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PATHWAYS TO THE PROFESSION SYMPOSIUM 2012 REMINDER: THIS TRANSCRIPT IS NOT VERBATIM Date: 20/01/12 Venue: West Park Conference Centre, Perth Road, Dundee Operator: Louisa McDaid MAT FRASER: Good morning everybody. As the last people come to sit down, before I sort of talk officially, how about I remind us all that noisy mobile phones can probably be switched off at this point or switched to silent if you are that self important. Sorry, that was unnecessary. Hello everyone. So first things first, who saw the entertainment last night? Wow, shall we give them a round of applause, that was, [applause] just awesome, all the pieces were fantastic, all artists subjective and I enjoyed posting everything so much I thought particularly Clare's piece, pretty much personified and encapsulated everything that we were talking about, it was professional level contemporary dance, it reinvented dance language, it was personal, general, it was just everything and I woke up this morning. You know what you do when you half asleep kind of dreams, waking into reality. Imagining that there was a 30 second slow mow part of her show as a BBC Scotland I dent. I think that, nobody would balling at that at all. I thought that was impression.... A bit of housekeeping. If you are hanging on all day to burst your talent on the open microphone slot, that was been cancelled, no open mike session tonight. Sorry to all the people who intended to go to that. We found people weren't travelling the long haul to the other building to post it notes comment board. We have brought the mountain as it were to the Mohammed’s, it is in the foyer here. If you have something to say, suggest, complain about, stick it on a post it note and one it on the comments board, some of you disgruntled, there was no coffee this morning. In about an hour, that will be available. Page | 1
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Because today is going to be slightly less people on stage talking and you listening, slightly more interactive. I will run you through the day. A keynote in a minute from Jurg then, you have all got the list but, then we are going to have a fuelling the fire session. Then 10:50 continuing the journey break outs, Caroline is going to administrate that and tell us how that is going to go. Feedback from Maggie, lunch, networking, an artistic intervention, by birds of paradise then a final panel and then panel. Tied up by around 4:30, awesome. So, I am really invigorated, I am tired but invigorated by the art last night and it spoke volumes to me, I think that is what we are all... Jurg, I hope I pronounced that correctly, Jurg Koch working internationally as a performer for the last 12 years, worked with Candoco, worked in San Francisco, an impressive CV, if there was a table, I would be able to tell you the whole thing, lecturer, a company member of die versions starts company Wales UK and Candoco company in London, lives in Seattle at the moment. ... specialised interest in integrated dance and creating access to course content for a diversity of students, where we are what at and what we are doing. Without any further ado, Jurg Koch. JURG KOCH: Thank you, especially for taking on my name. It is my great pleasure to be talking as part of the symposium and to stand in front of an amazing Assembly of artists from the field of disability. Thank you for the organisers for setting this up and I think it is amazing event. Of ghettos and Ivory Towers. The ghetto in my title today is a met fore for the practice of isolating specific groups or culture practices from the rest of the population. Places of segregation and discrimination, so in medieval Europe, this is where the Jewish population could live. We think of them as the poor often segregated sections of large cities. Like in this image here, with its graffiti covered back alleys, there is also spaces that invoke sub cultures, creative worlds like the 80's hip hop scene. One question that concerns me, how integrated dance is often isolated as a ghettoised sub cultural practice, particularly where access to
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professional training is concerned or access to training is concerned and then there is the Ivory Tower. Also standing for isolation and separation. The Ivory Tower speaks instead of a place or practice, born of privilege and choice. This is where intellectuals engage in the lead pursuits. A place of splendid isolation. So my other question is then whether or why professional dance training is such an Ivory Tower... removed from the current events, accessible for a few handpicked individuals. So for this presentation, I would like to stay with some of the medieval roots of the image of the Ivory Tower, like in my second image, an illumination of a Dutch book of ours, it is a mystical place and maybe the destination of quests, quests where you fight dragons, find holy grails in hidden treasures in what better place to do that than Scotland. So. So looking at the, this Assembly here of who is the who of performance and disability my title refers, even though I will talk about what I am doing, refers not to just my own quest for access in dance training but to a collective one, a quest that we engage with as a community. On that quest I will outline a framework for providing access for professional training for a diverse student population. I know for some of you this is familiar scenery and you have covered this ground. I hope there will be new territory there and if not, new perspectives of the same territory. So I will begin by identifying some of the key challenges and then the principles of universal design as a way to make click collar and pedagogical changes, and have shared and training goals. Hopefully to have time for some responses and questions as well. Some of the examples we have seen last night and companies and individual artists in the field of dance and disability have been creating work for at least the last 30 years. This collage here shows a few examples from dance ability, Candoco, Dandelion, Dancing Wheels and I apologise who is here that I haven't put up there on the collage.
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It is just there is an example to show how rich the field is and beyond that, integrated dance has spread well beyond Western Theatre Dance and is represented in places like India, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, a multitude of functions, forms in dance. Now this amazing success story stands in stark contrast to the reality of access to training. Jo Verrent studying access concluded many disabled people can only gain access to informal training provision. So notwithstanding recent developments, concrete challenges to equal access still remain. Focussing more broadly on access to tertiary education, Burgstahler and... study, 4 key areas, physical spaces, information and technology, services and instruction. They are all really important considerations. However for me as an educator and artist I have a particular interest in instruction and within that the instruction of the studio based classes, including improvisation, technique classes. Over the last 8 years I have offered a number of integrated dance courses and projects in the University of Washington dance programme. They involved university students as well as off campus participants. So the images here show participants diverse, not only in terms of disability but also body type, age, ethnicity, level and forms of previous training etc. Despite this though, I observe that students with disability often still stay on the threshold. They are welcome visitors, but they are still not necessarily members of the degree programme. So how do I not just teach "about" integrated dance? But teach all student practice including my regular courses in an accessible way. So big swoop, improvisation ... they are largely deemed accessible, this is evident in chance practice, in the company work but also in the writing of authors like Albright, Benjamin, Coopers and Whatley, technique class. Nobody wants to talk about that, deserves particular attention. So what is this technique class? Technique class of which you see some examples, ballet, modern, forms of Indian dance etc. they provide a systematic approach to trained dance skills. It is a Page | 4
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highly valued part of professional training with a significant amount of time dedicated to it. So while valuing these aspects I am also convinced that technique class is the single major challenge to access and inclusion because of the position it holds in our degree programmes and because of the conventions through which it is taught. So a professional performer is amongst others expected to execute sustained movement sequences, strength, balance, coordination, flexibility and control with accuracy, safety and technical fluency. This example of assessment of object is for technique classes is provided by trinity college London, I don't make them up. National diploma for professional dance. It states generic and open teaching goals, applicable for a number of techniques, time and time again, like last night, disabled performers do this. These open generic goals and there are other ones but I can't go into those right now, don't prescribe how a student demonstrates these skills the essence is that the student demonstrates ability to retain her, not a uniform, set phrase, with accuracy and perform it with appropriate control and detail. So the challenge is not to replace the skill set that a professional dancer needs, the challenge is how to train the skill set in in an accessible way, it is a question of teaching methodology. Bringing up the image of the artist and companies I mentioned earlier, I observe that all of them have to have a lot of methodologies that are successful in their training and the development of their work. However, like many other professional companies, they don't actually use formalised technique classes they often use a more fluid workshop way to train and to develop work. We can talk about that maybe later. But amongst those that do use more traditional forms of technique classes there are 2 main approaches, there are disability and style specific approaches. I don't know if you are familiar with Kitty Lung ballet for wheelchair users, multiple versions of the same exercises; why not apply these in the degree courses.
