A belated Happy New Year from us here at CRIPtic Arts – where we are delighted to be announcing CRIPtic 2022! We hope you are as excited as we are to get stuck into another year of creativity.
The success of the 2021 CRIPtic Showcase was overwhelming. As we move into 2022, we’re going even further to develop and support the very best of disability arts. This year, we will be working to dismantle even more barriers to deaf and disabled talent across the sector.
A taste of our 2022 projects is below. If you want to know more about them, or get involved, you can contact our team at team@cripticarts.org.
CRIPtic Incubate – RECRUITING NOW
CRIPtic Incubate is a peer-facilitated project designed for deaf and disabled people building organisations in the arts.
We have monthly meetings covering everything from budgeting, finance, and registering your company to setting rates, branding, and telling your story. This programme will support four deaf and disabled people building organisations in the arts, with two open places currently available.
If you’ve got an idea for an organisation and you think it might be feasible, find out more here
CRIPtic 2022
In 2022, we’re delighted to have been funded by the Arts Council to build on the success of our 2021 development programme. We will deliver a 12 month development project, giving deaf and disabled artists, leaders, facilitators and organisers even more opportunities to develop their skills, craft and networks.
We will run a series of BSL interpreted:
- Workshops – practical, skills-based sessions led by experienced deaf and disabled people working in the arts. To be announced in early Feb
- Deaf and Disabled Writers’ Salon, continuing our existing project. We are adding more sessions featuring a workshop from a deaf or disabled writer, a reading from a deaf or disabled writer, and an open mic session
- Online drop-in sessions open to all deaf and disabled people interested in the arts. A mixture of themed and unthemed sessions with sign-up open now!
- Online bookable 1:1 sessions with Jamie Hale. You can book in for a 20 minute discussion session exploring anything from budgeting to organisational development, creative access to production. These will be released a batch at a time in order to manage demand
Arts Council England are funding Incubate and CRIPtic 2022
CRIPtic: Always the Audience
Theatre is becoming more accessible to the audience – but breaking into the London theatre world as a deaf or disabled creative feels impossible.
Funded by the Arts Council, this research will focus on people with specific physical access requirements. These are loosely defined around either needing access to a hoist adapted toilet or changing space during the day, or needing to use specific adaptive equipment (AAC, switch, or eyegaze) to communicate or use computers.
We will meet with venues, disability arts organisations and individuals to explore the practices, policies, and attitudes that bar us from careers in the sector.
As part of this, we will be forming a (paid) advisory board. We aim to release more information by early February.
If you’re London-based, interested in being on this board, and either
- Need access to a hoist-adapted toilet or changing space
- Use AAC devices to produce speech, or switch/eyegaze to operate a computer
please get in touch with us on team@cripticarts.org
Arts Council England are funding this project
CRIPtic x Access
Deaf and disabled people are excluded from the arts world, constantly, whether as artist or audience. This experience is exhausting, discriminatory, and leads to a huge talent drain of deaf and disabled people from experiencing and producing art. We need to change this – and hold organisations that don’t provide access to account.
We are inspired by the trans casting statement and other community-rooted initiatives. This project will explore the development of a position of solidarity between disabled and non-disabled artists, organisations, companies, and venues, with an agreement to meet minimum standards.
We will also be building on the existing excellent work on access riders. We hope to create an online tool that guides people through the process of writing an access rider. It will ask a range of questions to help people think differently about the barriers they face and how those could be mitigated.
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation are funding this project
CRIPtic x Lewisham Festival
We’re excited to bring CRIPtic to our local borough and celebrate the diversity and creativity of our deaf and disabled community. During the summer, we will run a day-long festival, creating a hub of workshops and performances. These showcase the very best of disability arts, from Lewisham (and beyond). We want to promote Lewisham as a space in which deaf and disabled people are central to cultural life, and are celebrated as a core part of our borough.
We’ll keep you up to date with each of our projects, and if you’d like to get involved in any of them, or just want to know more, send us an email at team@cripticarts.org.
Lewisham Council are funding this project
CRIPticArts Team
Jamie Hale : Artistic Director
Caitlin Richards : Lead Producer
