Rachel, a white woman with short cropped hair wearing a skeletal skirt with syringes hooked around, stands looking out at the audience with arms raised and a triumphant look. Behind her is a bright painting out of focus.

Breakthrough

For creatives who are ready to break into the mainstream.

Breakthrough is about disabled artists succeeding in the mainstream. We’re looking for practicing creatives who’ve “done it all” in disability arts, who are mid-career and achieving success, and yet are still facing huge barriers to entering the mainstream. It’s about saying “we see your track record” and investing in you – to develop something tiny, perfect, and that truly showcases who you are and what you do. We want to support you in creating a calling card to mainstream recognition whatever that looks like for you.

Who we’re looking for
What we want to support
What the programme involves
Payment
More information/FAQs
Apply to become a Breakthrough artist

Who we’re looking for

We are looking for a disabled* creative to produce a sample of professional quality work to be distributed by CRIPtic.

*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 we want to support

This is your opportunity to create at the highest quality. As disabled creatives, we’re used to working on a shoestring, making a budget go as far as possible. The funding from this award should be used to create something tiny at the highest possible quality, rather than trying to create “as much as you can”. This might be a 5 minute video, a single song, a lighting plan for part of a show, a showreel archive of your work, a pitch for a book or novel, an individual painting, a 5 minute segment of a play, a proof-of-concept for a larger creative piece – or something else entirely. The purpose is for you to do it exceptionally – to show what you could achieve if you had the mainstream support and funding you should.

This can be anything from a 5-minute scene from a play, to a song, to a lighting portfolio, to a short video – we want to nurture your creativity and support you in creating something that showcases the absolute best you can achieve.

What the programme involves

The chosen creative/company will be paid to develop a commission and attend support and development sessions with CRIPtic Arts’ Artistic Director, Jamie Hale. They’ll also be linked up with an industry mentor of their choice, to learn from them over six mentoring sessions. At the end, they’ll have a high quality calling card to showcase their potential.

Support and development sessions and mentoring sessions will 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.

Payment

The Breakthrough artist will be paid £6,000 to fund their time and costs to develop their commission and attend the four support and development sessions. They’ll also receive a further budget of £1,500 to pay for six sessions with an industry mentor of their choice.