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A disability specific approach in higher education at least is discriminationary. I can't select on grounds of disability while rejecting others, offering ballet for wheelchair users is out. Multiple, so that leaves adaptations and even, also in the context of higher education, that either slows down the teaching process while you are teaching 3 classes at the same time, or it turns into a just do your own thing approach, leaving disabled dancers to fend for themselves. So I am taking things apart here. In the absence of a transferable integrated dance technique, meeting the training for professional but performers the main challenges are, how to train the required skills with a diverse student population. How can students demonstrate these skills through their movement range? Then how to give feedback and assess these performances. I found they provide a helpful framework ... who is familiar with universal design? Ok? I am glad I am talking about new stuff here. So, universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptations or specialised design. It was initially considered for the design of products, houses, parks, tools, its founder stipulated 7 principles. These have been reconsidered by Burgstahler and Corey and adjusted and expanded for teaching and construction. For my research, I was at liberty to select some of the principles; they include equitable use, flexibility of use, simple and intuitive. Tolerance of error, adjustable effort, feedback and assessment, class climate and interaction, physical environment, delivery method and perceivable information. So there is a whole catalogue there, unable to address all of them today, I will focus on equitable use and flexibility of use with a couple of examples. Before doing this, take a side track, talk about technique as a degree requirement.
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So students are required to successfully complete a number of courses to get their degree. Ballet and contemporary typically make up the bulk of the technique class requirements if not the whole degree requirements. There are oh technique forms that are not represented in this cannon, forms that are potentially much more accessible, contact improvisation, ballroom dancing etc. considering universal design, keen to introduce the following options for all students not just disabled students, for all students. Offered as part of the curriculum student study techniques relevant to their artistic interest outside of the degree programme. I am talking myself out of a job I know. All students explore the technical range through studies, processes, material and compositional structures, in both cases supervising faculty provide quality assurance and accreditation, while other subjects are studied within the student body. This proposal will not only allow for increased diversity within the student body but also increased diversity in the forms studied on a par with wall lay and modern. That is wrestling with some dragon; I have to put it out there. Let's now consider universal design with regards to the actual teaching of technique class. So the principle of equitable use with its demands for providing the same manes of use avoiding segregation and stigmatisation as well as making the process appealing to all users, challenges my understanding of adaptations in particular. Nondisabled students in my class well versed in technical training really struggled when asked to adapt. They felt singled out while independently developing, remembering and performing their variations in the context of the otherwise unified class. I asked why expect this of a disabled student to get on with it and do it? Adapting involves analysing, translating, composing request, remembers and independent independent performance. That is different from the usual copying process. But hang on, these are 5 amazing skills. So rather than ditching adaptations because it is inequitable, make it relevant to the whole class. Let's all adapt. We are going to get to that. Page | 7
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Working with adaptations involves from describing a task to improvisation, following varying degrees of setting and repetition. So moves across the, moves from, in one session and at this point it seems appropriate to change terminology from working with adaptations to working with individualised material. I would like to illustrate this with a couple of examples I used in my regular technique classes and so like, with any material that prepares people for the class that follows with start with the warm up, use some basic movement principles and can you get involved? [Louisa]
...
Jurg Koch: I will try and project. The first principle to explore is up and down. Wherever you are, give yourself some elbow room and see what is possible for you today in terms of up and down. What is the range you are working with? What are the possibilities of up and down for you? Cool! Explore your range. What moves up and down? Okay. We will go into pelvis next. Shoulders! Start with an exploration of the shoulders, through touch. Give each other a hand and wake up this area of the body. Initiate from the body part or into the body part. See what the shoulders do. Forward and backwards. I know you have restrictions where you are today. See what possibilities of forward and backwards you have got. Are there rhythmical differences in the forward and backwards movement in space? Can you layer it with level changes? You must be able to return from where you are too! [LAUGHTER] Explore the possibilities and go back up and down. Revisit some of the stuff that felt particularly good. Back with the shoulders. Next? Backwards? Level changes - there may be one you particularly like . Everyone is awake! Good job. Thank you. [applause]
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So using descriptions I asked the students and you, to explore a movement task in open time frames. I called for the next change. I show and I suggest various possibilities for the participants. They explore it according to their facilities. The number of repetitions vary. In the short demonstrations we established four distinct elements in the sequential order. Did you get warmer? Good. This structure can be developed further. What about time frames? An eight count. Lets do five. What about the aspects of the up and down that particularly work for you? Identify and set it and stick with it. When specifiying parameters, other factors, the overall space use is varied independently or remain open. This same process can also be used for the exploration and setting of other parts of the class, including the pliet exercise,moving to and out of the floor. Or different limbs and torso articulations from the central and peripheral use. This can be considered for more complex channel uses. Lets do that. [LAUGHTER] Have lots of space. You have your space to find for yourself.
I want to identify a curve reach forward in space. Every time you get involved in that, a curve reach forward in space - find yours and shift forward in space. Lots of different solutions for this. Curve forward and shift forward in space. Take a twist, a twist and forward for the twist. Follow the twist. Work with the means available to you today. Twist, twist, follow the twist. Recap, curve forward in space, shift, twist, twist, follow the twist. Reach, shift away.,Okay! Curve, shift in space, twist, twist, follow the twist, reach, transfer weight, reach back, So much movement. So here are a few considerations for the process. its an accumulative process, building up the elements and ordering thme ,giving the participants time to explore and improvise with them. I vary my version because I don't want to set a standard phase that can be copied. Where possible I step back and don't impose the tempo and rhythm. So the participants can find their range that lets them use their full range of motion. Same for the space, use your maximum space and don't try and cross the whole of the space. We don't have to work towards setting. This can be an improvised structure to explore and find different solutions and keep Page | 9
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pushing that aspect of the technique. Choose your favourite moments and share them with a partner, move when they move or move together. Set time qualities and time frames. Add material to that. When reaching and you balance, can you turn when twisting? See if you can push your maximum range and complexity you are working with. Whether improvised or set the material lets me come in with questions and feedback about specificity, what is your shift again, accuracy, alignment, full and safe use of the movement range. Your chair will tip if you move that way - lets see how we can work with that. A process that feeds into assessment. These are a number of ways in which I introduce the process in the class collective . I consider the process equitable and we pursue share movement principles that are relevant to professional training. Flexibility in use. Developing individualised material - [reads from the slide] Having practised this approach in the class collective we can provide choice in the method of use - creating flexibility. At the University of Washington students independently vary anything from a single to the entire movement phase in my classes and those of my colleagues. This applies to my own teaching - depending on the group I work exclusively with the process, once in a class, once a week. What is important is that I have these and other methodologies and that the whole class is familiar with the process.
I started with a grand title , leading us on a quest pursuing great ideals. We have discovered - treasure or fools gold? Rather than a magic solution it may sound familiar. You have done stuff like this. You may think its not technique class. Technique class in its root means skill. That is all. Individualised material allows a greater diversity to access the skills in the dance curriculum through their movement range. Other people use improvisation in their classes. Of course I borrow - I am collecting best practices and am more than happy to reveal my sources if there are questions there. Shifting the medieval image of the quest into a contemporary frame. I really like this image, called ivory tower, depicting a theatrical prop like tower. This new image suggests more of a road trip than the Page | 10
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idea of a medieval quest, more pragmatic and applied. Far from suggesting I have arrived at the final destination this is the route I suggest we take to make classes accessible. Work with the existing teaching goals for professional performers and examine how they are met. Curriculum and pedagogical solutions - consider multiple ways the goals can be met. use individualised teaching material. I have discussed only two principles that I work with but there is so much more to do. Work with the approaches regardless of the make up of the group. Don't wait until the disabled students apply to the courses . Do it anyway, shift the discussion from disability to diversity. The approaches discussed extend beyond the idea of adaptations as a disability accommodation - they are relevant to differences in body type, type of previous training , individual learning styles,. etc. In this way disabled students become part of the spectrum in the dance studios rather than ghettoised from the mainstream. IS it a clichĂŠ to say the journey is the most important part? It matters that we cross the boundaries between artistic practice and training. Thank you. [applause]
Mat Fraser: Fantastic. Thank you. We have got about 15 minutes for any questions. I am not stepping on your gig but in terms of universal design we should use the mics so those using the loop system can hear. So wait for the mic to come to you before you deliver your questions. I can be one of the roaming mics on this side so if you have any questions.
New Speaker: Thank you for the inspiring talk. A quick question, for my own benefit to understand, you talked about ballet for wheelchairs and the issue of not being able to offer something for a group, can you say a bit more? Page | 11
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Jurg Koch: Does this work? If I offer a class and sign it out in the university, a ballet class for wheelchair users I am targeting a minority group so the student with a visual impairment is excluded from the process. I am in a litigious society in the U.S.A and that is a problem. someone explored this and it was relevant to her - Kitty Lung. I would suggest as an independent study to a wheelchair user student. There are videos available. That is my independent study suggestion. To explore this realm and I will give credit for the technique requirements in the university.
