jim
Davidson turned up in my audience. We made a big thing of searching the
audience at the start: picking on people with ginger hair and that sort of
thing!
At first in Edinburgh I was part of a smaller disability arts festival called
Degenerate that happened the same time as the Fringe. Although this
helped to minimise the costs and risks involved, it did feel like a bit of a
ghetto because it was quite far out, in a way, geographically from all the
other venues. But that helped and the good reviews I got from that helped
me get into more mainstream venues when I went back.
Now, over the years, I think I have changed quite a bit but when I started
out it was very much using comedy to educate. But I guess more and
more - as I got into it - I got more interested in the art form, and my
motivation more and more became just to make people laugh; which isn’t a
bad thing. Because mostly my motivation for buying a ticket to a comedy
show is primarily to be entertained, and people didn't buy tickets on the
whole to be educated although that can be a useful bi-product and still
needs to be there.
So, in the end I did a series of shows which mixed stand up with hidden
camera filming, and the most successful of these was called ‘Spastic
Fantastic’. Which was a great title for Edinburgh, but then I couldn’t bloody
tour it, could I? Because nowhere would take a show with that title on.
But then DaDaFest did. The whole show is about various attempts to
reclaim that word “spastic” as someone with cerebral palsy, so again
breaking taboos again proved a rich ground for comedy.
Traditionally, disabled comics have quite rightly tended to focus on the
41
various bizarre and sometimes discriminatory ways in which people react to
us. However, there are draw backs to doing this, as I mentioned, with a
mainstream audience. For one you're preaching to the potential abusers
by asking them to laugh at things that they may well have said and done
themselves in similar situations; and this can mean that disabled comics
have to work extra hard to create an atmosphere where the audience is, in
essence, laughing at themselves.
But also your on-stage persona can become restricted if all of your comedy
is just going one way: if it is just coming from you taking the piss out of
other people and situations. I have always preferred comics that are
equally self-depreciating and caustic about themselves as well as others.
However, persuading an audience that it’s okay to laugh at a disabled
bloke can be no mean feat, because in this age of political correctness
audiences need reassurance before laughing at a member of any minority
group. But I don't want people to laugh at my impairment, I want them to
laugh at me because of my material and that I get things wrong,
misunderstand things and sometimes behave like an arse.
So, in the most recent show that I have done, ‘Moments of Instant Regret’ it feels a lot more truthful. I wanted to do a show that was more honest
because the discrimination and peculiar treatment that I tend to receive is
only half the picture, and if I am completely honest I don't always handle
things myself in the best possible way either. It can be - you know, often
the treatment that we get as disabled people comes out of the best of
intentions, but maybe you're having a bad day or you’re just not in the
mood, and overreact. So, over the course of that show I relate various
stories where I am less than perfect, and I guess this is the way that my
comedy has developed over the years.
I have been involved with a comedian to write a radio sitcom pilot earlier
this year, and it is not going any further which is kind of devastating to be
honest. But one of the things that I kept coming up against was the way
sitcom is a misleading term: sitcoms are not about situations, they are
about dysfunction. And they kept saying my character was too boring, too
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plain because I was consciously avoiding all of the negative stereotypes
that we have had in representations over the years; but in doing that it kind
of made for a kind of blandness. This person has also tried sitcoms and
had them turned down, and they told her that her character was too happy
in it. And which again is kind of the same thing, in that if it is going to work
then the character has to have a flaw, has to have a dysfunction. I really
struggle to give the disabled character a dysfunction. I am going to have
another go, needless to say.
But, I guess over the years I have come to realise that my comedy material
can’t just be good PR for disabled people. After all, I am not some sort of
spokesperson for my kind because, let's face it, if a minority group were to
elect a spokesperson, the last person you will pick is someone that takes
the piss for a living. We have got a much broader representation of
disabled people now in the media, in the arts, and even more in comedy.
So maybe there is a bit more movement to be honest with representations
because truly equal representation maybe has to include those times
where we get it wrong and we behave like an arsehole, because we're only
human. Thanks.
Liz Carr: Well, I am going to say very little because we have got about 25
minutes before lunch and two great speakers. That was, of course,
Dr Laurence Clark. I would like to now introduce Rachel Gadsden, who is
joined by and has an amazing exhibition alongside the work of Zahra Al
Dhamin and Safiya Al Bahlani - apologies if that is not the correct
pronunciation - downstairs at the moment. So I encourage everyone to see
their exhibition, but first I encourage you to give them a warm welcome and
invite them to the stage to speak.
Rachel Gadsden: Whoever is doing my slides they can just be one after
the other at whatever pace you like, they are not going to be individually
audio described. The exhibition is all downstairs so you can go and see it,
it’s just give you a feel of what we're actually all about.
So, we have Zahra here and Safiya here [indicating to speakers in turn]. A
43
lot of you know my work and what I am interested in and - as you can
imagine, bringing two extraordinary collaborators from the Middle East - for
me it is much more important today that they speak to you rather than me
speaking.
First of all, hello everyone. “Salaamu alaykum” to my other Middle East
colleagues from the British Council who are here today. It is really huge for
me to be able to be at DaDaFest, - we have been talking about this
exhibition for an awful long time and hoping that we would be able to bring
the project here. It is called ‘Al Noor’ - which is “vision” in Arabic - ‘Fragile
Vision’. Just to give you a tiny bit of background about how it came about: I
grew up in the Middle East, so for me the Middle East heritage is part of my
culture. It is part of who I am. I had not actually been to the Middle East
for 30 years, which is incredibly shocking really. But for various reasons I
had not gone back to the Middle East, but I had this wonderful invitation
from British Council to exhibit as part of the Qatar UK Year of Culture.
British Council invited me to be one of the artists and I was lucky to have
really quite an extraordinary exhibition out in Qatar.
When I was there I had the opportunity to meet literally hundreds and
hundreds of young people, and it was during the exhibition that I began to
realise that despite having survived my childhood in the Middle East - I was
resuscitated many, many times, I have a very chronic lung condition that I
was born with - I realised that a lot of the young people that I was now
mixing with would never have the opportunities that I have been able to
have in my life, and to have an international artistic career and the
opportunities that I have had. And I found that incredibly depressing, and I
also found what was even more depressing was it was not just about
having a career: it was about having a life. And many of the young people,
fully educated - there is a lot of money going into education in the Middle
East for disabled people, for all the young people in the Middle East - but
most of the young people, once they finished their education, they go back
into their homes and that is where they stay. No jobs, no future, nothing.
So I came back to the UK. After I did the exhibition I was on a high but also
44
on huge low, and I went to British Council and I went to Arts Council; and
despite obviously some of the negative things that we have had to talk
about today, I can re-assure everybody here that we have had massive
funding from Arts Council, British Council. Huge support from DaDaFest,
huge support from private organisations all over the Gulf, and also public
organisations, to be able to unfold the project which we're taking part in and
which we're hosting here as part of DaDaFest.
So, first of all I want to introduce you to my darling new sister friend Zahra.
Zahra is from Saudi Arabia and she is just going to say a little bit about how
she has felt being part of the ‘Al Noor’ project and what she feels about it.
Zahra is going to speak in Arabic, Safiya is going to translate, so you will
hear this wonderful language: the Arabic language. Anyway, over to you
Zahra.
Safiya Al Bahlani interprets into English:
Zahra Al Dhamin: So, my name is Zahra, I am from Saudi Arabia. I
came here escorted with my brother because as a Saudi woman you
cannot go anywhere without a male escort. I came to participate with
DaDaFest and my journey began from Saudi to Bahrain. So, for my
journey from Saudi to Bahrain I went there to gain more experiences
and to give what I can about what I have in my social background with
the other Arab countries. Thank you.
Rachel Gadsden: Thank you very much. Just to fill in a few gaps there,
Zahra is at University at the moment. She's studying media studies at
Riyadh University. She is also a sculptor: [she] makes really quite
extraordinary work. And Zahra has shared with us how extraordinary it is
that she has been able to really get to the place where she already is: a
student at the University, studying media. Her ambition is very specifically
to be the first blind woman who is represented in the media in Saudi, and
she's already started to do quite extraordinary interviews and everybody is
very excited that there is this woman - who is blind - who can do interviews
because, of course, in Saudi that is something new.
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Most people don't ever have the opportunity to even go outside and have
their voices heard. Most of you know that what under writes all of my work
is Human Rights issues - and it is just about people. It is about all of us
wanting to have our voices heard, and that is really why I go out and make
work about other people. Underlining all the work is obviously my own
story and how I live with really quite chronic medical conditions and
disabilities, but how I reach out to other people to try to find ways for them
to have the opportunity to have their voices heard. Because it is really
essential that every single one of is us is heard: doesn’t matter if we are
disabled, it doesn't matter if we have other issues going on in our lives, our
voices have to be heard.
So I am now going to hand you over to my other Arabian sister, Safiya, who
is going to tell you little bit about her story.
Safiya Al Bahlani: I am an Omani professional artist: I am also a
freelance graphic designer and a public speaker back home. When my
journey started back in Bahrain, I thought I was just going to be proving
myself over and over again of what artistic skills I can do. I have never
projected in the past of my feelings about being disabled, I was always
trying to prove to people that I can do realistic portraits, I can do anything you know - you want me to. So it was always about proving, so whatever I
felt inside, I kind of just pushed it away. I do write about it in my poetry, but
it is not anything I used to expose.
So, being in Bahrain and being collaborative with many different artists and
each one having a certain challenge, one: I felt I was not alone, because
back home we do have disabled people but they are always shut off. And
for me to constantly be an advocate and being a voice: it is great but I wish
- I am going through struggles and I don't know if I am the only one - so
being around all these people it was really a great mentor. And to have
been funded and sponsored by the British Council and getting us all the
way here has been a great journey.
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Rachel Gadsden: Brilliant. You will be able to see Safiya and Zahra's
work in the exhibition: there is also a film which really opens up the
dialogue. Something I want to express very clearly - as we have already
said today - these issues are not just Middle East issues, they are global
issues, and Allan was very clear about that. I am very shocked to have
heard about the new Arts Council building, I have not been there yet. But
for me it is really about making sure that each of us can just be what we
want to be: to be human, to express who we are through our creative
talent, through the different art practices that we have.
This project is constantly engaging with both audiences and participants,
both in UK and also in the Middle East. We're working with Middle East
communities: we had a residency that Zahra was able to attend with
Liverpool Arab Arts Festival here at the Bluecoat back - I think it was June time. Safiya did not make it because of Visa issues, so that is something
that is effecting our project all of the time, but in the end Safiya was able to
come to my studio in London and we actually spent three wonderful days
together creating artworks.
So, the aim of the whole of the ‘Al Noor’ project is to make sure that we're
working with young - we actually work with young boys and girls - and
teenagers. But because of the issues in the Middle East we find that once
we get to about 10 years of age the groups are obviously divided - very
clearly divided - so we then work with young teenage women and young
teenage men. But underpinning the work, the project is led by women.
Every single artistic senior or professional collaborator is a woman, and
that has been really important for me because I sort of felt it was necessary
that we did highlight issues of women; because we're dealing within these
communities - Muslim communities in UK and Muslim communities in the
Middle East - and it was the woman's voice that is often not heard.
So the aim of the project is to make sure that both Zahra and Safiya learn
from this experience, and then we will be able to go back and work with
their communities and, already, I know that Safiya is leading various
workshops in Oman and we hope to build a bigger project in Oman. I also
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know that we're working at the moment to make sure that this project goes
to Saudi Arabia this time next year. Of course, it is all dependent on
funding and we have to work very hard with British Council, with the great
support we have had from Arts Council, and our public and private funders
to see if that is going to be possible.
I am actually going to Palestine in the spring and we're going to be looking
at similar issues but almost at a sort of more country level, to make sure
that the displaced people and the suffering that the individuals have
experienced through the troubles in Palestine is also looked at. So we're
looking at disability in a very, very broad sense: looking at a country that is
actually being disabled and for me that is really important because my work
operates on both the single level, we are working in groups, we are working
in communities, and ultimately we're trying to change society.
Come and have a look at the ‘Al Noor: Fragile Vision’ project, we would
love to talk to you about it and if anybody wants to get involved or finds that
they have a voice that they would like to contribute, just get in touch with
me: I want to have a dialogue with you. Thank you.
Liz Carr: The capacity of the arts to create change: I think is more about
the capacity - the immense capacity - of the arts to create change. Maybe
the immense capacity of disability arts [to create change], as the three
speakers so far have shown. Amazing.
Finally, I would like to introduce Jo Verrent. Jo is the Senior Producer of
Unlimited - I am sure she will talk about the Unlimited programme - and
she's also an award-winning jam-maker. For both of those reasons, I think
that we should welcome her to the stage.
Jo Verrent: So, I am Jo, and I am senior producer for Unlimited - I know I
am the only thing between you and lunch, so, I am going to go as quickly
as I can bearing in mind access .
What is Unlimited? It is a UK-based commissions programme supporting
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disabled artists across all of the art-forms to create, make and tour work.
We say we're about “delivering the best work to the most diverse
audience”.
