We’ve joined forces with Bradford-based Mind the Gap, England’s premier learning disability performance and arts company for a very special programme of Empowered: Series of Care events. These workshops are designed to help artists and creative organisations to support and be inclusive of those who identify as D/deaf, disabled, or neurodivergent.
Don’t miss these opportunities to embrace diversity and bring the transformative power of inclusivity to your creative practice. Join us in shaping an inclusive future for the artistic community of Bradford and beyond!
Upcoming events in the Series of Care x Mind the Gap programme:
Series of Care x Mind the Gap: Access Riders with Daneka Etchells
Tuesday 25 July 2023
- 10am - 1pm
- Mind the Gap
How to ask for what you need, building an access rider for disabled D/deaf and neurodivergent theatre professionals.
This session is an introduction to how to build a personalised access rider to confidently and clearly communicate your access requirements with venues, collaborators and employers.
This session is for Bradford and West Yorkshire creatives who want to learn more about creating an access rider for themselves.
Led by Daneka Etchells, this workshop will empower you to discover and professionally vocalise your needs; kickstarting your journey into understanding, discovering and honing an accessible working framework. A tried-and-tested template will be provided, along with provocations, questions, and examples to aid you in moving forward in better, more accessible practice.
Daneka Etchells is a disabled actor and writer, who’s worked extensively in theatre with companies and in venues such as National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Sheffield Crucible, HOME, Northern Stage, Theatre by the Lake, Pilot Theatre, Northern Broadsides and Octagon Theatre Bolton.
She is also an access, equality and inclusion consultant, specialising in arts venues and production.
Series of Care x Mind the Gap: Inclusive Practice
Wednesday 26 July 2023
- 10am - 1pm
- Mind the Gap
Learn to lead with inclusion at the heart of your creative practice. Mind the Gap invites you to explore their inclusive approaches and learn how to incorporate them into your own work.
This session will be practical, so come with an open mind and be ready to participate in a fun day of inclusive activities and exercises.
This session is for Bradford and West Yorkshire creative facilitators who want to explore how they can embed inclusivity into their practice.
- A practical, half-day session aimed at facilitators, directors, creatives, and people who regularly work with groups.
- Exploration of Mind the Gap’s ways of working inclusively with learning-disabled and/or autistic artists, performers, and students.
- A theatre-based perspective presenting tools that are easily transferrable to other live artforms
- The expertise of learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled facilitators from Mind the Gap.
- Build on your existing practice and explore how you can make what you already have in place even more inclusive.
- Develop skills that are not just relevant to working with learning-disabled people, but all. Working inclusively is better for everybody!
Series of Care x Mind the Gap: Building Accessible Creative Spaces
Thursday 27 July 2023
- 10am - 1pm
- Mind the Gap
This session will explore Mind the Gap’s expertise in building accessible creative spaces. Come and learn how to apply their processes to your own projects, events, productions, and companies.
This event is for Bradford and West Yorkshire artists, creatives, producers, directors, or anyone bringing a creative team together who want to know more about how to lead a team built around accessibility.
- Explore case studies, scenarios, successes and challenges, and reflect on your own practice.
- Learn how Mind the Gap make processes accessible at all levels. Including recruitment, auditions, building teams, and meeting different access requirements both in and out of the rehearsal room.
- This session is not about audience access, but that of your creative team.
- Understanding that access is not one person’s responsibility
- What your own access requirements might be, and what kind of support might be available through hearing about how Mind the Gap works inclusively
- What access requirements look like and ways of adapting processes
- Communicating and advocating for your access requirements to be met
- Confidence in having conversations about access
Bursaries, access and travel costs
As with all our development programmes, we have bursaries and access funds available to make these opportunities as accessible to as many people as possible. You will be asked about your financial support requirements shortly after booking onto these events.
Bursaries: a contribution towards your time to enable you to attend when you may otherwise be working. You can claim up to £50 for each of these half-day sessions.
Access costs: additional costs you may have to enable you to attend; things like disability support, BSL interpretation, translation, or childcare.
Travel costs: the cost of travel to our events ideally using public transport. If you need to take a taxi, please get in touch with us to let us know as we’ll need to approve this in advance.
We do not means-test or ask you to prove that you need this financial support, but where possible we need to agree in advance on what costs we will cover, and you will need to provide receipts to claim costs back from us. Please only apply for these if you need to, as this will ensure we can provide funds to those who really need them.