New Speaker: So there isn't an opportunity to offer that to all students? They experience the ballet through the wheelchair user ? Its a way of subverting the experience.
Jurg Koch: I would not offer it in a general university course. They can explore their individual process and how its relevant to them, how they can develop their own technical training. There are important angles in but not to offer ballet for wheelchair users . ITs a small percentage.
New Speaker: Thank you.
New Speaker: Also, very inspiring. Thank you. You talked about the practice as part of your tool kit and something you don't use everyday. I want to know the balance of the courses, I am thinking of the non disabled students and how you adapt to them to this way of working. Are they asking for other needs? Page | 12
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Jurg Koch: I have only a small percentage of disabled people in my courses. But the diversity applies as there are all different body types - some don't transfer to the floor. Its not relevant to their movement range. We find different levels for them. Once students identify the process relevant to them they really take it on. That is my way in. if there is a disabled student in the course the process is already there and modelled by other students in the course. I do this in my regular class and start the quarter with the process so the students are familiar and depending on who is in the course I do more or less with it. We have students in their 50s and 60s who take the technique class. Some have done hip hop and have different technical training and we must work together and cover different technical skills. We started economic crisis - we folded up three levels of the different technical training. How do I make everyone push 100% in the environment? Those are a few examples of how the process is made relevant.
Again, it is a beautifully illustrated model and thank you, but in a way I am going to pick up also with Janet's question and it seems that there is a, a piece missing which is, if we are looking still at developing dancers for the profession, we can see how model works for the disabled student. There is no question; it is a very high model. The question would be in the long term, how the nondisabled students measure up in terms of employability and technique. So that is a very big question which I guess we can only answer in the long term but it needs to be raised and I think it is, if I am right it is the kind of question that Janet is also raising. So we can see that there will be a particular set of skills developed in this work which is wonderful. Big question mark. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: Once the process is there. JURG KOCH: Once the process is there, we are going do this now, for this, this is a range, they do this. Other students for whose that is not part of their range, they are familiar with the process and they built their own variations of it. Once I know we have introduced it, there is a comfort level participating in that way. We Page | 13
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can go into that as well. That is how students work in my colleagues classes. It doesn't rule out working with set and co-defined material. Something has to happen before. The other one is also, you know how it is when we show material and people copy and they copy the form and they have copied this form since they are 3 years old but it is still not registering what actually happens on the line, there is no connectivity. It doesn't translate through the body. Found students showing struggling with this material, perfectly, doing it perfectly in their mother tongue. I can say, you have got it, tie and find that in the French material we are using as well, which maybe ballet. So I think there are really important aspects that will prepare the nondisabled students for the professional work as well. NEW SPEAKER: I also think Jurg that you made the point about students have the option to do what it is that they need outside of it. So, doing what they do with you and if it is then is ballet or contemporary or that tech nay they need then it is to them to pick that up as part of what they are doing with these principles kind of underlying. JURG KOCH: Yes they can take this to different environments hopefully. I see a huge difference with colleagues; it takes a decade to get to know people, to get these comfort zones. Our graduate students that come in, they come from different places, so the students encounter different resistances to the process with different instructors, not my regular colleagues, not the people there year in year out. It is graduate students coming in from a different world. They look at it and say, what are they doing, that they are not doing my material. That is an important process when they take it to other places. MAT FRASER: A question from Laura and then Luke. NEW SPEAKER: Just wanted to, with the thing of the relevance for nondisabled dancers with this. I completely agree with your process, I think that actually it is learning that process makes them more employable because they are learning skills are how to make everything more relevant to them. You commented that Page | 14
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everybody is working to 100% it is not about watering down the material or the technique, it is about going ok, how can I make it relevant to me? So you can go into a technique class and say this is too easy or relevant. The skills they have learned with you, these are relevant to me and I will make it relevant to me 100% in whatever class I am in. Personally I think it is relevant to everyone. JURG KOCH: Thank you. NEW SPEAKER: I have got a twofold question and two part question. The first part is, I am interested in how much support you have had from the institution to develop the thinking and how much responsibility is placed on you, or whether people in the faculty contributing to this way of working and the second part, with you working this way, what is the influence with your peers or the principles of the organisation? JURG KOCH: Remind me if I am not covering both of them. Support from the institution, fantastic chair who allows me to develop new courses. Then comes economic crisis and I can't offer the courses but I can have space, offer a course in there and it is not a university course because university courses are prohibitively expensive, I can get people from the outside in. That is fantastic to get the bureaucracy out of the way. I have had a project with my peers as well looking at individualised material so my colleague Betsy looked at it in her ballet, more individual rather than my collective approach and my colleague Jen as well who is doing it. When the faculty gets involved you shift the culture in the place. There is a programme for disability studies, I had permission to be part of a seminar there, they asked really relevant questions and I had to go back to my practice and said, hang on, I think I am doing what I am doing but no I am not and I have to rethink the process. I think these, this enriched my experience rather than going in my little ghetto, this was a wonderful process in that. MAT FRASER: Time for one last question. You were the next in the queue, so being fair.
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NEW SPEAKER: I will try and be quick, I am interesting in the note of who is the teacher and who the is the learner, and the collaborative process that takes place. Can you say a little bit about that and also yesterday we spoke a lot about research and, the work that you are doing and others are doing, is that being documented from sort of insider perspectives really of students participating in your processes that are being developed? JURG KOCH: Student to teacher. Yes, I am learning all the time. I also said when I give feedback, I find myself coming in with questions more. So actually students what is your choice there before I say, it is the wrong choice yes, because I don't understand. I don't necessarily see what is going on and I am learning to read the students and their choices in the process and so at the end of the course, I failed so many times. I failed students so many times when I go back. This didn't work for me, ok. I will try next time again. There is lots of feedback that comes from students and these are sometimes difficult moments there as well in that process. The second part was documenting ok. We have, one of our projects when I talked about working with my two colleagues was delivering surveys to the students and there is amazing feedback coming back from them. Oh I feel, I have got agency in that process, I get to determine something, I am learning at my pace. Other students worry, I am not working quite as hard, am I being lazy with my choice. These are important bits of information to take in as well and to shape the information that you give to the students. Thank you. MAT FRASER: Once again ladies and gentlemen, please thank you Jurg [applause]. Awesome, ok, I forgot that where possible speakers have been asked to use this microphone, clearly it is a superior microphone and it works better for everybody. Now ladies and gentlemen, awesome session now called fuelling the fair. SDT casting exploration, with Caroline Bowditch and Janet Smith. [applause]
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CAROLINE BOWDITCH: Good morning. How are you all? We have a supply of match sticks in the foyer, should you need them for your eyelids, I will be borrowing them later. Thank you Jurg for that amazing presentation. Janet's and I as we indicated yesterday have been on this massive journey for the last 4 years together and we made a piece that some of you may have seen, NQR a couple of years ago. One of the things we came across, one of our challenges was, what happens if myself or Mark who is the other disabled dancer, co-choreographer on the piece, were unable to perform. Who would cover us? I know this is a question that Candoco have also had conversations about. The conversation, so we kind of went, ah, we don't know the answer to that, let's hope it doesn't happen. We shelved it. One of the things I came back to Janet saying was, we really need to have this conversation and we really need to explore it a bit. Another thing that happened was, we kind of got into that thing about, well the disabled dancer would never be able to cover a nondisabled dancer. It isn't going happen, they have a set material and dancers come in and learn the new material. That is the way the rep company works. So I could never necessarily cover for another dancer. So this was our exploration, our hypothesis or our myth was, this couldn't happen. We felt we would give it a go anyway, I am a bit like that really, can't be done, let's have a go and see what happens. Might just blow it away, there we go. What we have done cleverly, do you want to add anything to that. SPEAKER2RB: Whenever you cover a role it is. JANET SMITH: Whenever you cover a role, it is different. Someone might have a slightly dodgy knee, we realise this is a figure of adaptation and an interesting one. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: Our lovely Vicky Wilson who is our marketing queen, has made this split screen video that shows me replacing one of the nondisabled dancers in a tiny duet called love games I do with the lovely Uri who is also in the room, we are hoping that the choreographer will be here to have a chat with us Page | 17