But that is not the only thing Unlimited is. The word “unlimited” is also used
by whole load of other organisations: so, it is the name of the Southbank
Centre’s festival, which mainly focuses on our work but actually about just
over 50 percent of the work is ours, and the rest is curated from other work
by disabled artists that happens to be around same time. It is also, as
Carole mentioned earlier, the name of a British Council programme in
Europe. And the concept of “Unlimited” has been written into Tokyo's
Olympic and Paralympic bid, so Unlimited - in some form - will feature as
part of the Tokyo Games in 2020.
I work on the commission programme element, so that is the bit that I am
going to talk about. I say it is “just” the commission's element but actually it
is more than that. For us Unlimited has a really clear mission. For us it is
not just about commissioning artist to make work, it is about harnessing the
strategic opportunities to challenge and change the implicit discrimination
that is inherent within the cultural infrastructure within the UK, and
obviously beyond. It’s not just about getting artists to make work: it is about
making a difference to the cultural sector, because the situation across the
UK and the world is discriminatory, we know that. All disabled people - let
alone artists - face barriers, ignorance and prejudice every single day. That
has to change somewhere, and we think the cultural sector is a really good
place to start that change; because of the transformational power of art,
and also because of the history - as Allan explained this morning - the
history that we build on means that we can do this now. So I am going to
tell you about the history of Unlimited specifically.
So Unlimited began linked to the UK’s Cultural Olympiad, which were the
cultural celebrations alongside the Olympic and Paralympic Games in
London in 2012. It was designed simply to be a one-off to lead up and be
part of that amazing year. And alongside the Paralympics it really took
disabled people from the margins and put them firmly in the spotlight:
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where we shone, where we absolutely eclipsed so much else that was out
there. It was seen as one of the jewels in the crown of the Cultural
Olympiad and that was across all the arts, across the whole of the UK; we
were seen to be some of the best. So, quite understandably that
transformation began within the cultural sector but it was also a
transformation for us as disabled artists ourselves: we really started to
believe in ourselves and in what we produce, and in the quality of what we
create. So following that, rather than everything just stopping, Arts Council
England said they wanted to continue the programme, they put it out to
tender and that is the programme that I am senior producer of today.
Unlimited is run by two organisations - Shape and Artsadmin - who have
come together and I sit in between them like some kind of referee. I will tell
you some of the work we are currently producing: we have got ‘Edmund the
Learned Pig’, I think every commission programme ought to have a kid’s
show in; we have got visual art from Lea Cummings; we have got ‘Let Me
Stay, which has already been mentioned today, by Julie McNamara; we
have got a sex comedy which I think has already been mentioned today,
‘Wendy Hoose’, which is a fantastic piece of work by Birds of Paradise very, very innovative in how it uses access; we have got a poet, Owen
Lowry, whose work just makes me cry. He is a poet’s poet, and he is
published by one of the foremost poetry publishers in the country. And
when he came to Unlimited, he really felt that as a poet - he uses a
ventilator - that nobody would ever have the patience to hear him speak, he
wouldn’t be able to do readings. He not only does readings but just does
them supremely - he is just astounding - and actually the pacing that he
has along with his words, because of his access requirements, just
enhances his words more. And that we find time and time again: we are
better because, not better despite.
Who else have we got? We have got Jess’s, ‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’.
My kid's favourite show of the Edinburgh Fringe this year, bar none! And
they all wear their t-shirts very proudly. We have ‘Dancer’, learning
disabled artists are as welcome with Unlimited as any other artists, a
fantastic piece by Ian Johnston in Scotland. And Jo Bannon's ‘Exposure’: a
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one-to-one performance looking at what it really means to see and be
seen. Jo is a really interesting case because she has worked in the live art
sector for a number of years: she has albino syndrome, she’s never hidden
it - couldn’t, it would be quite difficult - but she had never really described
herself as a disabled artist before, she felt it would narrow her potential.
And what she felt was that actually, now, the way things are shaping up in
the UK, it's a step - it is an enhancement now - rather than being seen as
something that is a limitation. I think that is a real marker on how far we
have come.
These are just a few of the pieces we are supporting. They are varied; they
are eclectic; they are diverse in all ways imaginable apart from one. The
thing that binds them together is that they are all high quality professional
arts practice. That doesn’t mean that we don’t think communities work isn’t
important, it doesn’t mean that we think other ways of producing work isn’t
important: we have to focus on something and what we focus on is high
quality professional arts practice. That is what we deliver.
So, I will tell you a little bit of the scale for what we do. So, as far as we
know, we are the largest commissioning programme for disabled artists in
the world, and we say that because we are waiting for Korea to come up
and trump us because there is a lot of money in Korea and they like to do
things big - so the challenge is on! We have funds from the Arts Council:
we’ve got £1.5 million. Creative Scotland: £400,000. Arts Council Wales:
£200,000. And the Spirit of 2012 Trust: half a million pounds. And we get
other funds from co-commissioning partners, through matched funding and
a few other sources. So we have got a large amount of cash, but we don’t
have a large amount of capacity. We want that money to go to artists and
to artwork, so we try to keep our overheads really, really low: we are not a
big team.
In our first funding round - we funded nine main Awards and seventeen
Research and Development Awards across all art forms. The great thing
for me was some of the artists who applied, and some of the artists who got
funding, were not artists we knew: it is not who you know anymore, it is
51
about the quality of your ideas and quality of the work that you can bring to
the table. We don't think it's simply about the art; we’ve got a trainee
producer role. Deadline tomorrow for applications for our second year, if
you know any disabled people who want to get into the producing game,
it's a fantastic opportunity to come and work in a paid position for a year
with us.
We cannot do what we do on our own. We have a range of different
partners and allies, and the idea is that by working with this extensive
group we can embed the way we work - and principles and practices that
are needed for the future - so that we can simply disappear and the work
goes on. It can become embodied in those organisations throughout that
cultural sector, and all of our partners and all of our allies sign up to four
key messages that we have, which are not [to Jess Thom] probably cats or
biscuits! [Shakes head] They are not our key messages!
We have:
 High quality extraordinary art by disabled artists.
 Embedding disabled artists within the cultural sector; so not just at
disability art events, but throughout main stream festivals and events
too.
 Attracting audiences to art by disabled artists.
 Transforming the perception of disability,
To make sure we deliver on those key messages it's absolutely about the
art: the art created by disabled artists is a part of that transformation.
Around that we had a lot of debates and discussion. That is me hosting the
sex discussion at Southbank in my sex dress; I am very proud of that
moment.
And we also have debates and discussions and after-show talks. This is an
after show talk after ‘Wendy Hoose’, which obviously got quite fruity in the
52
conversation by the looks on those faces! We focus on audiences too, and
growing and encouraging conversations around access.
It is also about the networking: nationally and internationally so this is a bit
of networking. Another networking opportunity with the Indian delegation
who were at Southbank in 2014, literally booking work. They almost had
their cheque book present at sessions, it was very exciting. That
networking is part of being here at the Congress here today, too.
So where are we now? We are currently open for our second round of
commissions, and these are chances for us to support work that has
already had a research and development phase or, simply, fresh ideas.
The deadline is 2nd February and in March we get to spend half a million
pounds on work, which is the most exciting position to be in - it really is culminating in a festival in 2016. There are rumours that Unlimited may
extend beyond 2016; nothing is concrete yet, we are hoping that 2018, may
be even 2020, is a possibility.
So what are we looking for? We are looking for:
 New work from established artists and companies based in England,
Scotland and Wales.
 We are looking for work across all art forms.
 You have to have a producing partner or a producer on board.
 You have to have high quality work,
 And work that is flexible and adaptable in terms of how it can be shown.
 It has to be disabled-led.
But we do not define what we mean by that: we expect you to tell us how
disabled people are leading the work that you create, because we don't
believe one size fits all. We think it's a very flexible - we can't tell artists
what to make work about. We can’t tell artists how to make work. You are
the experts: you tell us.
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Currently we also work with our co-commissioning partner, do you
remember in 2012 we had Sue Austin and the underwater wheelchair? We
have a co-commission with The Space at the moment to get Sue in the air:
she is turning the wheelchair into a para-motor thing. So it will be a great
big thing, and it's the most scary project: it is a delayed start because we
had to put Health and Safety first, we do not want to kill the artist!
Unlimited is also about the next generation. Unlimited is for established
artists, but what about opportunities for young emerging artists who are just
coming up? The Spirit of 2012 funds are helping us there too, and we are
being able to invest in some young artists who are just breaking through,
which is really, really exciting for us.
In 2012 there were international commissions, in 2014 there were not: we
do not currently have funds for international commissions, but we want to
and we are currently exploring how to get cash together to co-commission
between the UK and international artists. And when and if that money
comes through, I am saying "when" - let’s be hopeful - we are going to
have to move quite quickly. So we do need to start thinking about what
those things might look like; maybe they will involve some of the people in
this very room today. If they did, we truly would be Unlimited. Thank you.
Liz Carr: What about the jam, Jo?
Jo Verrent: It was hedgerow jam and I got the cup for Best Preserve in
Show. The next year a memo went round the WI [Women’s Institute] in my
village saying an incomer had won the jam competition and could the ladies
please ‘step up’, and I have never won it since!
Liz Carr: A new strand to Unlimited in the future, possibly: preserves and
jams.
Okay - we have sadly run out of time, so we don’t have time for a Q & A.
However, everybody who you have seen speak this morning is around:
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there [are] exhibitions - this afternoon some of the pieces of work from
Unlimited are going to be discussing and showing their work this afternoon.
Before I go, I would like to leave you in the very capable hands to sum-up
this morning with his wonderful words: our roving Congress poet - you saw
him earlier, it is Roger Cliffe-Thompson - would you come [up]?
Roger Cliffe-Thompson: It is really, really quick, and it is motivated by
Allan talking about the way the Government are decimating benefits and
also Leroy's poetics; it is just more verse I am afraid!
She's sleeping in the bath
I'm snoozing on the loo
‘cos Ian Duncan Smith's took our bedroom too.
He robbed all me money
He robbed all our bling
No wonder wife and I need counselling.
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Session Three
The Journey of Change: Impact Beyond the Arts
(Afternoon Plenary)
Chair: Jane Cordell
Speakers:
Laura Evans, ‘Empowerment & Culture in Cambodia’
Lisa Simpson, ‘The Simpson Board - Tool for Choreography’
Amanda Cachia, ‘The Curator’s View’
Colin Hambrook & Trish Wheatley, Closing Keynote
Jane Cordell: Hello. Welcome back.
There are a lot of new conversations going on and a lot of new ideas being
plotted. This [Congress] is two days, and we have a lot of exciting new
things happening; I look forward to seeing them. We have an action packed
[two days] of seeing what we do.
I welcome the first speaker - all the way from Cambodia where she lives Laura Evans from Epic Arts.
Laura Evans: I have been out of the country for two years, and we don't
have many technical things in Cambodia, so I will try my best to get this
right.
I am Laura and I work in Cambodia at Epic Arts. I have been there for the
past two years. My main role is advising and training the Cambodian staff,
and includes coming up with creative projects and developing and
managing the Inclusive Arts course and the Epic Encounters performance
team. Today I just want to talk a little bit about the work we do, and how
we are trying to use the arts to empower people and enable people with
and without disabilities - together - in the country using different art forms.
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Some of you may know Epic Arts. I am in a bit of a strange position: I only
came to it two years ago in Cambodia, so I don't know a lot about the work
that they used to do in the UK. But for now they have actually closed the
work that happens in the UK to focus on the work that is happening in
Cambodia, and in 2016 we plan to explore how we can make the links
between UK and Cambodia through different projects. The organisation
has been running for ten years and the aim is to spread the message that
every person counts.
We are based in Kampot, which is a small town in the south of Cambodia
on the coast. So for those of you who don't know where it is - because a
lot of people think they are not too sure where Cambodia is - we are just
between Thailand and Vietnam, and the people are called Khmis and they
speak Khmi or Khmer, so it depends how you say it.
Cambodia is a developing country and in the 1970s it was severely affected
by a genocide. The communist party called the Khmer Rouge - which
some of you may know of - came to power in 1975 and it is estimated that
they killed nearly three million people in just four years; so it was pretty
horrific time in the country’s history. And this quote gives you an idea of
what that regime was like,
“It was a dawn of an age where there would be no families, no
sentiment, no expressions of love or grief, no medicine, no
hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no
music, no song, no post, no money… only work and death.”
And talking to the people that I work with in Cambodia that is completely
true: that is what happened: everything was destroyed and it went back to
the year zero. So the effect on the people in the country and the
development of the country was huge, but particularly for people with
disabilities. Officially, in the country, the percentage of people with
disabilities is 15%, but that is what the government says; we don't actually
believe that, we think it is probably an awful lot higher. It is quite interesting
to hear the ladies from Saudi Arabia talking about how people are hidden
57
away in their homes: it is exactly the same there, so to get a true number is
very difficult. There is no government support for people with disabilities at
all and any support that there is, is provided by non-government
organisations or charities like ourselves. Many people with disabilities
experience extreme and economic hardship as they cannot access work,
and many are without homes themselves. Most rural buildings - as you can
see in the picture [indicating slide] - are built on stilts because of flooding,
and access to homes, etc. is very hard for anybody who is a wheelchair
user.
