The Library Presents and Babylon Arts are set to host an online seminar aimed at upskilling artists and performers with the knowledge required to make their work more accessible for people with protected characteristics.
The Library Presents is a vibrant and inclusive programme of arts activities taking place in towns across Cambridgeshire and online. Events often include; music, theatre, art, dance, storytelling, comedy, puppetry and digital arts.
This season, a key focus is on providing training for artists who wish to create work, whether that be a performance or workshop, for or with people with protected characteristics.
The seminar will be hosted via Zoom on Thursday 23rd November, 12.30-1.30pm.
Tickets are £5 per person and are available to purchase online at www.babylonarts.org.uk/events
With a specially selected line up of speakers presenting the best practice from lived experience, who already have experience of producing such work, the seminar will provide valuable insight on inclusiveness in the arts sector and will discuss the considerations artists who are creating work should be aware of.
This will be a spoken presentation with a visual PowerPoint to accompany, chaired by Michael Corley, Chief Executive at Babylon Arts, and will conclude with a questions and answers session.
Seminar plan as follows:
5 minutes – Welcome from Babylon Arts
10 minutes - Speaker 1 – Michèle Taylor, Director for Change at Ramps on the Moon since its beginnings in 2015. Michèle has worked with Ramps consortium theatres to embed disability equality into all they do and continues to support mainstream performing arts organisations to up their anti-ableism game. Ramps’ mission is to enrich the stories we tell and the ways we tell them by elevating the place of disabled people in mainstream performing arts.
Michèle will talk about how employing, commissioning and working in other ways with disabled people is vital to ensuring that we remove barriers to the work we develop and deliver. The Social Model of Disability is central to this approach and Michèle will explain its relevance to Accessibility in the Arts.
10 minutes - Speaker 2 – Amy Leach, Deputy Artistic Director at Leeds Playhouse, one of the Ramps on the Moon consortium theatres. Amy directs, develops and programmes work for the theatre as well as leading on their artistic development programme and championing access across the organisation.
Amy will explore the journey of a director who, through a series of encounters, provocations and opportunities, found her artistic practice expanded and enriched in a thrilling new direction. She explores how, as theatre-makers, we can see sign language, audio description and captioning, not purely as add-on access tools but as new creative possibilities? How might we go about exploring the creative opportunities of integrating access into our work? And who are the new collaborators with whom to make this happen?”
5 minutes – break for BSL interpreter
5 minutes – Rachael Dance, BSL interpreter will sign the seminar and present the requirements of a BSL interpreter when being booked for an event/performance.
20 minutes - Q&A facilitated by Babylon Arts