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about the process following the film. If we can have a look at at it, that is great. A tiny snippet from love games. [applause] JANET SMITH: We are going to invite Joanne to talk about adaptations, this is a great microphone, do it from here and how you found the. NEW SPEAKER: Hello. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: You can make it higher. , we did a piece called the long and the short of it, can you see why? NEW SPEAKER: I think that the experience was much more easy than we had predicted and we felt it was pretty straightforward we did it in two sessions and I think that it was quite, it was possible and it was quite easy because we worked on intentions, so rather than working on form we just, I would just go back to the choreography that I had made, so what was the intention that I had when we did that step? Then I just posed the question to Caroline or to myself, how we translate that into Caroline's physicality and the same way I did with Naomi and Juri we worked together and the 3 of us came up with a new version of it. Sometimes another occasion it wasn't the intention it was more a physical task, it was about a drop, it was about weight or was about a circular movement so we just basically worked on those premises. I think that the essence dispute of the choreography remained pretty much the same. JANET SMITH: That's. Small and simple thing. I don't know if anybody had questions about that. Yes. NEW SPEAKER: Which version did you prefer? NEW SPEAKER: I don't know, do you love more your mum or your dad? I don't know. I think, I think that I would love to have had more time with Caroline because we just did it in very short time, so I think there would be potential for more, so had more time to do it with it originally. So yes, both, I don't know. Page | 18
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NEW SPEAKER: It is not really a question, do you mind if I say something? For having witnessing the process, watching the video clearly today, trying to be honest, there is one element that is missing, it is presence. I think Scottish theatre the presence and it is not that far away, Caroline's presence in that is really huge and I think it is a completely big part of the covering as well. So just wanted to say that. NEW SPEAKER: Sorry, I am very excited to see this work happening, it asks essential questions about the identity of the piece and the identity of the performer and there is a way, a strand of philosophy aesthetics that maintains that the body is neutral and I think, that is a fallacy which body is neutral and which body has an identity. I have seen a project from this company can do co, doing reset, reset, reset, from Patricia Brown. It is a capturing of sense in the right process and so, I am glad you went on this exploration as well. Thank you. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: I at some point it would be great to get, I mean it is hard as it indicates it is harder to watch it on video than it is to see it live. Yes. I think it is the beginning of a conversation definitely not the end. I have some tiny housekeeping issues that we didn't want to add to Mat's list because it was already growing. Gil are you in the room, can you stand up so people is seen you, keen to meet with anybody in the middle of research around integrated practice. My recommendation is sit together at the table at lunch. Also, so you know, after the symposium we will be setting, we have already set up a you tube channel that we will put all the videos that you have seen here on so that you can do with them what you will. If you think they are going be useful for your teaching or when working with other groups or to show to other disabled people or not. Then please, they are there as a resource. It will also contain an edited video that all the students are filming, we are going try and capture the essence of these 2 days in a very short film and all the keynote presentations will also be on that.
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So when we send out our survey monkey evaluation thing, which we will do next week, there is nothing worse at the end of the day, and if you can just fill out a form before you leave. No mate, I have got a train to catch. We are going to just send it out to you next week, so you have got time to reflect and think about how it was here. We are now going to move into breakout sessions which are going to be different to yesterday in that you get to choose. I am not going to be the dictator today. So there are 3 break outs for you to choose. Amy is going to put up the slide to show where they are. The break outs are going be presented, they are going to have two presenters each. Going to have 2 presenters each, short presentations in the break out and then time for discussion around the topics that you have just heard and then that information will be gathered and in a summarised version which will then come back to the main session for a session chaired by Maggie Kinloch from RCS. So the sessions that you can choose from, there is one around dance which is going to happen in the Longforgan Room, where we had the networking and where Sally played last night. One about alternative training that is going to happen in here. Then one that is going to be, well it is going be a provocation from Suzi Morrice about in search of a model particularly around the theatre training and that is going to happen in the up in the mansion house. There are many details in your abstract pack if your pack if you want to know more about that. Please make your selections and move to your break out rooms now and we will see you back here at 12 o'clock and the good news is, there is coffee and tea in the break out rooms. Just to inspire you to go, in here it is in the foyer. [workshops] [Louisa] ... Page | 20
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New Speaker: Hi, does anyone ned a speech to text reporter or a signer? Give me a wave if you need that to access the session. No-one is waving at me.
[ breakout session ]
Mat Fraser: Can the last session return to the table for the feedback? Anyone? Hello! If you notice who they are please tap them. I will grab Louise. Thank you. Thanks.
Maggie Kinloch: Can everyone take a seat? We are well behind and should get cracking. Come and take a seat so we can get started. We are late in beginning which means you have been having brilliant discussions but we are 15 minutes behind and should try and catch up. Please can those at the back come forward. Thank you very much. Welcome to the feedback session from the continuing the journey break out sessions which were clearly very lively. We have the people leading the sessions on the platform and I will invite up to the podium those who are feeding back on the discussions. I want to be cheeky and take the chance to say although a number of organisations have been involved in making the event happen I want to say thank you to everyone in Scottish Dance Theatre because they have been the driving force. Thank you. Why was I asked to chair? I am a theatre director and vice principal at the The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland . I suppose that was why I was asked to chair this particular session. We have looked at the journey from informal training to formal training and into work. I have listened to parts of the conversations and it seemed a number of barriers have been identified particularly with the move into formal training and some proposals have come forward that we are able to hear. Why bother with the Page | 21
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formal training? Many artists don't and do fine. But if we accept the traditional model of the deep learning cycle the first part is WANTING to do it. Everyone here wants it. The 2nd and 3rd part is being taught and reflecting on that and getting feedback before the full application of it. In this context the model is broken because it seems part 2 and 3 doesn't appear to be accessible. If we accept the model is broken lets fix it. Lets find out the proposal from the discussion groups starting with the group in here. Can the feedback people come to the podium because this is the best mic.
New Speaker: We discussed alternative training and Sally talked about her training and the kind of barriers to what she would have liked to happen in a forthright way. There was a searing honesty about her presentation. If you know her you know what I mean. She talked about the important of training mentorship and leadership and the necessity of grasping autonomy and daily decision making. This is something everyone could benefit from. The dedication and passion and drive to master your craft, having a clear purpose. A reference to the fact that many rely on extrinsic motivation when we should look intrinsically and make ourselves do the work again and again, to want to excel is something she tries to foster. That denotes a huge respect for the art form. Looking at my notes again! One of the searingly honest contributions is that she wants everyone to ask honest questions and not applaud any effort made. She wants everyone to give an honest response, is it good enough, can I approve? To be able to give those responses to the young people and everyone she works with as well. Am I booming a bit?
New Speaker: yes.
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New Speaker: Sorry, I am not used to that. Although those of us who were here at the time had to rush, Sally wanted me to clarify that its really important we are clear that music as therapy is different from music training and music to access on a social skill level, those things are different. Currently they are lumped together for funding and that should be addressed so there is no misunderstanding for those who want to access training. I want to talk about Louise's presentation and the wonderful programme in Gloucestershire called Ignite for emerging choreographers to give them access to working with other choreographers and give them input in their training and leadership skills.
Louise's report is probably available to people as there are many interesting things on it. I will zoom through to the successes of it - the mentoring was particularly successful and the emerging choreographers ranged from aged 20 to 60. The mentoring was very successful and there was a national reach in the programme but not as far as Scotland! [LAUGHTER] Maybe we could remedy that. They worked closely with strategic partners, Gloucestershire Dance now called G Dance. There was excellent delivery and the artistic development of the emerging choreographers was taken seriously. A challenge they realised quickly was they tried to do too much! The leadership programme they offered was not quite right for everyone, some just wanted to get back into the studio and others were ready to embrace getting more out of dancing. She accepts they could do more finely tuned bespoke programmes and there could be more frequent programmes across the countries and that model sounds interesting for people to discuss with other partners. That model draws from a lot of research about what the emerging choreographers want. The research is there and they would really benefit from it. I should let someone else speak. Thank you for listening.