The government also has some very strange rules about disability, one of
which I think is the most shocking to people here: is that people with
disabilities are not allowed to be teachers in the country. They are deemed
as though it is completely impossible for them to do that. They are allowed
to work into other areas of the government but they are not allowed to work
in schools, which is very frustrating for a lot of our staff. On top of that
there are some religious implications in Cambodia. The national religion is
Buddhism and the teaching is that people with disabilities are people who
have done things wrong in the past: in a past life. And a lot of the time
people view them as having and being bad luck.
So it is quite a challenging place to be and even though some people are
not Buddhists themselves - or are not involved in religion in that way in the
country - it is kind of the mind-set of the country. And anybody who has a
learning difficulty, or any mental health issues, are often feared: they are
seen as being cursed or as demons, and there are quite a few stories of
people being locked up in the village or tied to trees because people just
don't understand and don't know what to do.
So, Epic Arts is trying to - very slowly! - make a bit of a difference using
[the] arts. What we are trying to do, really, is transform people's attitudes
and we get people thinking differently. We do this with three main
programmes: so the first one is our Inclusive Education Programme, the
second one is our Community Arts Programme, and the third is the Social
58
Enterprise Programme. So I am just going to explain a little bit about how
they work out where we are.
The Inclusive Education programme contains the Inclusive Arts Course,
which is a full-time two year arts training course based at our fully
accessible Epic Arts Centre in Kampot, and people from the deaf, disabled
and non-disabled communities come together and study together. So my
main role is just to timetable that and to train the teachers to deliver the
work as well. We also have a Special Education Project which offers
creative and educational programmes to children and young people with
learning disabilities. There are three classes that meet every single day,
from age five up to age thirty, and we provide learning of life skills through
arts based creative lessons.
The Inclusive Arts Course empowers the students to see what possibilities
there are for them, and the first main thing that we try and do is just show
what they can do and what they can access in their own country. Through
the course we provide skills training in the arts: so students can perform
and create artwork and we also give them teacher training as well, so that
they can deliver their own arts practices to other people. With this course
we find it is really, really beneficial combining people with and without
disabilities together; learning alongside each other. They are all eighteen just over eighteen - and we are finding that is making a real impact on
people's attitudes. and people are taking their friends home to meet their
families and there is a real kind of community between those students that
do have a disability and those that don’t linking together. So it is making
quite an impact in Kampot town itself.
Through the Special Education Project we provide access to basic
education for people with learning disabilities who would normally not be
able to access school. We also provide education to children who have
never been able to attend school; so they are often living on the streets or
they have moved from village to village, so they have never actually been
to school, so we give them basic education in that programme as well.
Many of the teachers that we employ have children themselves who have
59
disabilities. So we try and provide them with specialist training in how to
deliver creative base education that is accessible and that is flexible for
everybody, and this obviously gives them specialist training but it also gives
them help in how to support their own children and develop their own
children throughout their learning.
So with this programme, as well, we work very closely with the parents.
We try to discover what skills would be useful for that student to have at
home. The main problem we find with children in that programme is that
their parents don't value [them]: they see them as a bit of a waste of time,
for want of a better word. So we try and find those skills that will be helpful
in the home: so whether that is cleaning up, or cooking, or making a cup of
tea, or even feeding the chickens. So, it is as simple as that just to give
them some value.
Another programme that enables empowerment and the transformation of
attitudes in Cambodia is our Community Programme: so this is really about
getting out there and showing people what we are trying to do. The Art in
Schools programme aims to bring arts to the classroom in Cambodia. So
not only is there very little understanding of disability in the country, there is
not really an acceptance of art. They do accept traditional art but that is
they only way it can be: if anything strays out of those boundaries it is
deemed as very disrespectful. So, we are trying to challenge this idea by
providing after-school programmes that are taught by our disabled and
non-disabled students, and they go in and deliver after schools art, dance
and drama, and it is kind of teacher-training as well as working with the
students.
The Epic Showcase is a community event that we hold every three months
and we have nearly over four hundred people from the local community to
come and watch that. We also invite key decision makers in the local
community as well to come and see what we are doing. We do
performances with our staff and students from all areas of the programme.
And then the National Tour is about going wider than the local community.
Each year our performance team - who will be here tonight - travel around
60
the country for around a month and they visit schools, they do conferences,
now and again we get to have conversations with government bodies as
well, and they just make those connections and try and talk a bit more
widely about what we do.
Like I said, the main aim of our Community Programme is to get the
message that every person counts out to people in the village, and
community leaders and government ministers within the country. Once we
have empowered our students through the education programme, we
encourage them to then share their skills with a wider audience through
performances and also through workshops as well. Through this work in
the community we have seen people's attitudes really start to change
towards people with disabilities. People are seeing people with disabilities
now as important: they have a role, that they have a purpose - which we all
know here - everybody is very, very capable of being part of society and we
can all work on an equal level. In Cambodia it is just not understood, so we
are slowly, slowly moving towards that through the work that we do.
Through the Community Programme we also give our staff and students
the opportunity to share their personal stories. We have various different
translators who work to help them and to communicate, and we often find
that in the villages we visit there are people who may have a disability that
do not even know that there are other people like them: they have never
been out of their house and their families are embarrassed of them, and
they really do struggle to take part in society. So, for the first time they
meet our team and they see them performing or teaching, [it] is quite
transformational for those people and they will come out and speak to us
and say, "I never even knew that there was somebody else like me in this
country".
By enabling our staff and students to be able to teach and lead workshops
in the community we find they are often looked up to and become role
models, and they are actually - you know - quite cool. So people are very,
very happy to meet them once they get over that first, sort of, being a bit
scared or unsure. And they meet them and they are working and
61
interacting with them and having a lot of fun. It is a real shift in attitudes
straight away and this is definitely most effective when we go into schools
and we are working with the younger generation that are maybe not
effected by their parents’ attitudes as much, and we engage with them and
teach with them; they are starting to slowly think slightly differently about
how people with disabilities can fit into society in Cambodia.
The final programme at Epic that we use to empower people is our Social
Enterprise Programme. Epic Encounters - who are in the UK at the
moment - is the first inclusive contemporary performance company in
South East Asia, and they perform and deliver workshops to generate
income for the Education and Community programmes. And as Jo
[Verrent] was saying before about Unlimited: the real passion we have for
that group is that they are high quality and that they are professional artists.
Epic Arts cafe is an enterprise based in the town in Kampot, where all the
tourists like to come. It is a model for inclusive working within the
community and it serves food and drink to travellers, ex-pats and also
locals; and people with and without disabilities from the local community
run the cafe independently.
Epic Creations is a new venture: we just opened the shop two weeks ago,
and it is a result of all our arts programmes. We make a lot of handicrafts
in Cambodia and we didn't have a place to sell them, so they are now sold
in the shop and generate income and we also - that provides jobs - and we
also give a place for emerging artists to display their work in there as well.
And then the Epic Monsters are a new product - I have them down here
[picks up bag and pulls out stuffed toys one by one] - I will leave them out, I
won’t go through all their stories but this is Sok-a-lok, and these are a new
venture with Epic to use in schools; to get people talking about differences
and diversities. So they all have a special power, so I will leave them out
for you to meet later. This is Nee Nee, we also have Kuri - who has got
supersonic hearing - and we’ve got Chakatak as well here, and then the
last one is Boo. So these are our set of, kind of, mascots for Epic, and
62
what we are hoping next year is to develop them into short animations and
short story books, that we can then share in Cambodia with the teachers to
introduce a kind of idea of a teaching pack and to get their children talking
about what we do. That is the next thing we are working on and that,
hopefully, is going to generate some more money for our programmes.
So just a little bit about the team - the Epic Encounters team - they are
actually employed full time as artists now, which is fantastic for us and I
know probably unheard of in England! They work with us in the studio
every day and they deliver workshops to the younger students. The work
that they create is usually focused on important issues in Cambodia: such
as road safety, sexual health and the awareness of child abuse. So most
of the work they create is not solely focussed on disability issues but on
major social issues in the country. This means that we get invited to quite
a lot of public events - mainstream events - where they perform and we find
it quite amazing when our students get up on stage and there is a big
rumble in the crowd - ‘Oh, they are in a wheelchair’, and ‘How are they
going to dance?’ - and then they do and they have a wonderful time
jumping around, and everyone is usually quite taken aback with what they
do. What we do with the Epic Encounters team is that they charge a fee for
their performances and that means that this year, for the first time, they are
now fully self-sustainable; so their fee is paying for their own wages. So we
are hoping that that can continue for a long time.
And then these are a few pictures of the Epic Creations marketplace, and
you can see up in the top corner [indicating slide] is our monster workshop:
so that is situated at the back of the shop and we really wanted to do that
because we wanted people to see that people were making the stuff
themselves. Each week we have a Special Education Project come over
and they work on a small part of these monsters, and then the Inclusive
Education students come over and they do another part, and then we have
staff members who finish them off on a Friday. So it's a whole organisation
working together to make them, and that is open to the public for people to
come and see.
63
Then we have got other artists that showcase work as well. We have a
student here whose name is Choc, he is quite famous in Epic, and he does
lots of drawings of monsters - again, we have a strange obsession - and we
try and print his designs on T-shirts and sell those. Profits from that are
split equally between the Special Educational project and his family itself,
so he actually earns a wage from what he is doing.
This is the Epic Arts Café. This is actually the starting place for the Epic
Arts in Cambodia; it was just a small room at the top that was used to do a
few dance workshops. It is now a very big part of Kampot community and it
just got awarded a Top Choice Award from Trip Advisor this year as well.
So it is a high quality café, run completely by mostly deaf staff; we have a
few people with physical disabilities and some without disabilities as well.
What is exciting about this is, it is quite an interactive café: we were very
strong on the fact that everybody should be independent within that café,
they didn’t need help to serve people, so we have a tick sheet system with
pictures on - because most of our staff can't read - they hand that to
customers, people select what they want and they go into the kitchen and
cook it from there. So that is quite a nice experience for people to come
and engage with when they are on holiday, and we have a lot of
information about what Epic is on there as well. What is exciting for most
of the people that work there is they have never had a job before, and we
have a gentleman who is 45 and Epic Café was his first job: he is deaf and
he was told he would never be able to work. So for him to have a job is
pretty overwhelming for him.
So I just wanted to finish off really - before I wrote this presentation I was
asking the performers, what do I say? I don't know what to talk about?
And I said, what do you think it is that we do? And [one staff member] said
what we do is,
“We try to show people in Cambodia what we can do so that
people can learn and understand about the abilities of all people,
whether this is performing or making a piece of art or attending a
64
meeting, we need to get out there and show people what is
possible.”
Then recently our HR manager - who is a wheelchair user - she went to a
meeting in Phnom Penh, and she got into a taxi and she got herself there,
she went into the space and every single person in the room stared at her.
And when she went to the front to talk the first question she was asked
was, "How did you get here?” And she said, "Oh, I got a taxi", "But you are
in a wheelchair, you can't get a taxi." So, that is kind of what we are
dealing with; so in every aspect of what we do we have to prove and we
have to encourage people to just go and do it and show people.
But the effects of that are very, very exciting: this year the government
have made their first policy about disability, and we are starting to now get
behind that. And we are very excited they included one of our lines, which
is that, “Any person, regardless of disability, should have access to the
arts.” So we are very excited about where that is going to go in the future.
And so, I think, that is it. I also have a blog that I write about the inclusive
arts work that we do. It also has interviews with some of our staff and
students, so if you want to follow that you can, and if you want to find more
out about Epic Arts then please do go on our Facebook page. And also
please come and watch the performance tonight. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: Thank you Laura. That, for me, was a demonstration of how
enterprise and ingenuity can create something purely original, even in the
most challenging circumstances; we are all a little bit humbled to hear the
context in which you work in Cambodia. Thank you very much.
Now, we have talked about enterprise and ingenuity. Moving on to
innovation, I would like to invite Lisa Simpson to come and explain how she
works. Lisa, welcome.
Helen Gould [& Lisa Simpson]: Are we all right there? Are we okay?
Cool.
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Hi, I am Helen Gould and this is Lisa Simpson, of Lisa Simpson Board
Inclusive Dance. Lisa is a Liverpool based choreographer [and] dance
leader with Quadriplegia Cerebral Palsy and no verbal communication, who
choreographs using the Simpson Board and we are here to show you how.
So I will read Lisa's presentation on her behalf:
Lisa Simpson: The Simpson Board as a concept benefits a wide
range of people: professional dancers, dance students, community
groups. The steps which I take are a model in which anyone can
apply when learning or creating choreography. The key stages of
unique training opportunities are as follows:
 The first one is Space. We look at deciding where the
dancers are on the stage, or whichever space they are
using.
 Actions
 Travelling: the modes of travelling within that space.
 And Dynamics.
Helen Gould: So, we haven’t got very much time but Lisa would like to
give a very speedy practical demonstration on how the Simpson Board
works. So, for this we need a volunteer - don’t everyone jump up at once!
Let's have a volunteer. We are going to use this as a very mini stage down
here [indicating to side of speaking floor]. Who would like to jump up? Just
one person, fantastic! So, over there, give them a round of applause.
[Robin Sturgeoner comes onto the floor]
Helen Gould: So if we say that our stage area - for the means of
this - from here, this is a very mini space, to there [indicating area on floor].
Robin Sturgeoner: Do I need a leotard?
