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

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…

Accessible Finance: Budgeting for Access

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…

How to create your own living diorama

By Liam O’Dell When it comes to creating a work of performance art, sometimes it can be helpful to start with an image – and that image doesn’t have to be your typical, two-dimensional kind, either. Martin O’Brien is an artist who suffers from cystic fibrosis, and in his work, he challenges the common representation of illness – through physical endurance, hardship and pain-based practices. He also looks to examine what it means to be born with a life-threatening condition, with cystic fibrosis having an average lifespan of 30 years. In a workshop for members of the CRIPtic Creative Showcase,…

Social Media, Promotion, Networking and PR

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,…

Creative Captioning with Samuel Dore

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…

3 resources to help you integrate British Sign Language into your performance with David Ellington

It’s one thing providing access; it’s another embedding it into your performance. In the case of British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation, artists are finding creative ways to integrate sign language into an act, rather than have an interpreter sit awkwardly at the side of the stage. In our latest CRIPtic workshop, Deaf actor David Ellington talked us through some ways to think about integrating BSL into performances. Here, we share David’s top resources to help you consider British Sign Language within the performing arts. Learn the BSL alphabethttps://vimeo.com/447637353/86de5e5a7a Before you can even begin to think about integrating BSL into a…

Arts Council England Funding for d/Deaf & disabled artists

In the most recent CRIPtic workshop, the focus was on Arts Council funding – how to get it, what to do with it. I’ve applied for ACE funding before – both times desperately last minute, wrangling with Grantium at 11pm on deadline day, vowing never to make the same mistake again. I’ve even attended workshops about ACE funding before, but what’s special about the CRIPtic workshops is the sense of being the target audience for once – access information isn’t half-heartedly added on at the end, it’s front and centre, and being translated into BSL as we go. It’s one…

Integrated and Creative Access with Touretteshero

CRIPtic meets Jess Thom: ‘Creativity can be a catalyst for change’ For deaf and disabled creatives working in the arts, it’s easier to produce art which is accessible to ourselves, with access bolted on to the end. Rather than thinking about how our work can be created with British Sign Language (BSL) at the very beginning of the process, for example, the question is often how the work can be translated into BSL. When it comes to making art, access needs to be right at the heart of everything we do. Yet in order to do that, the idea of…