Maggie Kinloch: Thank you. I suggest we hear all the feedback and if we have time, a few minutes, to take questions that may emerge. Two powerful emotions Page | 23
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mentioned there. A desire for honest and in the discussion groups I heard a few talking about the fear in institutions, these are powerful emotions and perhaps something we must consider. We heard about the mentoring of artists. Maybe we should mentor the teachers if they have the fear. Feedback from the dance group now.
New Speaker: Hi everyone. We had two interesting presentations - one from Ally Jarvis, she works for the Scottish funding council for higher education and one from Sarah Watley from Coventry university. Ally gave a general overview of the Scottish system in particular and the work they did to provide access to disabled artists to the education system. It highlighted some of the difficulties - one of the big issues was around careers advice. That was a big issue, around the negative advice that some students were given. This comes back to what Maggie said, the fear and anxiety is hitting not necessarily to the students but the potential access, the keys into that. Careers advisers suggesting that people should not take that route because they won't stand a chance. Sarah went into more detailed examples of the work she did at Coventry university where they set up an inclusive and integrated course and they did a lot of work to get that model happening. They had to invent learning support assistants - a person working between the teachers and students to ensure the right support is there. Absolutely! That is the word for that. The LSAs have been mentors and advocates for that work for different universities as well. In the feedback session at the end we talked about ... the formal education system and the fact there is a lot of expectations for students to gain a degree. What is that benchmark and where does it come from? to get onto a degree course we must be fair and say its not assumed that a disabled student will get onto a course. There must be talent and potential there which can be worked with. There is a question around the model that Sarah has developed, how can the excellent higher education model be filtered down into further education and the community work so that students are ready to get onto the courses. Page | 24
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The other question - we looked at the Conservatoire level training. Which is some of the big college institutes and concluded its still very hard for disabled students to gain access there and the whole issue around that is unanswered at the moment. It comes down to the fear where people aren't prepared to push students into these places. Does that cover the big issues in a nutshell? Any other thoughts I have missed? I shall pass straight on. Thank you. [applause]
Maggie Kinloch: Thank you very much. The mention there of the LSAs and the idea of mentoring the teachers - perhaps there is a partnership between the disciplined teacher and the LSAs that would develop the confidence in the teacher. And the negative careers advice - the wrong information that is out there and how to communicate an accurate picture of what is available and accessible. A number of things emerging here. James Browning is reporting back on the third group - the theatre group.
New Speaker: Hi. Theatre - always problematic. [LAUGHTER] Not sure how to summarise the great conversation we had. We didn't really have a presentation but Suzie referred to yesterday's discussions. We heard various forms of witness of good and inspiring practice - the problems to do with disabled practitioners being isolated, the structures around there and connecting to big organisations who want access to your expertise in these fields. Sometimes the way is to look for individual support needs and the presence of a disabled actor forces the organisation to think about the way it works. We heard from John Batty about how it took 12 years to effect the cultural shift. The context of the work there was transformed . Social networking possibilities and there is a suggestion about parent councils and getting direct access to these to show what can be done and moving around the educational structures which can be influenced by fear. We Page | 25
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talked about presence and that being hugely important. We found it easier to talk about work in schools in community contexts and training than talking about the representation of disabled people in mainstream theatre. We didn't avoid it but we found it easier to talk about that. We got onto the challenges and why we don't see an accurate representation of the world we live in on our stages. That is a much more heated conversation - perhaps the next conference! I should summarise by saying education education networks and training. We need disabled artists on stage and into our buildings so their presence is seen and felt. There are many reasons why it doesn't happen. There is the whole notion of excellence and whose definition we work to. We should remind ourselves why we are trying to do this. A few practical things emerged - NTS have talked about having an open casting session in Scotland, not just for disabled actors. We get them in a room with directors running buildings across Scotland. We get directors in the same room as disabled actors to find out who people are and what they can do. That is one way of starting to make a difference.
Inspired by Scottish Dance Theatre and Janet to say we will do a piece, drawing on the expertise and knowledge of Graeae. If people out there don't necessarily like it that is tough! If it's a bad piece of art, fine. At least it will be an interesting bad piece of art that will provoke discussion and debate. This is a political as well as an artistic area of work. This may provide some opportunity to talk about that now.
[applause] Maggie: interesting we heard about the negative careers advice out there, we had a proposal about engaging with the parent coup sills in school. There is a way of getting accurate information out there, start young, so parents understand from an early stage in the child's development. James said of course we understand it takes time. That is true, within time there is planning for something and you can plan and plan and plan and then do it, that might be a decade later. Page | 26
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Do it, develop it and plan while you are doing it. I think that is where we are at and we have simply got be doing. We have to be doing and planning but we can't start the planning until we start really doing. If action is taken that means that the leaders need to act and build it into their strategic planning processes in the companies and in places of education. Need to make sure that staff and other artists are buying into that and it is part of what they are doing. No doubt about it. If I am honest, I am disappointed from the lack of attendance from senior people in Scotland. There is enough of us here to start something, we have to bring peers in, we have to do it. People in the education establishment, we need to brick them on board and I know that some have sent representatives from the companies, in the end it is the leaders that have to do it. I would like to come back to that point, that point that the group brought back to us there. Excellent, definitions of excellence, I don't know about you, last night in the theatre, one of the most excellent nights I have had in the theatre in a long time by any definition. We need to get the work seen. The work last night and the other work of that quality. We need to show people what we are talking about rather than talk to them. I heard people saying, could we have web sites to show that work. Put that work out on tour. How can we get the work seen? As James said, loads of reasons people say no we can't do it, whatever, well you know, excuses are a great thing aren't they? Sorry, I don't buy it. Anyway well done, you have got 15 minutes left for discussion, so thank you to the 3 people who fed back, you did it wonderfully concisely. [feedback], I am feeding back all on my own. Ah, two roving mikes, please wait for the mike to come to you. Say to the speakers, two microphones on the table, I would be grateful if you would use a microphone if you respond to the questions, it would make life easier for all of us. If you have some comment to make, wait for a microphone to come to you. Page | 27
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I think it is live. NEW SPEAKER: Just wanted to say our programme did reach Scotland [feedback] I somebody running to solve the problem there. NEW SPEAKER: Our programme did reach Scotland and, I wanted to make that point because we had a selection process we selected people that were most relevant to the programme, so it did reach Scotland. I wanted to clarify before I got attacked. Yes, thank you. [laughter]. Maggie: attack neatly avoided. Anybody who wants to ask anything of our speakers or raise any points. Somebody at the back here, the mike is on its way to you right now. There you go. Thank you. NEW SPEAKER: I there, my point is, I mean, I am a student at the moment so maybe speaking about something that is maybe already out there but for me, we seem to know a lot about integrational work in participatory community sense and then we have got people in sort of professional training sense. Perhaps not knowing how to adjust their work and maybe there needs to be a lot more partnership between those who have been trained to work you know. I mean I am trained in community arts, trained to work in the arts with various client groups and I would love to see work where I am working with the people who are doing you know, our professionally trained rather than working against them which I feel like it is often portrayed in terms of resources and practice and ideology. So that was my thoughts basically and what do you think of that? NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: anybody on the panel like to pick up on that, if so, pick up that microphone. NEW SPEAKER: I am not sure I will directly answer that, come up as part of the feedback and discussions earlier, there are challenges within each sector of Page | 28
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education, training and so on. So we do define them differently, I come from a university environment and I think something that we can offer and perhaps need to do better. Something that gill mentioned in terms of getting a research group. We have a discourse around disability, it is helping us think of our practice differently, not just about the practical activity of learning skills, techniques but it is about engaging with the thought processes and what happens to our thinking, our reference space is different. I think there is something that we can perhaps do in perhaps trying to support across the sectors and allowing that research to be documented, disseminated and communicated. Communicated not because we have all the answers but because I think we have the time to engage in discussion and debate which I think can support what goes on in the practical technical skill development work in a vocational Conservatoire setting. That is a way of getting that knowledge disseminated. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: I know we have colleagues from creative Scotland here, there is a project happening which is called art work Scotland and part funded by creative Scotland and part funded by the Paul ham Lyn foundation. About developing artists to work as teachers or facilitators of learning and strikes me there is something emerging from this, that might be embedded in this project, maybe that is worth a conversation, in terms of making sure that as we develop people in the teaching skills, let's build this in as a given with that. Anybody else wave at me if you want to? Get a microphone down here? Thank you. NEW SPEAKER: I just like to throw in the idea of the role of a creative producer. We talked a lot about the transition issues from community or training then into professional there is just a model I am aware of which is a theatre Bristol it is a network organisation and the Arts Council pay for creative producers for a variety of sectors there and it is one of the things that I have been discussing people about the role and in terms of what they do is flexible but here is a kind of go at a short list. I see creative producers a bit like football scouts, so part of what they do is talent identification. They sign post, their relationship brokers, they are cultural interpreters, I have put my glasses on to read the rest here they can fund raise, they can do help with admin support, they mentor, they are provocateurs, they challenge so I think that role has a great deal of flexibility and it is just something I would like to put forward. Page | 29
