Launchpad

What is Launchpad?

Launchpad is a development and staging scheme for four UK based performers. We’re looking to support four disabled creatives/company currently to develop a 20 minute piece to be staged at the Barbican in November 2024. Creatives will undergo a 10 month programme of mentoring, development, and critical feedback sessions, which will culminate in the performance.

Launchpad 2024 is a celebration of disabled people, removed from the pressures and oppressions of being defined by non-disabled people. A world outside narratives of diagnosis and medicalisation. A world in which we can imagine crip pasts and crip futures, in which we can joyfully bring our whole selves, as storytellers, dancers, musicians, magicians, and more. We’re looking for performances that celebrate what it is to be alive in the face of death, joyful in the face of emptiness, present in the face of absence, and taking up space in the face of exclusion. Performances that conjure up worlds as they were, are, or could be. Performances that are vulnerable, satirical, bold, silly, biographical, mythical: there’s no limit.

Artists will receive a total of £1,200 for their participation on the development programme, and an additional £750 for the show in November 2024. Hotel, travel and per diems for the show rehearsals and performance will be provided by CRIPtic Arts.

Applications for Launchpad 2024 are now closed. We will be assessing applications in the coming weeks. We hope to reopen our programmes for 2025.