Embark 2026

Embark is a year-long programme for four disabled creatives with high physical access needs, designed to help kick-start creative careers.

Each year between 2026-2030, we’ll be supporting two writers and two directors to create new, paid work for the stage. Writers will develop scripts, while directors bring them to life, with the work shared in a relaxed work-in-progress showing for industry, friends and family.

Along the way, participants will take part in workshops, get 1:1 mentoring, and experience a full rehearsal and staging process. By the end, they’ll have a filmed version of their work, professional photos, and references to support next steps.

Sam, a mixed-race young man with light skin, dark curly hair, brown eyes and a slim build in his manual wheelchair rehearses Just Short of Saintly. He is wearing a white t shirt with a paisley pattern and grey and white trousers. He leans to his right with arms raised.

Who is Embark for?

Embark is for four disabled creatives aged 18–30. We expect all four participants to be wheelchair users. Wheelchair users face significant barriers in the theatre industry and are hugely underrepresented, especially at entry level. Put simply: it’s hard to become a writer or director if the training opportunities aren’t accessible.

Embark is here to change that.

Join Embark

Applications for Embark 2026 Scriptwriters is now open!

Meet our Embark Project Board

Embark is co-designed with a Project Board of disabled creatives, alongside the CRIPtic Arts team. Meet our 2026-7 project board!

Lozza Gilbert

Lozza Gilbert is an award-winning northern, trans & disabled performer, consultant and writer. They are a member of the National Youth Theatre working across video games, audio drama and stage, and use their background in advocacy to push for a more accessible industry and advise game developers on the movement, story and design of disabled characters. Lozza is also working towards a career in performance capture as a mobility aid user, and is passionate about increasing authentic disability representation in games. As a writer, they discuss the games they play, disability and performance, and after performing their first self-written piece ‘Not a person’ in 2024, are now hoping to develop their own play and video game.

Lozza recently worked with Cast Doncaster on the R&D for a new play, and their upcoming acting work includes playing lead character Reflex in Rusty Quill audio drama ‘Rez High’, Dee in Eastshade Studios’ next game ‘Songs of Glimmerwick’, and a supporting role in Hipflask Games’ debut title ‘The Bureau of Fantastical and Arcane Affairs’. They were nominated for Best Non-Binary Voiceover Performance at the 2026 One Voice Awards.

They graduated with a degree in Astrophysics from Newcastle University in 2023, and worked as Disability Officer at the Student’s Union and a member of the NHS Youth Forum while studying. Since then, Lozza has worked with charities, delivered talks and panels and hosted events, and as a result were awarded Influencer of the Year by Sense in 2022, and a Pride of Newcastle University Award in 2023.

A dark-skinned Black person stares seriously at the camera. They’re wearing a colourful patterned headwrap, hoop earrings, and a white t-shirt as they sit in a wheelchair in their dining room.

Simi Roach

Simi Roach is a Jamaican-British actor, writer, and Disability justice activist. Their work explores Disability culture, history, and innovative Disabled representation through both written fiction and live performance. Simi has also performed as a spoken word poet, public speaker and educator, and is both an experienced stage and screen actor. They are queer and use they/them pronouns.

Simi has both written and starred in the sold out two-hour solo show Cirque du Handicap which has been staged at Bloomsbury Theatre, Soho Theatre, and St. Paul’s in Cambridge. They’ve performed in a production of Ayo as the titular main character at the Bolton Octagon, and a Dutch production of Romeo and Juliet produced by Ilse Wouters. For three years, Simi has been a member of Vital Xposure’s VX Labs’ artist panel where they work with them on numerous theatre projects.

Their screen credits include main character roles in both the short film But Still We Move and De Bushalte, as well as background roles in the Dutch CBS show Bestseller Boy and the Dutch Netflix film The Takeover.

Miggy, a white non binary person with orange and blue hair smiles at the camera. They have purple eyeshadow and are wearing patterned red and yellow and brown dungarees, with a grey long sleeve shirt. They have a frog earring that's balanced on a tiny pumpkin.

Miggy Barker

Miggy Barker is a multidisciplinary artist whose work blends intense realism with surrealism, using extended metaphor and unexpected imagery to explore the realities of being disabled, trans and queer.

Their practice spans theatre, performance and visual art. They are particularly interested in using absurdity, fantasy and weirdness as tools for communicating complex lived realities.

They are co-producer of Drag on the Borders, a drag performance fundraiser, and are currently developing Standing Ovation, a solo show exploring the pressure to perform to survive as a disabled person. They are also an emerging Director, and mostly recently worked as Assistant Director on The Acts 2026 (CRIPtic Arts, Bristol Old Vic). They first began their journey as a theatremaker through their training with Above the Nerve Theatre.

Anna, a white woman in her twenties with long dark hair, smiles at the camera.

Anna Landre

Anna Landre is an activist, researcher, and artist. She works across disability rights, justice, and culture, moving between systemic critique and creative expression to interrogate nondisabled/Normate culture. She is drawn to disability arts as a site where culture is remade: where crip aesthetics, interdependence, and access are understood as generative. Her practice spans fields including humanitarian response, social care, transport access, human-computer interaction, and more.

Anna is a PhD Candidate at the UCL Global Disability Innovation Hub, where she studies Disabled People’s Organizations (DPOs) globally. She is also the Global Research and Response Advisor at The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, where in Ukraine she spearheaded the first-ever wartime evacuation mechanism for disabled people. Anna’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Vogue, and more.

As much as she is a maker, Anna is a connector, curator, and committed audience member in the disability arts space. She brings to Embark a grounding in disability studies, a researcher’s instinct for measuring impact through crip-centred methods, and a belief that art is key to addressing the root causes of ableism. Anna is also an American immigrant to the UK who enjoys facilitating the exchange of crip ideas across the Atlantic.

Supported by:

Embark! is funded by Youth Music’s Shift the Scene Fund, which champions inclusive, ambitious creativity across all art forms. This support means more time, space and resources to co-create bold creative work with Disabled young people, not as an add-on, but by design. It will run for four years, from 2026-2030.

Our other collaborators include Tramshed Theatre, Graeae Theatre Company, Pathfinders Neuromuscular Alliance, and Treloars School.