Announcing our 2024 cohort!
We are thrilled to introduce the 16 incredible creatives who have joined our 2024 Artist Development Programmes.
Through these initiatives, we forge diverse, disabled excellence, and create an artistic landscape where disabled people flourish
We can’t wait to support our 2024 artists, and be there are they unleash their creativity.
Breakthrough
In Breakthrough, we are supporting artist Rachel Gadsden and Director & Theatremaker Vici Wreford-Sinnott, to create professional quality work to be used as a ‘calling card’ to break into the wider industry.
Visual and performance artist, Rachel Gadsden will create a short film that encapsulates the ambition of the ‘TransHuman’ vision. Digital animation, ‘live’ art performance, spoken word poetry and composed sound fuse together to serve as a call to action, where TransHuman intersectional voices are heard and embraced.
For Writer, Director & Theatremaker, Vici Wreford-Sinnott, Breakthrough will be an opportunity to create a film which showcases a body of her disabled led work at its best.
Incubate
The Incubate cohort is made up of four exceptional innovators. They’ll take part in a 12-month accelerator programme to build their disabled-led organisations. The selected initiatives are:
Head Over Wheels, a collective of multidisciplinary artists led by Jonny Leitch. Head Over Wheels focuses on creating circus work, challenging misconceptions around disability, and breaking the stereotypes of what a ‘circus body’ should look or move like.
BLK INK Productions, helmed by Princess, are looking to unleash narratives that reflect the beauty, power, and diversity of the global majority.
How to be Books, a platform which looks at the intersection of society and literature from amarginalised perspective. How to be Books is led by Suswati Basu.
A company led by Rebekah Ubuntu, which aims to tackle prevalent (and preventable) contracting issues within the spheres of digital arts practice. Rebekah’s hope is to make a valuable contribution to arts and creative ecologies and beyond.
Launchpad
In CRIPtic Arts’ Launchpad artist development strand, the aim is to encourage the development of adventurous work for the stage.
‘To Rose on her 18th Birthday’, an autobiographical play by A.C. Smith, exploring the life-altering experience of going through cancer treatment as a mother.
‘Autistic as Fuck’, a meta-theatrical piece by Asylum Arts, with Stephen Bailey, Theo Angel, Evlyne Oyedoukn, and Kat Dulfer. The show is about autistic performers trying to put on a show about autism, and being pushed into a performance of just another mask.
The Quest for the Bronze Cloak by Hugh Malyon and Steve Sewdon, is an almost too remarkable tale of heroes and monsters and an exploration of a hero’s insatiable desire to prove his worth.
A piece by Marcy Rick and Ro Lewis tearing apart wellbeing culture, and putting a spotlight on the inaccessible, uninspiring, and ‘proper shit’ ways that workers are let down by their employers
‘Over the Moon’ by Peyvand Sadeghian & Matthew Robinson, a theatrical exploration using immersive projections and original NASA archive material of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, to explore whether space travel has given us any real perspective on our place in the universe, our relationships with each other and in understanding ourselves.
Reach
A total of 5 artists are joining CRIPtic Arts on the Reach artist development strand, which has a specific focus on supporting intrepid new solo shows:
Fannie Marion’s ‘The Spider’s Daughter’ is a one woman, darkly comic show written about strained mothers and daughters, the generational trauma of women, and cannibalism.
In ‘Joke’s on you’, Ozioma Ihesiene explores the journey of a stubborn 25-year-old, who is abandoned by her parents in an experimental treasure hunt to find them in…. NIGERIA?! AKA Home.
Dan McIntyre, brings us a sometimes comedic, sometimes serious show about the adventures of a disabled IT service desk worker.
Rachel Baker’s ‘Sloth’, explores how she flipped the script on misconceptions around her ADHD, told through clowning, storytelling and stand- up.
Arden Wilson brings their exceptional talents to a story about power and relationships.
We can’t wait to see what 2024 brings!