66
Helen Gould: [To Lisa] So, if I sit the other side, will that be easier? So,
the first thing we will do is look at where Robin is going to be on the mini
stage. So, I will ask Lisa, where…? So, stage right? Stage right.
So, Robin, if this is our stage, would you be able to move into the stage
right, and Lisa if you indicate when he is in the right place? [Lisa nods]
Further up stage? Further up stage. Yep? Okay.
[To Lisa] So where would you like Robin to move to? Down stage? Down
stage centre?
[Lisa indicates yes]
Helen Gould: So, over in this direction here? [Lisa nods]
Okay, [to Robin] so if you move diagonally to your left, and Lisa will say
when to stop.
[Lisa indicates for Robin to stop]
Perfect. Thank you, Robin.
[To Lisa] Where would you like him to go next? Back? Up stage left.
Okay, so over up that way. Further up stage? Okay.
So if you head backwards, Robin, turn yourself to the right, fantastic, and
then - oh, left - that is it! And then backwards.
[Lisa indicates that Robin has reached the correct place]
Fantastic, [to Lisa] is that okay? Do you want to go back to the beginning?
Can we go from the beginning? Can you find your starting position for us
Robin?
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[To Lisa] Is that okay? And Lisa will say when to go.
[Lisa indicates for Robin to begin moving through the sequence]
You're going to your next position for us Robin… and the next one.
[To Lisa] Little bit further up stage?
[To Robin] Up stage, up stage… up backwards, backwards, backwards!
[Lisa indicates Robin has reached the correct place]
Yes, perfect, well done! I think we need to give Robin a round of applause.
We haven’t finished yet, that was only step one. So now we are going to
look at how Robin is going to travel from his starting position, into the
second position, into the last position.
[To Lisa] So would you like the top line? Top line. Twisting? Leading.
Twisting. Rotate? Rotating. So it is rotating and turning.
So if you go into your starting position, Robin, and travelling into your
second position Lisa would like you to find a turning, rotating way of
moving. Yes, give it a go.
[Robin completes move, twisting and spinning across stage]
[To Lisa] Okay? I think that was - Lisa is happy with that one.
Perfect. Okay, [to Lisa] the next one: how are you going to get him the last
position? Top line? Top Line. Leading with? Leading with… which part of
the body? Leading with his left-hand?
So, Robin, if you can lead with your left-hand to your next position, which is
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up stage left.
Robin Sturgeoner: So, over there?
Helen Gould: Yup.
Robin Sturgeoner: Leading with my left hand?
Helen Gould: Leading with that hand.
[Robin moves up stage, spinning clockwise with left hand out-stretched]
Lisa would like you to try a different way of doing that.
Robin Sturgeoner: From there? [Indicating second position]
Helen Gould: Yes.
[Lisa indicates for Robin to start]
Go on, try a different way.
Robin Sturgeoner: Still leading with my left?
Helen Gould: Still leading with your left-hand.
[Robin moves across space, executing a gentler anti-clockwise spin while
extending his left hand in front of him and finally moving backwards into
position]
Lisa Simpson: [Nods] Yeah.
Helen Gould: Yes? Do you prefer version number one? Or version
number two?
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Robin Sturgeoner: I can't remember version number one!
Helen Gould: Version one? [Lisa nods] Version one.
[To Robin] You did like a turn, to begin with, and then you… so you sort of
twizzled around and then you went up stage.
[To Lisa] Do you want to go - shall we go from the top? [Lisa nods]
We are going to go from the very beginning, [to Robin] so if you go to
starting position and then, Lisa, if you let him know when to go.
[Lisa indicates for Robin to start]
[Robin completes moves from starting position to first position, through to
second, as previously described]
[Lisa cheers]
Okay, if you can go back to your starting position, Robin, we have got one
more stage.
So we are just going to look at the dynamics, now, in our third one. So
Lisa, would you like top line? Top line. In a gentle way? Okay.
[To Robin] So if you can do the first travelling - the rotating movement - in a
very gentle dynamic, that will be wonderful.
[Robin gently completes the first spinning movement]
Okay? [Lisa nods] Yeah, do you want that version? Yeah? Oh, no? No.
[To Robin] Can you try that in a different way? Still gentle. Challenging…
[Robin completes the movement again, with a tighter spin]
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[To Lisa] You like version number two? [Lisa nods] Version number two,
so we will stick with that one. And then the next move: do you want to go
into the next move? [Lisa nods] So, leading with your the left-hand. Top
line? Free? Freely.
[To Robin] So if you can do the leading with your left-hand: freely.
[Robin completes the second movement, spinning clockwise using his left
arm to extend motion]
[To Lisa] Another version? [Lisa nods] Can you try a different version?
Robin Sturgeoner: Just so you know, I have never done this before!
Helen Gould: You're doing a great job, a really great job!
[Robin completes second move, this time with left arm extended higher
above head]
[To Lisa] Version number one? [Lisa nods] Version number one, so we
like version number one. I think it was a little bit - a bit slower? [Lisa nods]
[To Robin] Slightly slower than the version you have just done. Shall we
try from the very beginning? Robin, if you can remember what you're
doing. Well done. So first one gently.
[Robin completes full sequence: slow, tight clockwise spin from middle left
of stage to front right, then clockwise spin towards back right of stage with
left arm extending the motion]
[Robin pretends to wipe brow]
[To Lisa] Are you happy with that? [Lisa nods]
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[To Robin] Well done, thank you! Let's give Robin an extra big round of
applause!
Okay, so the next bit of the presentation we are going to show you a video,
[to Lisa] is that of the translators? [Lisa nods] Lisa ran a translators
course: enabling [and] training people to read the board to then translate
for nonverbal communicators - or verbal communicators - but we worked
with a number of adults with learning disabilities on this course. So, we will
show you the video.
[To Lisa] So, we’ll move to the side?
[Video]
Luke: As a dancer, I think I preferred it to when someone is talking
directly to me, saying how they want it, because I tend to get confused.
Using the board and having a translator tell me specifically what they
want, instead of me just trying guess what they want, I found it more
easy. So I might use it in my own practice when I am teaching other
people.
[New scene within workshop]
I am definitely going to be taking this exercise back to class.
Helen Gould & Lisa Simpson: The Simpson Board is a
choreography tool, and it enables nonverbal communicators or people
with limited communication to choreograph. But it is also very useful
for people who want to choreograph whatever their ability.
Joe: It was totally new approach to creating work, and I found it quite
inspirational actually. I think aside from it being a vehicle to articulate I
could quite happily use a tool like that as an inspiration, because it is you pick a space on the stage and movement and then it - you know, it
uses cues to generate new work.
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Sam: It is nice to see the guys use it, and it will be nice to be used at
the performance group: seeing the guys actually choreography
something. It will be good.
Helen Gould & Lisa Simpson: This course aims to train the
translators who will work with choreographers, and potentially find
budding choreographers who have not yet had the opportunity to
develop their choreography skills.
Phil: The first thing we went through, really, was obviously the stages
first. You go on: where you would like your dancer to come on and off,
or the next step of where they will be. I sort of knew what she would
like - I can visualise what she visualised by how I know her, by using
different ways on the board as well.
Helen Gould & Lisa Simpson: The course is aimed at translators
who may already work in community settings with dancers, or people
that work in the arts, or also professional dancers who might want to
work in the community settings with nonverbal communicators or
people with limited verbal communication.
Emma: From last time, when we came to the training here, I found
that it posed quite a lot of questions in my own mind about how I
practice and how I lead sessions; and it did straightaway have an
impact. I did lead a performing arts group from a translator
perspective and the whole of the Christmas show that we made was
basically all of their work, and we had a raving review in the paper and
stuff, and even though it is developed for people that are nonverbal I
can see that it is obviously useful in other areas as well.
New Speaker (Unseen): Would you use it again, do you think?
Sarah: Yeah.
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Karen: I was here for the last session in October. Since then I took
the Board away; worked with an individual who I thought would benefit
greatly from this. We looked at how the board would suit him:
straightaway I noticed that he couldn't read and write, so I needed to
go back to the drawing board and create a board similar that is
something that he could understand. He could understand widgets, so
we used the widgets and I simplified it into three boards, and
everything can be taken off. This will then create the timeline, so once
we have done four movements we then write it on a Flipboard and you
can then learn what he created.
I certainly have realised that for every individual you have to go back
to the beginning: look at the Simpson Board, and pick out what works,
what doesn't, and adapt it to suit the person. It is a very enjoyable and
it is a very rewarding project for everybody involved.
Helen Gould & Lisa Simpson: The course also included dancers
who may have been dance students or professional dancers. The
choreographers we were working with had dance training or had
worked as choreographers before, so the course focus was specifically
on the translators. The first day we focussed on developing the
translator skills and was just for those translators, the second day we
bought in choreographers and dancers to work with us. So they have
the opportunity to utilise their skills, adapt where necessary and work
with people that they had not worked with before, which was very
helpful, very useful.
Natalie: It has made me realise the different angles you have to look
at from, you know, different people's perspectives. And also just how
complex it is: like, what our bodies do that we take for granted.
Jelisa: It is nothing like what I expected and I have really enjoyed
today, and how to make - if I was to do workshops - how to make it
accessible for everyone.
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Helen Gould [& Lisa Simpson]: Lisa leads the course, with me
acting as her voice, to enable choreographers to create their own work
and to give disabled choreographers the opportunity to realise their full
potential. And for that to happen we need translators who are able to
read the board. The Simpson Board itself is a very inexpensive
choreography tool, and is very, very versatile.
Laura: I love to teach the performance group dancing.
Choreography!
[Jodie]: It is nice to see Jodie being able to choreograph something
herself.
Helen Gould & Lisa Simpson: The need for the course evolved after
Lisa led a Simpson Board session at Glosdance. In the first part of the
course she had someone assigned to her who had no training in the
Simpson Board and the second half of the course had someone that
did, and that make made a huge amount of difference. She really
needed to have translators that were trained to enable her to
choreograph much more smoothly.
Joe: I am a professional dancer, but I also do quite a bit of support
work. So I think it would be a really useful tool for me to cross over
those two job descriptions, as it were. So, yes, [I] definitely will be
using it.
Rachel: It is like a life-long achievement, to fulfil my potential.
[Video Ends]
Helen Gould: Okay, so, Lisa would like to give a little bit of background
about the development of the Simpson Board, so if I can get this to work yes, there we go - that is a Simpson board [indicating slide].
Lisa Simpson: The Simpson Board came about when Adam
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Benjamin, co-founder of CandoCo Dance, visited the College where I
was studying GCSE Art and Design. He watched how I produced
visual artwork using the help of a study support as I created a number
of images with stones. The way in which I arranged each stone was
by a process of looking at where I wanted them to be placed. If it was
not in exactly the right place, I would indicate with my eyes and head
in which direction it needed to move in. This inspired Adam and got
him thinking [to] himself the question, ‘if it can be done with bodies on
the stage?’ He organised a workshop that ran for five days at
Hereward FE College in 1995, involving disabled dancers and
non-disabled dancers, non-disabled students and Lisa attended that
workshop.
The Simpson Board is a product that evolved from this process, and
was developed in sections to include space, body part, dynamics, and
movement. So you can see the different sections there: the body
parts, there is dynamics [indicating slide]. All the stage options were
then put onto the Board to enable me to tell the translator exactly
where each dancer was to start from and where I wanted them to go
next. After this we then looked at the body and what movements I
wanted individual dancers to make. We put a diagram of the body on
the Board, allowing me to have an exact decision. For example: if I
wanted a dancer to move their left shoulder, I would look at the left
shoulder on the diagram and stop the translator when their finger
came to the right place. This then led Adam, [by] offering a range of
actions to enable me to say how I wanted the dancer to move the
particular part of the body. Such as, did I want them to rotate it or lead
with it? Which is what Robin was doing. All these options were put on
the Board so that when I came to the next dancer I could point with my
eyes at which action I wanted them to make.
By the end of the five days I successfully choreographed a small piece
to music, using the Simpson Board as a tool and the feeling was
fantastic. I always thought my disability would stop me from being a
choreographer. Although we made a substantial amount of progress
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during the week, it was clear that in order for me to have more have
control and be able to be more precise with the decisions and the
individual movements of the dancers, the Board would need to be
developed further.
This led to Jonathan Thrift from the Roehamphton Institute London
being involved, and he had expertise in dance analysis and notation.
He went on to modify the Simpson Board with Bill Robins - a student
with same degree of cerebral palsy as myself. During the five day
residency I met Louise Katerega, who was at this time a dance lecturer
at Coventry University for the Performing Arts. I worked alongside
Louise delivering dance summer schools, which were a huge hit with
the children who learnt to use the Simpson Board to create dance
movements, as well as actually dance. This, in turn, led us to create a
simpler version of the Simpson Board - which you can see here - that
the children could choreography with.
Thanks to Adam and Louise, I delivered a three day residency in
Suffolk during February 2009, based on the Simpson Board. We went
specifically to support a woman with cerebral palsy and limited verbal
communication, who wished to choreograph for the first time. It was
so inspiring to watch her grow into a choreographer who, by the end of
the three days, was deciding everything herself: from the positions of
the dancers, to the type of music that captured the right mood of her
piece. During this residency we held an open workshop exploring
ways in which artists who work in the community allow everyone’s
creative voice to be heard by using the Simpson Board.