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NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: very interesting point, perhaps some development we can do there with the creative producers. Anybody from the panel? Thanks. NEW SPEAKER: Is that ok? Yes, I just think and I am speaking coming from a creative learning community point myself it is really important to ensure that the professional practice is feeding into the community practice and coming back around again. [feedback], sorry. A bit like my feedback. So yes, it is ensuring that whilst this is very much rooted in community, in training that we then have the logical professional path ways for people to access and I think it is important to come back to that and what we were discussing in the theatre, kind of group feedback group was let's just get on with it. What are we going to do? Who is going to do it? When is it going to happen? That feels like a really important thing to keep reflecting back on. Amongst all the really important crucial work that has to happen within education, training and community. Maggie: thanks. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: thanks, a few more, right on that row, thank you. NEW SPEAKER: This is from Lisa Simpson of Simpson board enterprises, about the training of young people. I am voicing for Lisa because her impairment doesn't allow her to speak verbally, if you want to have more conversations with Lisa, come and see me and I will speak to you using my letter board. I will use first person for Lisa. NEW SPEAKER: Ages ago someone asked me if I would have done better rather than in main stream school. My reaction, until 13 in special school then into main stream school and then further and higher education. I had a thought that because we already know that the arts works so well bringing disabled and nondisabled young people together, should disabled people who have been identified as gifted and talented in special schools not already be spending a Page | 30
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regular half day or day a week doing arts practice in a main stream context? A specialist classes, so it is woven into the fabric of the school week. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: thank you for the offer for people to catch up outside of this. Really interesting question in there about quite, I suppose the philosophy and practice in early education and then through into secondary. Any thoughts? Doesn't need to be a question from the floor, might be you want to pick up on that point? Anybody from the panel, an interesting point. Sally: thank you. Hello. Right, yes, so, main steam schools spending a day a week in main stream schools, I have had experience of specialist and main stream schools, I think the more that people can do in both the better I would say, in a nutshell because you know, ultimately, you need to that diversity of experience especially if somebody with an impairment you node that level of diversity in your experience set, you will come across lots of people without impairment in your life and you need to be able to interact with them. In a nutshell I would agree with Lisa on that. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: there is time for one more; I saw the first-hand go up. A mike there? Already got one Caroline. You want to go first? CAROLINE BOWDITCH: I wanted to pick up on a point about, there was an implication, somehow in what he said that if there was work produced on a main stage that included disabled actors, there was an implication that (a) it might be bad and (b) that audiences weren't ready for it. I think that we actually need to flip that coin and go in thinking that work is going to be excellent and let us not patronise our audiences by thinking that. I think one of the things that we have learned at SDT is that sometimes you just as we all are ready; you just have to do it. The results of our research have indicated that actually it is a positive experience for audiences not a negative one. I think to go in with that thought rather than we might fail at this, is actually possibly a better way. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: a good point, a lot of research on how audience impact effects last night a vast majority of us knew the part of the programme, we went Page | 31
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in with the expectation of we were going to see something fabulous, we did. We were able to receive it on that basis. Let's take this point, then the last point from the floor up there. NEW SPEAKER: Yes, I think basically what we were saying it is about the artistic integrity, people taking the art form and reflecting on Jenny's process yesterday and the richness of that and the reviews she had read out. Making sure that people are engaging with the art and yet if they think the arts is about , fair enough, have that opinion but it is why they are coming, acknowledging the integrity. We would want them to come and embrace it and be challenged. I think pretty much Jenny demonstrated the richness and artistic integrity that moving towards this work in this way can offer, definitely. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: ok, you will get the last word here. NEW SPEAKER: Anna, my point is linked to that, the point was raised in the theatre discussion that audiences may not only not be ready for work with artists with disabilities, but also they will go to the theatre and theatre, the person playing Othello is the wheelchair user. The casting director, 15 years ago you wouldn't be able to put a black person in a commercial. I think 2 years ago in London, there was a black Romeo, everybody said, that was 2 years ago and for me it is irrelevant whether you go there sitting, I wonder if the black Romeo would be as good as the white one. Or the person in the wheelchair, wonder if it is going to inhabit the wonderfulness of the play. The bottom line is the art form is about suspending it is about creating an intelligent world and a unique forum for if it is a talented artist or production it is regardless of whatever that person maybe, they are Romeo as soon as you go there, ten minutes into the production, that really is in terms of doing it I think the fear is very unfounded in that way. NEW SPEAKER: Maggie: that is why we are proud of our students, thank you. [applause]
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Ok well, we do have to come to an end on this part, I know the discussions will go and on and on and on both here and where we go back to wherever we are, by e mail, phone, however we communicate with each other. Thank you to all of the speakers that set the sessions off and to those who reported. I will hand back to Mat to bring the morning to an end. Thank you very much everybody. [applause] MAT FRASER: Thanks Maggie, awesome. Don't worry; we will be going 5 minutes. Jurg, technique classes, definitions, challenging is the actually teaching methodology, universal design, huge round of applause I think he managed to articulate in the best way possible what everybody is wanting but it also immediately brought up yeah, but that is not at degree level and you know, we are hearing more and more, the importance of the transitions and presumably therefore what I am hearing and what I am from the floor is that the transition into degree and further is going to be the most problematic with the existing barriers. I would personally suggest therefore that the next conference on this we have a keynote that is specifically addresses this next transition if you like. Then other things that random but do, are appropriate and. I know a guy, short stature, in pan toe, Wimbledon; he has got lines and a character. It is not like he is one of the 7 or anything. Here is the best thing I have heard about, historical having dwarfs in pan toe, I don't need to tell you the history of that and what it means. I am like wow; you have got a part, learning lines, that is an improvement. You know, I am the understudy for the dame. I will only do it if I go on 3 times and you make a costume for me that fits. That is happened and so I was really sad to have missed it. Imagine the cultural shift for that audience, where the dwarf in the pan toe is the dame. I would have loved to have seen that. I was very encouraged I popped in on a couple of the discussions in the theatre, was encouraged on what I heard from the national theatre of Scotland. Into one Page | 33
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of their strategies, improving the presence of disability on stage whether that be disabled actors or productions. It is commissions to me it is obvious that it is new commissions that we need. Commissions from disabled writers who are proven good writers, commissions for writers who have a knowledge of disability and an attempt to reflect the real world which is that there are some disabled people and mostly nondisabled people in the world and hopefully we all try to live together at some point. It is not, it is not rocket science that one is it? So, you know, rep Dundee, you know, talking big and then fired down there proof of the pudding is in the eating isn't it. Come back in a year's time and see if things are a bit better. At this point I should perhaps tell you, that I do have a production in duty and the beast next year. Nice to get a gig in Dundee, I am not going to stand here and not try. Then one thing that is a personal bug bear of mine, the casting of disabled people in Shakespeare. Isn't Shakespeare, isn't the continuation of doing Shakespeare part of the oppressive paternalistic paradigm of excellence we have been complaining about? I don't know, couldn't I play Malvolio, isn't he obsessed with his stockings, a man servant. I won't be hamlet, my sword skills not being particularly good. Never have a disabled person at royalty. Killed them at birth and said they died. Historical accuracy in Shakespeare. "all female production" they complain. It is Shakespeare, it is great and everything, but, we can have other plays you know. I wanted to say, I mean, of course it is problematic with Shakespeare, Shakespeare's day everyone was a bloke you know. We are moving on, we are going to have lunch. I would as Caroline suggested earlier, our last large big network opportunity so perhaps you might like to avail yourselves of that awesome opportunity by lunching with people that you want to talk to and we will all come back in an hour and then get on with the afternoon. Starting with a good artistic intervention of birds of paradise, which I know you will enjoy.
