Incubate

Building disabled-led arts organisations & supporting disabled arts leaders.

Disabled people in the arts are carving new ground and leading change, as individuals, or running small organisations. Successfully leading projects, organisations, campaigns, and movements requires an understanding of everything from brand and pitch to finance and project management.

Incubate takes Jamie’s journey and the development of CRIPtic, and supports four emerging disabled arts leaders or organisations through everything they had to learn – from successes to failures and mistakes to experiments.

Who we’re looking for
What the programme involves
When are the sessions?
Payment
More information/FAQs
Apply to become an Incubate member

Who we’re looking for

Incubate is a leadership programme for four UK-based disabled* emerging cultural leaders.

We’re looking for disabled people leading change or building organisations in the arts – people developing and communicating ideas and making an impact. The impact could be sector-wide or community-specific, as long as you’re adding to a shared ecosphere of disabled people and organisations.

*By disabled, we mean “all people who face disableist [including audist or neurotypist] barriers”, or “people who identify themselves as disabled and/or are identified by others as disabled in society”. To find out more about what we mean by this, please look at our website.

What the programme involves

Incubate is a 12-month programme of monthly peer-facilitated sessions. These are structured and led by CRIPtic, but participants will be expected to prepare and present from their own experience and expertise at most sessions. Incubate invests in individual leaders – so even if you’re leading an organisation, the same person is expected to come each time.

Peer-faciliated sessions will all take place online, with captions, rest breaks, and BSL interpretation where required, and we aim to meet other access requirements across the programme as far as possible.

When are the sessions?

The sessions will happen fortnightly on Monday evenings and will run for 2.5 hours, inclusive of a short rest break.

Monday 9 June: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 23 June: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 7 July: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 14 July: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 4 August: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 18 August: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 1 September: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 15 September: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 29 September: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 13 October: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 27 October: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)
Monday 17 November: 6pm – 8.30pm (online)

Payment

As a mentoring and development scheme, this programme is not paid. It is free to attend and CRIPtic will cover the access costs associated with joining the programme.

More information

If you want to hear more about this opportunity, we are hosting a drop-in to discuss the project with Artistic Director Jamie Hale on Wednesday 23 April 2025.

Book your space here

Please also read our FAQs, which contain more information about the programme and what we’re looking for.

We also have limited 1:1 sessions available with Jamie Hale, reserved for people from the Global Majority, and those who face specific barriers to access and require:

Wheelchair access, including facilities like Changing Places toilets
1:1 support
Robust infectious disease and illness protocols
Remote-only or remote-priority work environments
BSL interpretation

Please book these sessions below:

1:1 Session for creatives from the global majority

1:1 session for creatives facing specific barriers to access

Apply to become a Incubate member

To apply, please fill in the below forms by 5pm on Sunday 11 May 2025:

Application form (with BSL)

Diversity & Monitoring Form (with BSL)

You can also submit an audio or video file in spoken English or BSL (7 minutes max), or download and send the questions as a Word document to team@cripticarts.org. Please find the Word versions of these forms below:

Word Version of Application form

Word Version of Diversity & Monitoring Form

If you need access support to input answers into the form, we can help out – just email team@cripticarts.org. We’re able to support applicants with transcribing answers on a 1:1 Zoom, but cannot provide or fund individualised access support for applications beyond this. If you have any queries about this, please contact us on team@cripticarts.org to discuss.

Don’t worry about neuronormative applications and what you think is “expected” in terms of spelling, grammar and structure – your application will be read by a disabled team and will be assessed on its creative or organisational merits. Just tell us about the things we’ve asked you to tell us about, in the way that works best for you.