Since Suffolk, I strongly believe that there are many prospective
choreographers with no, or limited, verbal communication who haven’t
been given the opportunity to realise their true potential. So I decided
to set up a social enterprise teaching people how to use the Board,
now known as Lisa Simpson Inclusive Dance. We have got some
images here of some of the workshops [indicating slide].
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I believe that the Simpson Board is not only an inexpensive
choreography tool, but also a priceless one. It allows people to
communicate with limited or no verbal communication, and is highly
adaptable to meet groups and individual's needs. The Simpson Board
is an asset: not only to the dance world but also an asset to the health,
educational and arts sectors. It is a tool that empowers, supports
personal growth and develops confidence. For example: in June 2010
I co-led a workshop at a local Special Educational Needs school in
Liverpool having developed two new bespoke boards, designed
especially to meet their needs and which were based on the original
board. These new boards being simplified and interactive, the children
are able to lead the group providing empowerment and greatly
boosting their confidence. I have got the actual example, so you can
see that they are a little bit like the one you saw on the video. You can
move the bits using Velcro, so they can order the actions and the
dynamics.
Every year thousands of dancers go into communities delivering dance
workshops, but may have difficulties or lack of experience working with
disabled groups. Basic training and an understanding of the Simpson
Board would allow so many more people the opportunity of
participation in dance choreography and allow so many more voices to
be heard: which is why I deliver unique bespoke workshops and
courses across the country, to enable and empower more dance
artists to have a voice and be heard.
There have been discussions about the ownership of the creative
work: whether it is the choreographer or translator. In the workshops
we do there is a sense of ownership and pride over the work that the
choreographers produce - and is always very evident - but we often
provide board adaptations for participants. Also, we explain to the
translators that they might want to position themselves with their backs
to the dancers, so they don't influence the choreographer’s decisions.
People may purchase a Simpson Board without attending the course
we deliver; however, it may not be utilised to its full potential without
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understanding the methods and approaches used in the process. I
have a hand out for you today which contains my contact details and
further information about the Simpson Board. Please feel free to take
one - they are over there [pointing to the left of the stage]. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: Ingenuity, enterprise and innovation together are a fantastic
set of tools. Can anybody picture Laura and Lisa getting together and
doing something amazing in Cambodia - dancing monsters? Thought I
might suggest you have a go. Thank you very much for that on our behalf.
Amanda: giving us the Curators View. A very important view as I
understand. Thank you, let's welcome her please.
Amanda Cachia: Hello. I am from California - originally from Sydney,
Australia - but I live in California, and it is currently 7 o’clock in the morning.
I am very jet lagged and I am not a morning person, so you will have to
excuse me if I am a little bit sleepy this afternoon. It is an honour to be
here and I am very excited to be sharing this presentation with you.
So, I am an independent curator, and I am also a PhD student; I am based
at the University of California in San Diego. I am working on a dissertation
on the intersection of disability studies and contemporary art, and I am
motivated to base my curatorial practice on disability because I believe like everyone else in this room - in social justice. I identify as a disabled
person: I have a rare form of dwarfism called Brachyolmia. And I also
believe that the arts, of course, are a powerful vehicle for social change,
which is completely in line with DaDaFest's ‘Manifesto’. So of course it is
my hope that through my writing and my curating that we can transform
people's attitudes and opinions towards disability.
So I am here today to share with you a curatorial contribution that I am
making to the US tour of the ‘Art of the Lived Experiment’ exhibition. I don’t
know how many people in the room have seen the show downstairs,
curated by the brilliant Aaron Williamson, a show of hands who has actually
seen the show? I hope everyone has seen it. We should give Aaron a
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round of applause, actually, because I think he has done such an amazing
job.
So it is my pleasure to work with Aaron on co-curating the show: it is going
off to Grand Rapids in Michigan, and it basically all started when I
contacted Ruth a few years ago and said to her, “I am interested working
with you somehow” and she said, “Well, why don't you try and find a venue
in the US for the ‘Lived Experiment’?” And my friend, Chris Smit - who is
also here with us, who is presenting tomorrow - I found out that he is
starting a new disability arts festival in Grand Rapids, in Michigan, and I
said, “Oh, we should have a partnership here!” So I have put the plus sign
[on the slide between DisArt and DaDaFest logos] to indicate the
partnership. And so it seemed to make sense to have ‘Art of the Lived
Experiment’ come out to Grand Rapids, and it is going to be hosted by
these three venues in Grand Rapids: the Urban Institute for Contemporary
Art, Kendal College of Art and Design and the Grand Rapids Art Museum.
So [it] will be spread across these three museums, and they are all within
walking distance of each other, very conveniently located right in the heart
of the downtown of Grand Rapids.
So I just also wanted to acknowledge Chris Smit, because when I rang him
and - you know - gave him this idea he said, “Of course!” And he has been
100% committed to this project from day one, so I am very grateful to you
Chris for your commitment to this project.
So I am here to present to you the artists that I have selected for the
project; so I started thinking about Aaron's vision and his objectives for the
exhibition, which I found to be really inspiring. He has 28, I believe - 26 /
28 artists - in the show, and I thought to myself, ‘How can I contribute to his
brilliant theme?’ In my mind he had developed a really dynamic and
flexible rationale that to me seemed to liberate, actually, other disability arts
exhibitions from their usual frameworks and discourses. So by that I mean
that Aaron was really interested in thinking about disability from the
perspective of an experiment, of course, and so he says in his publication,
in the essay, that “art and life are subject to flux and transformation.” So he
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was really inspiring me to experiment as a curator, and so I approached the
artists in my selections of the work with a very playful - I hope - a very
playful and open attitude. The work in essence was not only about
transforming reductive ideas about disability in society at large; but it was
also about personal change and transmutation in the lives of the individual
artists with whom I choose to work, and in various audience members, and
of course in me as the exhibition’s collaborating curator.
So, I am going to take you on a bit of a whirlwind tour of the artwork, and I
am going to be very conscious of the time if possible. But I hope you will
agree with me that, I think, that my selections of artists provide a really
wonderful synergy with Aaron's artists that you can see downstairs.
When I first heard of Aaron’s idea being inspired by the ancient practice of
alchemy, and the quest for turning base metal into gold, I immediately
thought of the untitled golden beaded curtain installation by the artist Felix
Gonzalez-Torres, who died of Aids-related complications in 1996.
[Video begins playing in slideshow of visitors interacting with the
installation, ‘Untitled (Golden)’: particularly a young child who repeatedly
runs through the beaded curtain]
So, the reason I thought of this work - it came to my mind - because I felt
that it is a poetic personification of transmutation on numerous levels. First
we might think of how the plastic beads of the curtain are transformed with
gold paint into a material that seems much richer than it actually is.
Through colour, this so-called simple material comes to symbolise much
more, providing us with an illusion of wealth, authority and power. But of
course there is much more to this work than meets the eye, literally
because the work is very importantly about the sensorium.
So the curtain is set up in this gallery space and it is forcing people to pass
through the beads from one side to the other, and this child [in the video] is
completely entranced with the installation. So it is sort of this ritualistic,
physical act - where you are going through this - sort of like a rite of
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passage, so to speak. So of course the artist originally was conceiving of
this work as a meditation on life: like passing from living into death. But we
might also think of it as a metaphor for the transformation of the alchemist's
material; but also people's attitudes towards disability, for which we are all
striving of course in this exhibition - in our festivals - and it is a common
and unifying goal. But in this act of passing, our other senses are also
dynamically activated: our bodies make contact with the beads, the beads
jangle, the beads “click”, emitting a lovely noise to our ears and then of
course we feel the beads - our hands, our legs, our torsos, our arms - we
are grasping and grazing the rounded plastic beads softly, roughly, quickly,
slowly. And it casts an opening as we go through the dangling beaded
lines from one realm into the other. So the child that we just saw here in
this video is clearly entranced with the installation and stimulated by the
multi-sensorial components that it offers us.
For me, the work is exciting because obviously of the direct conceptual
links to the exhibition, but also for the accessible dimensions that it offers:
where it can be experienced through many modes and enjoyed by a vast
range of visitors with differing capacities for seeing, hearing and touching,
and everyone will experience something different. This is a big
consideration that I try and take in my curatorial practice: to think about
how to move beyond vision for visitors in the world of visual art.
So Jeremy Burleson is an artist who makes beautiful sculptures and
drawings and he is based at the National Institute for Artists with
Disabilities in Richmond, in Northern California. For the exhibition he is
going to provide us with a theatrical installation called ‘Lamps’, and that is
going to be installed in the front foyer entrance area of the Urban Institute
of Contemporary Art. These lyrical lamp shades are designed to hang from
the ceiling and some are also large enough to be placed on the floor. His
lamps emphasise the symbolism of transformation and illumination of ideas
and energy that I hope will spread far and wide across the city of Grand
Rapids during the DisArt festival. His lamps will also be set up to be visible
from the streets, and they will glow brightly at night and of course sparkle
throughout the day.
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A special component of Burleson's work is a video interview that I plan to
conduct with him at the end of December in collaboration with a
videographer. Burleson is unable to be physically present at the opening of
the exhibition in April - he has a fear of public spaces and sidewalks - but I
thought that it was really important that his presence was still felt in some
way in the exhibition as an important political move. We decided that
filming an interview between Jeremy and myself would be of benefit, so
that the interview could accompany his work and could be displayed on a
flat screen television.
[‘CREATE: The Artists Are Present’ begins playing in the slideshow,
subtitled without audio]
So I was inspired - this is a video that was created and directed by an artist
named Katherine Sherwood, where Sunaura Taylor actually interviewed
Jeremy - so I am using this interview as a template for myself. This video
was actually also created as a political move: as a reaction against the lack
of the artists’ voice - the representations from the artists - at the National
Institute for the Art was completely lacking at an exhibition that was staged
at the Berkley Art Museum in 2011. The curators of that particular show
had said to me, “Well, the artists can't speak.” So I was completely
outraged, as were some of my other friends in Berkley, so we said, “Well,
we are going to go and interview them ourselves and we are going to show
this video as part of your show.” So we ended up having a sort of
intervention into this exhibition, and so I believe that I am going to continue
to maintain that position that the developmentally disabled artist’s voice
must be present. That is part of my move as a curator and what I can do
for social justice and disability rights and Disability Activism. So I do
believe that the curators at the time had failed in their professional duty in
their relationship with the artists.
I’ll just show you, so you can hear…
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[Plays some of the video file with audio, before moving onto slide showing
article titled ‘From Outsider to Participant: Developmentally Disabled
Dialogue in Socially Engaged Art’]
This is an article in a journal that I got published, that was talking about the
issues with the so-called outsider artist and how they can come to be a
participant in various art exhibitions. So this is a big feature of my
contribution to the ‘Art of the Lived Experiment’.
The next artist is Raphaëlle de Groot: I will run her video in the background
as I speak.
[Video begins playing in slideshow of ‘En exercise’ performance]
She is an artist based in Montreal and she sees her work - she is a
performance artist - and she uses the gallery space as a kind of laboratory
- again thinking of the alchemist and connection to ‘Art of the Lived
Experiment’ - and she is interested in transformative actions, where she
manipulates the stock of materials that you can see she is pulling out here.
She covers over her face and creates various accumulations and layers
and protrusions on herself - see her weaving the string over her arm - and
every new performance she looks for ways of including new and unknown
elements into her blind-making process. She is interested in spatial
challenges through that process, through her actions, and she aims to
create unique situations where she finds herself experimenting through
space, context, function in every single place in which she performs. Her
performances include phases of making and unmaking, transformation and
wandering, and disorientated walks, and she wants to find herself lost and
eventually find her way in a given space.
So Wendy Jacob is developing a brand new commissioned sculpture: it is
going to be in the form of a 20ft tall weather balloon. So the artist had
developed a similar work for the ‘Sharjah Biennial’ in 2013, where students
from the Al Amal School for the Deaf mapped the sonic landscape of
Sharjah by sampling sound, and the collected sounds were played as
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vibrations using the weather balloon as a speaker. And of course this is a
smaller version of the balloon. And then, just one month ago actually,
Wendy used the weather balloon once again to map the sounds of the city
of Edinburgh through art link. So her iteration for ‘ALE’ will also turn to
mapping the sounds of Grand Rapids, as she works with local musicians to
offer a unique and exciting vibrational compendium as charted through the
weather balloon in which she of course hopes to particularly attract deaf
audiences.
Martin Kersels’ work calls attention to the relationship of the body to the
outside world: things, spaces, people and the ways that physicality and
psychology are entwined. He is a bit of a slap-stick comedian: he strikes
emotional notes of humour and pathos in equal measure. He creates a
world in which objects and characters of outlandish shapes and sizes
populate an American landscape of music, suburbia and screwball comedy.
So for ‘Art of the Lived Experiment’ he is contributing these drawings that
we see on the screen - ‘Flotsam’ drawings he calls them - that intermingle
skeletons, tables, chairs, coat racks, trees and spider webs. And like much
of his work, he likes to play with scale shifts and transmutation, where the
spindly legs of a chair become a giant skeletal hand.