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Thank you to the panel, the speak speakers, have a nice lunch and we will see you in the afternoon. [... [lunch] [Louisa] ...
Mat Fraser: I know your conversations are really interesting especially you lot at the back but could you stop now? Brill, thank you. I would not have made a great teacher. We will let you settle and collect and readjust your mobile phones to the off switch. Five minutes behind - that is not bad for the second day after lunch. Sorry to be the disciplinarian but that is my job. The housekeeping - for those who can see, I am not auditioning for QVC but I am modelling a small bracelet that I can get over my slim flippers. If anyone owns this or knows someone who does, would they... All right! And the winner is! [LAUGHTER]
New Speaker: I also owe someone a tenner. [LAUGHTER] Thank you.
Mat Fraser: And the result of the DNA test is... Frank is an associate artist for GDance. An artist on Ignite, funding to develop his piece and there is a DVD available of his work. It says crank as part of his email but its a misprint - it should be cronk. We have found a black memory stick that we believe may contain Paula Hocking's presentation. So one of the purple people has it! [LAUGHTER] Do we know if we are ready for the next bit? Awesome. In a while we will have a Page | 35
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Reaching the Destination but for now the artistic intervention by Birds of Paradise. [applause]
Shona: My name is Shona and I am the company manager for Birds of Paradise theatre. I am on my own today. I was meant to be joined by Alison Peebles by Skype but she is in rehearsals for a show in Edinburgh and Glasgow for the next few weeks. We recorded an interview with me asking her questions earlier this week, asking her questions about her up coming show, the Man who lived twice, and Alison talking about her career. For me the show is particularly interesting for today because it shows the pathway that happened in the 1920s and 30s. I find it incredibly inspiring but I will let Alison tell you more about it. We will get her on the screen now.
What initially attracted you to the story?
New Speaker: It was fascinating, when Garry told me about when we worked on Mother Courage, about the meeting with John Guilguid, he was very famous and influential in the 1930s in York, when Guilguid met him. He influenced Thornton and Eugene O'Neill. What was amazing, he was not writing plays, he was 50 by this time, and he was paralysed from the neck down with a strange condition. He created a theatre in his apartment, an old society, the cultural with young playwrights, and actors and directors who came to him for help. He wrote a lot of plays at the time and refused to take credit .He created a mausoleum for himself on a plinth like cataphalt (sp) where he lay dressed in a suit, made up and beautifully manicured and attended on. He was blind as well as paralysed. He had a silk ribbon thing over his eyes. People would come and listen and talk to him and he seemed to have incredible perceptions - he knew everything that was Page | 36
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going on in the world at the time. It was fascinating. He was a huge friend of John Barrymore who then went to Hollywood. He never made it in to the Talkies. Barrymore was always asking for advice. He, Guilguid, remembered the meeting for the rest of his life until he died. This man, trapped in this body in a room he created into this theatre. It was amazing.
New Speaker: As an actor and director you sat on both sides of the casting table. Any advice for any young actors auditioning for drama school?
New Speaker: It's always difficult because casting is such... you never know what people want .The part may say young physical guy with incredibly mean attitude. Then the director may say, this is someone totally different. But it seems really interesting. You can never second guess what the director or the producer want. You should always be true to your own instincts about what you think the part is and don't try and give necessarily what they want. For a film and T.V part, you must realise that a lot of the people just want to see the character there and then. If you go for someone who doesn't wear make up and doesn't wear make up don't come all flash and bling! But theatre is more imaginative and you can be more creative and hopefully get a chance to show what you are good at and get to read. Be yourself and believe in yourself and try not to be too nervous.
New Speaker: What side of the table do you prefer?
New Speaker: Both sides at different time. When I act I love it and when I direct I love it. When I do one I don't want to do the other. I love being director because of the greater creative responsibility and vision you have for the whole piece, Page | 37
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bringing in the designer, the sound and music and lighting designer. As an actor, I always have an idea of the whole piece but you are only responsible for your character and their position in the piece. You are at the hands of the director. If they decide to make a forest out of matchsticks or an army out of plastic horses you have to go with it! You haven't got much ... You are responsible for your part and the other characters You can communicate with. That is a creative position as well.
New Speaker: You played some of the most iconic female roles on stage - do you see yourself as a role model for younger actors?
New Speaker: I don't ... the older I get I suppose I have now. I never used to. People say that to me but ... not a role model so much as that I can be in a position to give experience and advice and I have good relationships with a lot of young actors and directors and I can help them. Have a creative collusion with, socially, hugely socially in a way that can help. The great thing about theatre and our business is that ... for working together and creating together. I don't know if that answers the question. I am not sure about role model.
New Speaker: Just a model?
New Speaker: yes. [LAUGHTER] [applause]
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Shona: Sorry that Alison could not join us live. She is rehearsing at North East Edinburgh arts and they gave us space on Tuesday evening to do a video and were set up with Skype for us today too. I have another bit of Birds of Paradise work to share with you. A couple of years ago we did a European project with companies from Italy, Germany Bulgaria and Hungary and we travelled to each others countries and did workshops and performed pieces in each others countries and it was an interesting look at how different countries work and different styles of work. It was a hugely enjoyable piece for the company. We asked Davie Anderson to create a piece with a European feel to it that we could take to all countries in Europe without people getting lost in the language. Birds of Paradise also surtitle and audio describe the performances. David was particularly excited about the notion of embedding the audio description into the text and we developed a piece with visually impaired actress Karina Jones to put the audio description into the text. Unfortunately she was not available for the tour but was hugely influential in Davie creating the right style for the piece. Now for a 2 minute trailer of the piece that we will show you now.
[ beginning of video exert ]
Actor: You came back from the dead to kill me.
Actor: Surely not.
Actor: Oh my God.
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Actor: I killed a man.
Actor: Seriously?
Actor: Yes.
Actor: That is amazing!
Actor: Where are you?
Actor: My mum says you have Aspergers - is that true?
Actor: What is it?
Actor: Dyslexia.
Actor: Oh.
Actor: Is it contagious. Page | 40
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Actor: Bastard.
Actor: Heart pounding.
Actor: Come out wherever you are.
Actor: A Frankenstein's monster in front of Stevie's face.
Actor: She pushed a button.
Actor: Panic, a six foot vampire.
Actor: Eyes, wide,
[ screams ]
[ end of video exert ]
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New Speaker: The sight of black water fizzing into white foam across the retina.
New Speaker: Dad still loves us doesn't he? Doesn't he?
New Speaker: He could feel the liquid in his body, the blood running through his veins, heart pumping, the air in his lungs, soon, all this would be over.
Shona: That is really all I have got for you today. I would like to say The Man who Lived Twice is touring Scotland in March and is coming to Dundee so maybe see some of you there. Thank you. [applause]
Mat Fraser: Thank you. Lovely outro there with the musical score underneath. I have seen more clunky attempts at this.
