Workload Management: Lessons Learned

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…

Access Needs: Lessons Learned

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…

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…

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…

Integrated Audio-Description with Quiplash

I’m a disabled writer working across performance, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Last month, I was invited to attend half the workshops on the CRIPtic programme as a notetaker and blogger, and jumped at the chance – to learn more about access, to develop my craft, and to meet other emerging disabled creatives. The first workshop, last week, covered integrated audio-description: the different types of audio description, ways to integrate it into your project, and some exercises that illustrated how audio description can be useful – or useless. I learned way more than I was expecting to, in terms of both…