Alison O’Daniel - she is the next artist - she is contributing a film called ‘The
Tuba Thieves’. The film is a response to a string of tuba thefts that
occurred in Los Angeles over the past several years, and this is a scene
called ‘The Plants are Protected’. I will run it for you in a moment, but it
basically shows close-ups of plants in a greenhouse; and so we might
consider the greenhouse again as a type of alchemist’s laboratory. So
slowly the plants begin to move and then they start humming, so the
captions which show up throughout the scene inform us that the sounds
are actually coming from the plants. The sounds are created by deaf artist,
Christine Sun Kim, so it is her voice that you hear: it is a sleepy and
buzzing noise. So what Alison wanted to do was commission Sun Kim to
develop a musical score for the scene, and it starts out with familiar natural
sounds and then eventually transitions over into more abstract noise.
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[Plays excerpt from the video, ‘Untitled (The Plants are Protected)’, scene
29 from ‘The Tuba Thieves’]
Alison was deliberately playing with access: accessible sound, inaccessible
sound, what it means for a deaf artist to stage a musical score for a film
and how that troubles notions of access in this way.
So this is Katherine Sherwood now [indicating new slide] and she is an
artist who is working on a series of large compositions; so she is basically
playing around with art history here. The image of the disrobed, reclining
female has been employed by male artists, of course - that we know - and
in their day there was a highly charged treatment of expectations of the
meaning of the horizontal female form. But Katherine is elaborating on a
stereotype: she is asking everybody, “Consider the figure at rest as
disabled.” If we move to some of these ones [indicating new slides] she is
disabling their form: one is wearing a brace, one is an amputee, and this
one here has a cane. She is again transmuting classic images from art
history and she is replacing their faces with images of their brain: typically
scans of her own brain, because she experienced a stroke in 1997 and she
is using that for this imagery.
The last artist in the exhibition is a dwarf artist named Laura Swanson. She
is all about covering her body and escaping the able-ist gaze. She has
created a series of witty drawings called ‘Uniforms’: she has a bee-keeper,
and a burka, and a plague doctor, and a morning dress, and a welder and a
fencer. She is using all these as a clever way to cover up her body. She is
developing these drawing actually into life-size mannequins - she is 4ft tall so we will see a series of these mannequins and she will be taking
photographs of herself wearing these costumes.
Here are just a few more images of her work [indicating new slides] as I
close, but I think this is a theme of covering yourself up. Obstructing vision
is of course related to the theme of my talk; ‘The Curator's View’ is the title
of my presentation because the view is - in one hand I found is like the
untapped potential of the sensorium. We engage with the thrilling
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experiments of the alchemists and the artists in the ‘Art of the Lived
Experiment’; so the dominance of vision is turned on its head where we
instead come to understand disability through a fuller spectrum of modes,
platforms and concepts. And I argue that each artist in ‘Art of the Lived
Experiment’ is compelling in its lively transmutation; compelling as the
individual disabled body itself and the rich knowledge it offers itself. So, I
hope to see you all in Grand Rapids in 2015. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: Thank you, Amanda, for that insight.
And now the key-note closing speech from Colin Hambrook and Trish
Wheatley, and then a chance for the asking of questions; I am sure you
have many.
Welcome to Colin and Trish.
Colin Hambrook: Firstly thank you to DaDaFest for organising this
fantastic day. It has been completely overwhelming in its breadth and
scale. It challenges, as well, in all of the work which it has presented us
with.
I should introduce myself, shouldn’t I? I am Colin Hambrook, I am a
disabled artist, journalist, poet and I have been running Disability Arts
Online (DAO) for ten years, so it is ten years old, and Trish Wheatley here
is the director of Disability Arts Online. I am the editor.
Trish Wheatley: I have been working in the disability arts field since 2005:
starting my career at Holton Lee down in Dorset, curating the arts
programme there and then moving into freelance work, most notably coproducing Sue Austin’s ‘Creating the Spectacle!’ in 2012 and also helping
Colin with Disabilities Arts Online.
Colin Hambrook: I wanted to say that there is synchronicity between
DaDaFest and Disability Arts Online. DaDaFest’s vision to inspire, develop
and celebrate talent and excellence within disability and deaf arts
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coalesces very well with DAO’s vision to achieve a wide spread
appreciation of the richness and diversity of disability arts and culture.
The DaDaFest ‘Manifesto’ - if you have not read it, I would recommend it it has some quite astounding statistics: 11 million people, disabled people,
in the UK, and one billion worldwide. 15% of the world's population are
disabled people; we are the world's largest minority and I think that is… the
breadth of the discussions today reaching out internationally encompasses
the value and importance of our lives and of our art in adding to culture. I
was going to say a little more about Disability Arts Online: the value of
Disability Arts Online as a grassroots disability publication, and that it is a
platform, a voice, for disabled people which is the envy, I think - I would say
- of many main stream publications in the scale and quality and consistency
and the community engagement that Disability Arts Online fosters through
the journal and through the social media. So I would strongly recommend
looking us out.
We are very much about arts as a tool for change, and DaDaFest is very
much about the lived experience of disability. Liz Crow, whose work has
been mentioned several times today by Dr Janet Price, and her ‘Bedding
Out’ live art performance was a part of Spill Festival - it is part of Edinburgh
Fringe - and was a performance at Salisbury Arts Centre that talked about,
um… Liz installed herself in her bed in the gallery space and had a
conversation - a worldwide conversation - the Salisbury ‘Bedding Out’
reached out to 50 countries, and 10,000 people engaging on Twitter,
talking about our experiences as disabled people. An immensely powerful
tool for social change, for connecting our voices.
Trish Wheatley: We were incredibly proud of ‘Bedding Out’ as a DAO
commission in 2012 and it shows the power of the arts for social change on
a societal level, but also on an individual level, because we had people
engaging with the arts - for perhaps the first time - through Twitter. Having
conversations about their particular circumstances living the bed-life, for the
first time, and really feeling a sense of community, so there was a definite
sense of the power of this artwork to help empower other people.
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I have just got a few quotes from that project:
“’Bedding Out’ gets beyond the shouting and takes you to a
quieter place. It doesn’t make you angry, at least not at first, it
makes you understand and that is the power of both activism and
art.”
“This is how art can and should be: holding a mirror to the world to
give a different perspective than we are normally shown.”
And I think that is a quote that could be applicable to a lot of disability art, if
not all.
Crow’s intervention is art as activism at its most open. Bed-life is a twilight
life that is so isolating; Crow highlights the campaigns needed to fight
perceptions of disabled people.
Liz’s lastest project is called ‘Figures’ - hopefully some of you have already
heard about it - and basically it is a mass sculptural performance that will
make visible the human cost of austerity and will urge action against it.
Crucially, this is timed in the lead up to the general election next year. She
is currently crowd funding for it and we will tweet the link for that crowd
funding on the DaDaFest hash-tag, so please support that project if you
can because it is really important.
Colin Hambrook: I was going to give us a looking back on the talks that
we have had today, and going back to a quote from Allan Sutherland - who
was one of the first presenters - he said that, “We fought a lot of battles but
we have to protect what we have won.”
[To Trish] How do you respond to that?
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Trish Wheatley: I think responding to that - and thinking about a lot of the
conversations we have had today - it has really highlighted the importance
of our history and being able to articulate that.
Liz Carr said it is about making a statement of the capacity of the arts to
make a difference: it is about where we come from, where we are now and
where we are going to in the future. And then we had Leroy [Moore] talking
about using Hip-Hop to express the history of oppression and recognising
the ancestry in the Blues and Hip-Hop. Also, Roger [Cliffe-Thompson]
highlighting [the] Edward Rushton part of the festival.
So I would say by educating our history we can help protect what we have
won. There are really important projects going on: like the National
Disability Arts Collection and Archive, which will hopefully really kick into
gear next year - fingers crossed for that Heritage Lottery Funding bid.
So, I was really interested in Jo Verrent’s comment about the artist Jo
Bannon: who understands [that] describing herself as disabled is an
enhancement to her practice, rather than something that reduces it. We
heard a lot in the past about disabled artists choosing not to identify as
disabled, because that [takes away from] their practice, but I just wanted to
comment on that really.
Colin Hambrook: I think it is part of the dichotomy of the times that we are
living in: where, you know, I think Unlimited, the British Council, Jo Verrent
and Carole McFadden gave us some brilliant examples of how the work
that they are doing is enhancing a capacity for social change worldwide.
And, with that, I think, it is opening up - the disability word has always been
a barrier in itself - a lot of artists have struggled, I think, with claiming the
identity of the disabled artist.
And that quote from Jo [Verrent], about Jo Bannon’s wonderful
performance - the one to one performance that Jo Bannon gave - at the
same time as we have this sense of bigger, better work that is getting out to
wider audiences, we [are] also - at a grassroots level - living in a state
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where disabled people are getting battered by society, greater than ever.
The Inclusion London statistic was that £28.3 billion of money that would go
to disabled people has been cut by the year 2018: so, in a space of four
years we will see this huge decimation of advances we have made. So,
more than ever, I think, identifying as a disabled artist is becoming more
and more important and I think that is what that quote from Joe Verrent
illustrates.
And I was going to ask you, Trish: Carol McFadden, from the British
Council, when she was talking about looking for innovative speakers who
can contribute for their [Active] Citizens and good governance
programmes, you were going to say something about that?
Trish Wheatley: Yeah. I was really excited by this actually: we were
having a conversation just the other day about how somehow, somewhere,
at some point, there has been this kind of - I don't know if it is an
assumption that people actually make, or if it is just a kind of an idea that is
out there - that artists can make a living full-time out of being an artist. But
I am a kind of complete believer in supporting a practice with other stuff,
and I think these kind of speaking engagements can be so powerful and
they are the point at which you can take your art work out there: put it in a
completely different context, and make a real impact on people's lives with
the themes and the context and concepts that you are working with.
[I have] just got a highlight: Sue Austin, she is not actually able to be here
this week - she is really sad not to be able to be here - but she has been
invited by the European Parliament to exhibit there for a week and give a
presentation to international delegates. Which is absolutely fantastic: that
Unlimited, and the profile she has got from that, has enabled her to be in
that position and start advocating for disabled people on an international
level. I mean, that is just one example and thank you, Carole, for helping to
support that happen all over the world.
I have completely messed up my order of my notes, so I am not sure what
is next. Colin?
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Colin Hambrook: Well, Jane Cordell, she started this off this morning
talking about being disabled and how, underpinning that, being human is
writ large over disability: we're all of us fragile human beings who are very
prone to impairment at some time in our lives. And Allan [Sutherland] gave
us a very rousing speech about access - and that access is a human rights
issue - and the need to fight for the gains that we have, that we need to
fight all over again for the gains that we have won. And it was kind of
shocking really, the symbol of the Arts Council's front door now being
inaccessible: 10 years ago they were proudly talking about “artists in
through the front door”, and now the Arts Council is a symbolic reminder of
how things have shifted.
So, I think that also access is the thing that has shone through all these
presentations today: Amanda Cachia talking about the ‘Art of the Lived
Experiment’, how access makes her work distinctive and the experimental
notions of access; and Jo Verrent, again, talking about Unlimited and the
Wendy Hoose, incorporating audio description as a performer within the
work; and Katherine Araniello's ‘Dinner Party’ that used BSL as another
creative device within it. These are all examples of how innovative
disability art is in transforming culture and its capacity to affect the way that
people think about their lives, and about the lives of us as disabled people.
Trish Wheatley: I have got couple of things from Twitter:
“The Simpson Board by Lisa Simpson, a thing of simple beauty
enables those with limited communication to choreograph.”
This is quite interesting for me because I was wondering what is going on
outside at the Fringe:
“Great 1st scratch performance #dadafest14 the audience
decorated the courtyard.” [@KazzumArts]
So we will have to go and see that later.
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“To get this happening in society for people with disabilities, need
a disabled person in a high position to have that voice
#dadafest14” [@Safiya_Bahlani]
It is about all of us wanting to get our voices heard, and we hope that
DaDaFest, and we hope that Unlimited - all the programmes represented
here today - and Disability Arts Online can help to do that.
Colin Hambrook: I want to add one last thing: Leroy [Moore] talked about
intersectionality and the need to continue the conversations beyond the
Congress to join up. We are disabled people but we are not just disabled
people: we have multiplicity of identities and the key is creating
partnerships and joining forces with allies - with other organisations - that
understand who we are and where we're coming from and [have] disability
justice on their agenda. Thank you.
Jane Cordell: Thank you, so much to Lisa, Laura, Amanda, Colin, and
Trish for that session.
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Session Four
Unlimited: the Artists’ Voice
Chair: Dr Janet Price
Speakers:
Nicola Wildin, ‘Where’s My Nana?’
Sheila Hill, ‘Him’
Ailís Ní Ríain, ‘The Drawing Rooms’
Jess Thom, ‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’
Janet Price: I know it is the end of the day, but there is lots more exciting
stuff still coming. So could you find a seat if you have one and take
yourself to an empty space, if that is what you're doing, and just gradually
get yourselves settled. I am going to give regular short breaks during this
session if people need to move in and out, because I know that you're all
getting quite short on energy and the day has been a long one. So, can
you let people talk while they talking and I will give you proper space at the
end of the each presentation to move in and out if that is what you want to
do.