We are going to have a panel now and I just wanted to introduce the chair, but I wanted to do one of those career things, the career path things, because the first piece of work that I ever wrote myself was commissioned by Gary Robson. I back, I don't know, 2,000 and I, I developed my career and going on tangents and stuff along the way met a lot of reviews that really didn't get what I was trying to do. Currently touring a cabaret show which is quite hard core, freak of the show girl with my partner in crime. Gary again curated Da Da fest whenever it was, a year and a half, two years ago, expanded, a Liverpool based festival to Scotland. We were one of the productions that were able to play in Glasgow at the arches, so we did the freak of the show girl in the arches. My partner does a strip where she crawls half naked ore many members of the audience. We did the show, went quite well, although quite cold in the arches. Page | 42
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After somebody went, do you know who she was crawling over, crawling over the chief theatre critic of the Scotsman, oh fucking hell, brilliant? We got the review, of all the reviews I got, this review nailed exactly what we were trying to do and got everything on every layer and actually articulated better than ever. We have used the review to get further gigs, got a Australian tour. I am keen on this person. ... writes a column for the paper, been in many campaigns, both in Scotland and internationally, freelance journalist in Scotland. [inaudible]... today, she is going to be chairing our panel calling reaching the destination, please welcome Joyce Macmillan. Joyce: panellists, please come up you know who you are. CHAIR: Bring the microphone to the table, sorry, things to be organised. So we use this microphone if we can, these if we can't, is that is right, ok, did you hear that? Mat has just said that tea and coffee are on-going throughout the afternoon, if you want any, get it and come back, that is the instruction however we expect your complete attention and we don't want to see anybody sneaking out during the session at all. Ok now first of all welcome to this session and I just like to say well first of all thanks to Mat for a lovely introduction and how very, very pleased I am to be here. I wasn't able to be here all day yesterday but I did arrive last night in time to see the great performance, give it another round of applause [applause] [applause] Sadly just too exhausted to stay for the comedy, so I missed that bit. I have been here today. So I have been catching up with the discussion but conscious I haven't heard all of it so I am very much here to learn and expand my own understanding of all the issues that you have been talking about scarily, the session we have now reached and I know you have been doing this journey metaphor for the last few days, says reaching the destination. Seems to be a Page | 43
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scary thing for creative people to contemplate. We like to think that the journey in some ways is endless. This enables us to explore the understanding of what the destination would be and what it is we are aiming for in terms of participation and creativity for people with disabilities and all the art forms we have been talking about but also to talk about what it would look like to reach the destination and what we think the next steps are. I have got a terrific panel here who are going to discuss that. We are going to proceed by each of them giving a short opening statement hopefully quite brief because we have only got an hour and 5 of them. If they speak for 20 minutes we will not get to the end of the session. Hopefully that introduction brief, their responses to the issues in hand and if they have been here for the last 2 days the response to what they have heard. Then open it up for discussion, both among the panellists, what they have said, but very much involving you and then at the end I will do my level best to pull out two or three next steps forward that seem to me to be emerging from the discussion and to see whether there is broad agreement on any of it. Probably not, you never know your luck. I will introduce, I can't find my specks but it is a fantastic panel. I will introduce them. Adam, I haven't met up until now, nice to meet you. NEW SPEAKER: I am not Adam. just kidding. [laughter]. CHAIR: Adam is an internationally renowned choreographer and teacher, currently working at Plymouth university, a joint founder and artistic director of the candle co company, and when asked for a provocative remark he said, although we may be tarred with the same industry brush I would like to think that most in the arts with more concerned with growing people than with growing performers for the business. Make we should identify the real education benefits of integrated and then there is a silence, there is a word missing integrated practice. Page | 44
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Next is David Gregg, who is sitting on my right. He is a leading possibly the leading playwright of his generation which is born in 1969 so that is the sort of demographic David is involved in. His biography is just much too rich and full to go through all the detail of here but he has written many, many plays for theatres in Scotland across the UK and internationally. He is currently curating a season of new plays from North Africa and the Middle East for this springs, season in Glasgow, working for many years with play Wrights from this ... this is a moment where we need to hear voices, his songs, romantic comedy, playing before touring Australia. That is a revival of a show that is one of the big successes, in the small to medium scale Scottish theatres. When asked for his provocative remark, he said: David Gregg's philosophy about writing for the troupe company rather than getting stuck in rigidly described character description. Believes that theatre companies should be presenting work that reflects what and who is inside and outside the theatre door. That doesn't sound provocative, if we did it, it would be an extremely radical state for each theatre. DAVID GREIG: Was... Care chair was that done by your assistant? On the far right, Henderson, is the casting director for the national theatre of Scotland so she is a woman who is right on the front line of these big decisions of who exactly gets cast to do what and has been working in the part of the industry for the last 30 years, now Ann provocative comment was: I think the position of disabled actors is about the same as it was for black actors 20 years ago, only change with more writers including characters with disability within a piece as a regular character, rather than a character with a problem. That was Ann's thought. Robert Softley gale who is a performer, creator, actor and, a writer? Yes, in Scottish theatre. Has been for the last ten years. Robert is currently involved with an organisation called flip which he will tell you more about later but his provocative remark was: the last 12 months have seen a marked change with Page | 45
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disabled performers being placed on the main stream stage across the UK, 2012 is going to see this continue and perhaps develop into something of a norm, no policy led to this happening it was because the key people with power wanted it to happen. That is all it took. And our final panellist, you can see what a powerful bunch this is, Joe Verrent, who some people might call a consultant. Doesn't use any word to describe her career, different is delicious and her work is seeking to reframe the perception of diversity through my idea of events and opportunities. An organisation called sink, looking at the interplay between disability and leadership and on that working with the Arts Council of England. Joe said: two accolades, the cosmopolitan woman of achievement award [applause] and much more importantly or at least as important to Joe, she says, won her village horticultural award for the best preserved in show, held for 2 years consecutive. [applause] Right. So just in that order I am going to ask each of the panellists to give a few brief and provocative responses to the theme and the conference so far and then we will open it up for discussion. So who is first? ADAM BENJAMIN: I guess one of the terms that has been used a little bit over the last 2 days, can you hear me? Sort of? Is the notion of and has been used regularly over the last decade is the notion of cultural shift. There is always there is always a slight sort of amusement when I see an organisation that calls itself cultural shift as if it is something that can happen overnight but what strikes me is that we are at a very interesting point at this conference where maybe 2 decades actually of work is reaching a very, very interesting turning point. It is already been commented on quite widely but there is a sense of things happening and possibilities and movement forward at this conference that I haven't experienced before. So maybe later on I would like to talk a little bit about that revolution and where we go next and in terms of reaching the destination I probably want to talk a little bit about where I am at the moment, the destination I reached was Plymouth. I have travelled the world and I have arrived in Plymouth and I enjoyed the little notion that you said, what Page | 46
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are the next steps? It was very relevant because I arrived at a brand new university department and the next steps were, steps. It was the most inaccessible building that I have encountered so picking up a little bit on the commentary this morning about concrete change and something we haven't talked about much, the notion of changing buildings is relevant for me at the moment. I have a little bit of food news to share on that score. CHAIR: That is great. Do you have any thoughts on what the destination looks like? Do you have a kind of dream? ADAM BENJAMIN: I have a dream? CHAIR: What it is that you are striving for? ADAM BENJAMIN: I think again, a notion that has been talked about and two words come up, the Conservatoire and the university. We have heard those two schools and I think my, my wish and my aim is that we keep addressing very clearly where we can best apply our abilities and skills and address those areas where we can achieve and the notion of changing a Conservatoire, I will come back to this later on hopefully, as oppose to changing the university. The clue is in the words, that if we bang our heads against Conservatoires, we are missing something. The definition is it conserves and generally speaking, it conserves the past. A university is something that we might well fit better with that universal design, so if we are going to look for change, my, my instinct is to look to the universities. I am sure that some of you will be going, oh many goodness me, it is not about that. But there is a notion of effecting change and where we might best employ change and find change is within the universities. The addendum I put to that of course there has been a cultural shift here within Janet's directorship of Scottish dance theatre and that very interestingly she is now heading off to a Conservatoire and so the notion of cultural shift and again, remarkably, that same Conservatoire being northern school is where we in Candoco nearly 20 years ago, found 3 or 4 of our dancers who joined the Page | 47
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company. Very interesting cycles of people coming out of Conservatoires, now 20 years on, a very key mover in the field actually going into Conservatoire which is extraordinarily exciting and something that that I have gone on ad nauseam about HE, I find my destination Plymouth in higher education. So, there are some very interesting shifts taking place which I think can only bode well for the future of integrated training opportunities. CHAIR: Thank you, now David can you get yourself close to that make? