Category: Learning

The cover of the report, a turquoise box with the words BEING HYBRID - a cheap and easy guide to hybrid events on it, and the logos for Spread the Word and CRIPtic Arts

BEING HYBRID: an easy guide to hybrid events

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: CRIPtic 2022, Learning, News and Updates, Resources
To read more about Being Hybrid, click here. To access it in a range of other formats, click here Why are you launching Being Hybrid? I keep having the same conversation over and over in my disabled writers group chats this summer. “Why is this festival not programming online?”. We had a period of time in which far more work was accessible to home-bound people and those who would struggle to reach it physically. Now, instead, everything has gone back to being in person. When people ask events “will this also be available online?” the response is almost always “that’s…
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Accessible Finance: Budgeting for Access

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Budget. It’s a word that strikes fear into the hearts of many people trying to work out how to make affordable work, sustainable work, and accessible work. When I got my head around how I wanted to think about budgeting, it was by going beyond “how am I spending this” and into “how does my budget fit with who I am”. That’s why this week I’m discussing accessible finance and budgeting for access. Your budget is your ethics I’ve heard this statement from two excellent influences – Spread the Word and Quiplash – and both are right. Your budget is…
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Prioritising Health: Lessons Learned

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This week’s blog is a short one – to make sure I’m prioritising health. Last week, I took some time to focus on my creative work and for family reasons. I don’t normally take leave, and I found it incredibly difficult. I was still working a bit, and I was often very anxious when not working, because I felt like I should be. Sometimes, I struggle to treat my creative work as work. Because I enjoy it, I see it as less important, rather than remembering that it’s the only part of my work that only I can do. I…
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Building Networks: Lessons Learned

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We went into CRIPtic 2021 without a very wide network. We certainly had quite a few contacts and offers of support. A lot of our work centred around the few networks we had, which were London-centric, and didn’t reflect the diversity of the disabled community. We were very lucky to receive support from people associated with those networks, but we really had to reach out and focus on building networks beyond the people we knew. We finished it with a far bigger network than we started, and a clearer idea of what we needed to do next to further diversify…
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Workload Management: Lessons Learned

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: Learning, Reflections
As part of the process of assessing quality and success in our projects, we’re writing a series of blog posts exploring some of the key learnings from our 2021 development programme and showcase. This allows us to reflect on our experiences, our achievements, identify areas for growth, and (hopefully) be of use to other projects considering carrying out similar plans. This week we’re looking at workload management. The Workload: CRIPtic 2021 CRIPtic 2021 was an enormous project. We supported 5 artists through an 8 month development programme, hosted 7 workshops (with 58 attendees), organised 6 months of mentoring, 6 one…
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Access Needs: Lessons Learned

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: Learning, Reflections
To assess the quality and success in our projects, we’re writing a series of blog posts exploring some of the key learnings from CRIPtic 2021. We want to reflect on our experiences and what we’ve achieved, identify areas for our own growth, and (hopefully) be of use to other projects carrying out similar plans. Out first learning is around access needs. CRIPtic is a deaf and disabled-led organisation. With that comes a recognition that everyone involved has their own access requirements for engaging with the project.  Everyone faces different impairment-related limitations and societal barriers that will impact them during parts…
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The Disablism of Age Barriers in the Arts

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At their heart, most age barriers in the arts are disableist. They create barriers that prevent disabled people having equity of access to opportunities. Their assumption that age is representative of life-stage, career-stage, or the point of development someone is at ignores the different experiences of disabled people. Age is sometimes relevant. Sometimes we need to use age barriers in the arts as a proxy to redress a specific underrepresentation, or encourage specific groups. This might include awards for people who started their practice later in life, or to encourage teenagers to consider creative industries, but these are a minority.…
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CRIPtic Pit Party, Barbican Stories, & Institutional Racism

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: CRIPtic 2021, Learning, News and Updates, Reflections
CRIPtic Pit Party and Barbican Stories – A statement CRIPtic Pit Party 2021 – a showcase of d/Deaf and disabled artists, is taking place in the Pit at the Barbican in Autumn 2021 – a time when the Barbican is also grappling with institutional racism. My decision to continue to present the work at the Barbican was a complex one, and this statement is written to explain it. The release of Barbican Stories, and the accounts within it, made it clear that many people have experienced institutional racism within the Barbican. The work to heal wounds caused by this and…
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Social Media, Promotion, Networking and PR

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: CRIPtic 2021, Learning, Resources, Workshop Write-Ups
As a writer working across forms – drama, fiction, non-fiction; not to mention non-writing work like speaking engagements, facilitation, and other things that occupy some kind of nebulous “creative” space but aren’t clearly defined or definable – as this kind of jack-of-all-trades creative, it’s sometimes really hard to tell people about what I do. I have a Google Doc with a bunch of different bios in it, depending on whether I’m working on a project which is more academic, or creative; to do with facilitation, or journalism, or creative writing. It’s like there are loads of different versions of me,…
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Creative Captioning with Samuel Dore

Posted on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized in: CRIPtic 2021, Learning, Resources, Workshop Write-Ups
My first blog for CRIPtic was on audio description and how it can be used as a creative tool; I left feeling energised and inspired to create work which truly integrates audio description, which treats accessibility as a consideration of equal importance to plot, language, and form. I felt similarly after the creative captioning workshop – I’ve always been interested in form, in disrupting audience expectations, in work that is surprising and captivating in new ways. I love the idea of captions which enhance a performance, rather than just describing it.  Politically, I feel strongly that accessibility should be much…
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