I would like to welcome everybody to the final formal session of today: I am
Janet Price, and I am not quite so used to being a doctor so much, so I will
just return to being Janet! Suits me far better. Today we are listening to
the artists’ voice: the Unlimited artist voice. We have three wonderful
artists to talk to - sadly Noemi [Lakmaier] has had to drop out through
illness, but she sends her real apologies. She is very upset not to be able
to be here and we are very upset not to see her rising with balloons, which
apparently was the plan. So, we have all missed out on a big treat there.
I know that you're all very tired, so I think that in line with the general trend
of today I would like you all to choice your own “hedgehog” or “biscuit” and
just shout loudly for two minutes; just get some air into your lungs, please.
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Seriously, because I think everybody is just doing this [deflating motion], so
find your own favourite word and on the count of three, ready? I would like
you to shout, “DaDaFest!”
Everyone: DaDaFest!
Janet Price: And again: one, two, three. DaDaFest!
Everyone: DaDaFest!
Janet Price: And, I think, once more - come on, big breaths, lots of air
going in this time, take a big breath - one, two, three. And…
Everyone: DaDaFest!
Janet Price: Right. Well, that has woken everybody up. Good. Okay.
Well, I would like first of all to welcome Nicola, who is going to present her
work to us. Nicola, I am going to ask you to come forward and take over
from there and tell us all about what you have been doing.
Nicola Wildin: Hello, good afternoon. I am Nickie Miles-Wildin: I am
Associate Director at a theatre company called Kazzum Arts based in
London, in Bethnal Green Road. I am an actor, performer, getting a little bit
now into directing and also workshop facilitator. So, there are many hats I
wear, but just enjoy working in the arts in theatre.
So, some of you might recognise me from that small thing that we had
about two years ago, mostly in London: the Paralympics. That was me
playing Miranda, flying through the air of the Olympic stadium in the
Paralympic opening ceremony, acting alongside some geezer called
McKellen.
So - at that point - that was 70,000 people in that stadium and about half a
billion people worldwide got to see that performance, and a great one,
really: we got to showcase disability arts at its best.
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So, the reason why I am here is about - probably about two years ago through my role as Associate Director at Kazzum, I came up with this idea
that I wanted to look at inter-generational relationships. And this came
from my Mum becoming a Nan, really, and seeing how my Mum interacted
with her grandchildren; and how different that was to how she used to
interact with us as small children as well. My Mum suddenly became alive,
she became playful, encouraging grandkids to jump in those muddy
puddles and splash mud everywhere, and it is something that really excited
me about it; so Kazzum gave me the opportunity to come up with an idea.
Kazzum are based in Bethnal Green and they are all about making playful
theatre in unusual places. We take theatre out to people: we will go and do
outdoor work, street work, finding those people that do not necessarily go
to the theatre. So that is something that really excites me, because there
you find audiences that might not have seen anything at all and we have
got the opportunity to take a piece of theatre out to them; a piece of art.
And then, also at this time, I had worked with an exciting company called
Slung Low, who are based in Leeds; some of you might have heard them,
some of you might not. And Slung Low are quite site specific as well:
audience kind of promenade round and the actors are all miked up, and the
audience wear headphones - headsets - and you promenade around
following the action as you go. So it is only if you have got headphones will
you know what is going on in the situation, which makes the performance
quite intimate. And it allows - wherever you are doing the performance - it
allows everyday action to continue: so it could be that you are, like, here or
in arts centre, or it might be somewhere like you are in street market, you're
in a shopping centre. It is very sensitive to the environment in which it is
set. So having worked with Slung Low, I realised that the work that
Kazzum do is quite identical to that of Slung Low, and how great it would
be to bring those two companies together, which is what I put in for my
Unlimited application.
I came up with the idea of ‘Where’s my Nana?’ and this is where the
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audience are taken on a journey, by a granddaughter, in search to find her
Nana. It originally started at looking at an idea that could take place round
a car boot sale: so maybe Nana's van is parked up somewhere, the
granddaughter has gone off to get refreshments [and] she has got lost on
the way, so she has to - with the help of the audience - find her way back to
Nana's van. And they meet characters along the way, so Chantal learns
more about her Nana than what she thought was possible: that Nana is not
just this old frail woman, that actually there is much more to Nana than can
meet the eye, much more than Chantal ever knew.
And with the money that we have had from Unlimited we have been able to
do Research and Development on it. We have worked particularly a lot
with the headphone sets, of how we add in creative access: so how we can
add in the use of Sign Language, or how we can add in the use of audio
description as well, just so we can make it accessible to everyone really.
Yeah, and that is kind of where we are at.
What is passionate to me, in this kind of work, is that we do make theatre
for young audiences, but also that it is for everyone - for a family to come
and enjoy - because some family shows I have seen, the kids are left there
as if it is a crèche and parents just go away. Whereas I want it so that
adults join in as well, because that is really important: if you go to see a
show, and you have got grandparents there with their grandchildren, that is
nice to see those relationships building actually. And just that, if you have
got adults enjoying a show, then the children will enjoy it as well - and vice
versa - and that is what I think is really important; that is how you make
those relationships work, by having those people altogether. And that is
what we are trying to achieve with ‘Where’s my Nana?’ and it is keeping
some of the adult humour but also make it an adventure for the young
people to go on.
With the headphones we are sensitive to the environment in which we are
working, so if some of you are coming to see the show here today at
quarter past five - which I welcome you with open arms to come and help
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us find Nana - you will see how sensitive we are to that environment, such
as being here at the Bluecoat.
For us now - having done research and development on it - we have
realised that we do have quite a good product, even if I do say so myself. It
is that thing that people enjoying working together: going off as a team to
find Nana. And it is that sense that, with it now, we can really see it
working in outdoor spaces: something like an outdoor market, particularly.
We did - on part of our R and D - we took the sound equipment and four or
five of the actors out with the headsets to Leeds outdoor market on a
Saturday morning, as the Tour de France was about to start in the next
street.
Quite entertaining! We just wanted to place the headsets in that market
place to see how it worked, so we went out. And what was great was because this was not something that the people that usually attend that
market had seen - it worked its magic, even though we didn’t have an
audience with the headsets; it was purely to place the actors and see how it
worked. We had stopped people stopping, and looking, and wanting to join
in. People asking if they could listen and see what was happening: and I
am not just talking about young children but older people as well, down to
your kind of people that were there cleaning up after the market traders.
So, it was something that worked really well; we were getting an audience
that we didn't think we would have. So it is kind of reaching out to people
that would not necessarily go to the theatre. It engages with the local
people - I suppose that is what I am trying to say.
So, yeah, I don’t think there is a lot more to say about it, but I do urge you
to come and see it. It is here at quarter past five: come grab a headset and
join in on the adventure to help us find Nana.
I would like to say thank you to Unlimited for giving us the money for the R
and D. Come and join us at quarter past five to help us find Nana. Thank
you all very much.
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Janet Price: Thank you very much, Nicki. That has given us a great advert
for the session at 5.15pm.
Is there anybody who wants to come in? There’s not a long queue
outside? As I said, sadly Noemi [Lakmaier] is not able to be with us, but Jo
Verrent - where is Jo? - is going to introduce a film from Unlimited for us,
because the session is being supported by Unlimited: as are all of the
actors, performers, our wonderful inspirations here today.
Jo Verrent: Hi. What we wanted to do is - all the people speaking in this
bit had Research and Development Awards - so we thought what we would
do is to show you a short video that was made as a result of one of the
other Research and Development awards, which went to Sheila Hill who is
a film-maker. And she worked with the actor, Tim Barlow, and had just
started that process of exploration around creating a piece that looks at
ageing, that looks at different ways of performing: Tim has always been a
very extrovert performer - very, very physical - and she is really interested
in paring that back and actually just watching the real character of Tim
emerge.
[Video]
[Film opens on Tim Barlow facing the camera, his head and shoulders
visible and drinking from a white mug. He stares past the camera, and
breathes out heavily through his nose. Scene fades out.]
[Scene fades in, as before.]
Tim Barlow: I am really comfortable about being old. [Chuckles] I think I apart from the odd periods of life when I was younger, sort of odd really
exciting periods in the army - apart from those, this is probably, probably
the happiest time of my life.
Very peaceful. I mean there are things like, you know, the post comes and
the brown letter - brown envelope - comes through the door. When I was
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younger, “Brown envelope, oh god, it can only be the Inland Revenue
wanting money!” Brown envelopes always bring bad news. [Laughs] But
not anymore! Now I am older, if a brown envelope comes, "We wish to
inform you that your pension will be raised - will go up - from a certain
date." Oh, thank you very much. Another one, "Your disability pension…” I
get that one: my disability pension for being deafened on active service,
and that is going up - not by much - but a bit is good news. They don’t
want anything from me! I can't think of a time when one has come wanting
something, well apart of course from the tax people, but that is just the
routine wanting you to submit the forms by January. So what are we now?
July, so that is plenty of time then: so even that is not urgent.
[Scene fades out, and back in as Tim Barlow begins speaking again. He
no longer holds the white mug.] … 2
[Video ends]
Janet Price: Thank you very much for bringing that along: it makes us feel
that moving into old age might not be the thing some of us dread and
actually it has got definite things to recommend it.
I would like to ask our next speaker, Ailís Ní Ríain: if you would be able to
come up Ailís? Ailís is another wonderful Unlimited supported artist, so I
will leave it to her to explain to you about her work. Welcome, Ailís.
Ailís Ní Ríain: Good afternoon. My name is Ailís Ní Ríain: I am an Irish
contemporary classical composer and a playwright. I am based in
Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and I have lived in Northern England since
1996.
I am interested primarily in cross-disciplinary work. My training is in
classical music as a pianist and a composer, and since 2007 in written text
for performance and theatre. My music has been performed in Carnegie
Hall, the Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall, on the BBC; that kind of
thing. I am a published playwright as well. I am hearing impaired: I wear
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hearing-aids, however, they are not much use to me, I find. Working as a
composer, it is very difficult as time goes on when you can't hear what it is
you want to write, really; so I have to rely on other people in the audio work
that I do, which I don't like doing that because I don't trust anyone!
So, yeah, that is another day's work.
So, in respect of Unlimited, ‘The Drawing Rooms’ is a working title: it will
involve, I think, something a little bit different. The piece - the R and D
project - is based on the artwork on Hieronymus Bosch, who is an artist I
have liked and admired for a very long time. He is a Fifteenth Century
artist - I am sure his name will be familiar to some of you - [a] Netherland
[Dutch] artist, and the piece you are going to see is a 25 minute excerpt
from it tonight here, in this room. It is based on one of his paintings, called
‘The Temptation if St Anthony’, which was painted as a triptych - alter
triptych - in 1501.
I have a copy of the painting here [indicating slide]: I don't really know how
much detail you can see there, but believe me it is hugely detailed. A
friend of mine did a very kind thing and bought me a canvas - a good
quality canvas version of this - online recently, so I have a very big copy of
it on my wall, and I can see all the little characters in it. Saint Anthony is in
the very middle in the blue robe with his fingers raised. This work tells the
story of, well, the mental and psychological torment of St Anthony. This is
St Anthony - Anthony the Great - the first desert father, known to some as
perhaps the first monk; it is that Anthony. The triptych contains a lot of
fantastical imagery: it has got a great deal of bizarre detail, a lot of the
unexplained.
What I wanted to do for this - what I have developed for what people will
see tonight - is just a fraction, it is really just a fraction, of what I want to do
with this piece. In essence what tonight's performance is [there are] two
live classical musicians: a violinist and a guitarist, and they both also
double on the electric violin and electric guitar; there is Sign Language
creative interpreter, who also works as an actor and theatre director; and
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finally, there is a live illustrator. That is kind of where the ‘drawing room’
idea initially came from: I wanted to work with a visual artist I knew, who I
thought - well, he says of himself, “he is most happy when he is left alone
to just draw in a room” - and he is a terrific visual artist, so the piece
includes him drawing live as part of it.
The piece is full of great characters: I have chosen four, so tonight’s piece
is in four scenes [and] each scene is dedicated or inspired by different
characters - these names are mine [indicating slide]. So, what I have done
with this piece is I have composed the music - so it is about twenty minutes
of music - and I have written the text: so there are four long poems as well.
So these two [characters], for me, are ‘Swine and Snatcher’ [indicating
slide]. This is quite a jump for me artistically: I have not worked in this sort
of way before, I haven’t worked with material like this, I haven’t as a writer
with absurdist, bizarre, even - dare I say - humorous text. I am known for
my very tragic writing, so this is something brand new.
So this is ‘Swine and Snatcher’, and I have basically fleshed them out into
full characters in my mind, at least, and that is what you will get a taste of
tonight. Here is ‘Roller Stroller’ [indicating new slide].
He is a man who says he has too many senses - he wants less senses and certainly whenever I have my hearing aids in I get far too much noise;
even when I don't have them in, I still get too much noise. I have become
extremely sensitive to sound in the last few years and I rarely socialise or
rarely go into public spaces if I can avoid them. I find noise is really
becoming a big problem for me, and this guy says - he says - that he has
had enough: he has heard enough, he has said enough, he's seen enough.
He just wants to roller stroll out of the frame, which is what he quite literally
does.
This guy [indicating slide] is quite special, he was born with three legs and
someone put him in a chair, at one point, and said, “Well, someone will
come along and push you somewhere, at some point, if you're lucky” and
for him that was not really a viable option for living his life. He didn't want
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to be pushed around by someone if he was lucky. The key thing, though, is
that he is a singer: he is a counter tenor, so if any of you know anything
about counter tenors, you probably would not want to be around them a
great deal when they are singing at a concert level, so his solution was to
find a duck and inhabit it.
This is the female character: her name is ‘Stab Stomach’.
And she says, “I have got all the working parts; I am just put together
weirdly.” She has an immense sexual appetite, and I would have to say
this: that Unlimited sex talk - that Jo [Verrent] referred to earlier - that I was
writing this, trying to figure out, this character at that time, and I was very
influenced by what I heard people discuss that day at the Unlimited Festival
in Southbank in September. So I have been quite bold, really, in what this
character represents. Her angle basically is that she wants to have as
such sex as possible, but never become pregnant; so if you can see the
solution she has come to.
Okay. So, as I said, the piece combines live illustration, sign language
interpretation, live music and poetry. There is also some animated film and
there are some subtitles. There are challenges in the piece, I think,
primarily: how do you make a piece accessible? And how accessible
should any piece of work be? Should accessibility dominate a work: should
it always come before artistic notion and ambition? Lots and lots of
questions really. You could cripple yourself trying to make a piece
supremely accessible on all levels, but something can also happen to the
artistic intention in that, as well. So, I am very nervous about tonight
because I don't know - I don't know, you know? I know what I know
[laughs], and I am hoping people will be able to take it for what it is, which
is very irreverent and quite bold; a little bit dangerous and maybe for some
a little bit controversial in some of its content as well. And I feel that is what
we are all here for; certainly there is a need to say what sometimes goes
unsaid. As ‘Snatcher and Swine’ in the first pictorial slide show: he is a
cripple - he has one leg - and he calls himself a cripple. He says, “Well, I
can do what I like. I rob people blind.” He literally robs people blind, and
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he says he can get away with anything, “No-one questions the cripple.”
They are his words.
So, yeah, thank you very much for listening. This is just a little taste of it, if
you are interested come along this evening. And thank you to Unlimited for
funding this idea - to get it off the ground - and see if it is actually worth
doing. Thank you very much.
Janet Price: Thank you so much for that Ailís: that looks like a wonderful
piece of work if as you said, slightly a bit… I love Hieronymus Bosch! Jess,
are you about ready to go? Right.
I have an instruction for you: at the end of Jess you have to move out of the
room at the fastest speed you possibly can - are the instructions I have
been given! Because they are coming in to set up the tech for later on this
evening and they need as much time as they can. The Bistro will be open
at 5.30pm for those of you who are having supper, along with coming to
see the shows, so if you want to collect your tickets or go up to the Bistro if
you booked supper. And ‘Looking for Nana’, the wonderful show we have
already heard a little bit about - whet your appetite - will start down in the
Courtyard at 5.15pm. So, just about time to get through the wheelchair
queue of the lift; downstairs; into the toilets; out if you’re going into the
courtyard; going back upstairs; into the bistro [mimes running backwards
and forwards] and sat down for the evening performance.
So, Jess? I welcome Jess Thom.
Jess Thom: (Fuck it, hello, biscuit) Hi!
Everyone: Hello!
Jess Thom: (Cats, biscuit, biscuit) So, my name is Jess Thom, I (biscuit,
biscuit) I am an artist, writer (biscuit) and part-time superhero
(motherfucker, hedgehog). I have also got Tourette's Syndrome, so make
unusual movements and noises. (Biscuit, hedgehog, cats) There are three
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things you need to know straightaway (biscuit) you are going to hear the
words biscuit and hedgehog a lot, and hopefully (biscuit) see them
captioned as well, (biscuit, biscuit) but I am going to try not to talk about
that (biscuit), the Bi- (bisexual) Council or (herpes) (biscuit, hedgehog,
biscuit) which came up earlier.
(Biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit, herpes) [Laughs]
(Hello, biscuit) If I say something funny you are absolutely allowed to laugh,
(biscuit) and several times a day my tics suddenly intensify to a point where
I completely lose control of my body and speech: do not worry if that
happens - that is normal for me - and my support worker Matthew knows
what to do (kick me in the shins). That is not one of the things he is going
to do!
(Biscuit) I co-founded Touretteshero in 2010 (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit).
Oh, look they are on here - we're here already (biscuit, hedgehog) - I forgot
about them, that they even existed [indicating slides]. (Biscuit, hedgehog)
Who has got control of the slides? I will wave at you when I am ready
(hedgehog, cats, fuck it) (biscuit) (biscuit). So I founded Touretteshero to
celebrate the creativity and humour (biscuit) of living with Tourette’s
Syndrome (biscuit, cats, biscuit, fuck it, biscuit). We work online (biscuit)
and across social media (biscuit). We invite artists to make images and
creative responses to things I have said as tics (biscuit, hedgehog).
So if we have the first slide (biscuit): you can see a selection of images that
people have created (biscuit), ‘95 percent of biscuits are birds’; (biscuit)
‘Squishy squirrel love’; (biscuit); ‘Stuff my mouth with pencils’ (biscuit,
hedgehog); and the company that everybody needs, ‘The Alien Barbados
Donkey Training Company’.
(Biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit, hedgehog) The idea was (biscuit) that (biscuit)
rather than just ignoring (biscuit) the tics - as I have been doing for most of
my life - would be to make them available to people to use as springboards
for their own creativity. (Biscuit) And Matthew, who is the co-founder of
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Touretteshero, told me not doing something with them would be wasteful,
and that was the first time (biscuit) that I was able to think about, and see
value, (biscuit) in my experience and (biscuit) in the strange ideas that get
collided together because of my unusual neurology (fuck it, Nana's biscuit,
hedgehog).
And (biscuit) Touretteshero is all about collaboration (biscuit) and about
creativity and about having creative encounters with other people. (Biscuit,
biscuit) We deliver creative events for children and young people (biscuit),
with or without Tourette's, (biscuit) and (biscuit) inclusive events
(hedgehog, cats). And (bees, biscuit) that is how we ended up thinking it
was time to do a stage show - to do performance - (biscuit) and (biscuit)
and that was our research R and D - Unlimited R and D piece - was
‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’.
(Biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) (biscuit, biscuit, biscuit) I developed ‘Backstage
in Biscuit Land’ with Matthew (biscuit) and with Jess Mabel Jones (biscuit),
or who my tics refer to as “Chopin” (biscuit) for no good reason at all - there
is no logic about that - that was her name (biscuit, biscuit), tic name, that
came up so it stuck. (Biscuit) As we're both called Jess, it was quite useful
(hedgehog, biscuit, hedgehog). And (biscuit) we created the - and the
show was produced by - Jolie Booth (biscuit), who is our producer and who
gets to dress up as a cat dressed as a nun as part of the piece (hedgehog):
again, for no reason! (Hedgehog, biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) (biscuit)
‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’ is borne out of my love of theatre, but for the
fact that I have actually found it very difficult to access theatre as my tics
have intensified (biscuit, hedgehog, bees). I have had some difficult
experiences in theatre, in public spaces, where I have been made to feel
very excluded and very isolated. (Biscuit) So I wanted to create a show
(biscuit) that created an environment that did the opposite (biscuit), but also
allowed room for the spontaneity and ideas (biscuit) that is part of my life
and part of everyday (biscuit). And that is quite a creative challenge
(biscuit) because I also wanted to be able to say what I wanted to say, with
a level of predictability, at some point. (Biscuit) That is why Chopin is so
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crucial: so (biscuit) Chopin - Jess is a puppeteer and a performer - and
(biscuit) I felt like we had a very good team to be able to create a really
interesting show (biscuit). We used an open space approach, (biscuit)
which meant that (biscuit) we didn't really know where exactly - what it was
going to be (biscuit, hedgehog, biscuit) - but we had lots of conversation
that shaped something really interesting, I hope. (Biscuit, cats, biscuit)
Because I am neurologically incapable of staying on script, no two shows
can be the same (biscuit, hedgehog).
And so we really embraced that idea (biscuit). We describe ‘Backstage in
Biscuit Land’ as a “two-woman solo show” (biscuit), and (biscuit) that is
because Chopin’s role is so crucial in helping me to say what I want to say.
(Biscuit, hello, biscuit, fuck) And (biscuit) we were mentored by Jenny
Sealey from Graeae (biscuit): this is my first time that I have ever done
anything theatrical or performance (biscuit), we were really - as an
organisation we existed and we were a creative organisation - but we
hadn’t done anything theatrical before, so having a team of people who
were really able to help us build our vision and give advice, and give
feedback, and create and shape something was really important. (Fuck)
(bees and biscuit, biscuit, hello) (biscuit) So the open space approach led
us to a show plan (biscuit) - if we can have the next [slide] - so we had
loads of stuff on cards (biscuit): ideas (biscuit) that we wanted to include or
questions we wanted to ask, and that was whittled down until we had a
plan for the show (biscuit). And actually that features in some of our
shows, that is a thing that exists.
(Biscuit) (biscuit, hedgehog) A little bit more about the show (biscuit): we let
my tics choose the set (biscuit), which basically means (biscuit) we didn't
know what we wanted to bring so I ticced about a hundred (biscuit) different
ideas (biscuit) and we created and bought the most feasible of that
(biscuit). Some of the options were: a model of the Eiffel Tower made by a
Lithuanian (biscuit). A cardboard cut-out of an oak tree. A loaf of Steve
(biscuit) - I don't know what that would look like (I have a biscuit). A
circular saw. A balloon shaped like a dinosaur (biscuit). The smell of an
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ice cream parlour (biscuit) and bakery in a different age (biscuit) - that was
one we probably ruled out (biscuit, biscuit) (ethereal, it is a bit ethereal)
(biscuit, hedgehog). A biscuit barrel held tenderly by a little penguin. The
whole cast of Eastenders. (Biscuit) Four (biscuit) four ducks pretending to
be Velociraptors. And a baby grow for Les Dennis (biscuit); the latter
definitely makes it in. (Hedgehog, biscuit, fuck, biscuit) (biscuit)
If we have a look at the next slide, you can see some of the items behind
us: we have got (biscuit) a card cut-out of Mother Theresa and some
autumn leaves (hedgehog), which were also things that I ticced (biscuit,
hedgehog).
The show mixes comedy, puppetry, singing and lots of tics (biscuit). And
we drew on recordings, and blog posts and things that I had written
(biscuit), and we did lots of verbatim stuff where (biscuit) Jess and I talked
about (biscuit) - I talked about my experience and Jess talked about her
experiences as a performer (biscuit) - because the first time we met was
when she was performing in an x-rated version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’;
so, (biscuit) her first experience of Tourette's was with me in the audience
(hedgehog, cats, biscuit, fuck). And all our shows are relaxed
performances: we aim to create an atmosphere that feels playful and in
which audiences can feel open and to respond to in any way they feel
(biscuit, hedgehog). And everyone gets a biscuit! Because it would be
mean to make people sit through an hour of that without even offering them
a Bourbon.
So, in terms of the reception to the piece: we took the show to Edinburgh
Fringe in August after a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund that
element of the work (biscuit) - which we developed with the R and D
(biscuit) support (biscuit) - and the show was incredibly well received, and
even won a Total Theatre Award. (Biscuit) One of the things that surprised
me about being in Edinburgh was that I also received loads of warm
invitations to see other people's work, which is something that I just had not
anticipated, but because loads of people came to see it I was invited to go
and see loads of stuff. I saw more theatre in the first week of being there
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than I have seen in my life (hedgehog). And that this then has continued to
have a knock-on effect (biscuit), for example: Daniel Kitson is doing a
relaxed performance of his show ‘Tree’ at the Old Vic in January, and he
says that is directly inspired by seeing ‘Backstage in Biscuit Land’. So, I
think, the idea of that as a starting point for other people to consider
(biscuit) what, - you know - how performances can be inclusive, feels
amazing to me (biscuit). And we are booked to do longer runs in 2015
(biscuit).
So, in conclusion, (biscuit) our experience of Unlimited (biscuit) and the R
and D Award has been incredibly positive (biscuit). The support from the
team has been crucial in helping us navigate in a new area and art form
(biscuit, biscuit). Meeting and (biscuit) meeting and speaking to other
disabled artists continues to be extremely beneficial to me, and has opened
up new networks and new ways of thinking. (Cats) It has not only helped
me develop as a performer, (biscuit) but also - more significantly - it has
helped develop my confidence going to see live performance (biscuit).
So, yeah, thank you very much (biscuit)! [Indicates for last slide]
(Biscuit, hello, please!)
Janet Price: Well, thank you very much for three wonderful presentations
to finish this first day of presentations. I think we can see that the Unlimited
R and D Awards are going to produce some of the most wonderful work
that we have seen in a long time; so we will look forward to that with great
excitement, seeing how they emerge as more work goes on and the results
of some that we have seen so far.
End of Day One
‘Gold Lamé’ was commissioned by DaDaFest & The Bluecoat for ‘Art of
The Lived Experiment’ at DaDaFest International 2014
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Only a section of the film, ‘Him’ by Sheila Hill, is transcribed here - if any
one requires the full script, please contact the DaDaFest office.
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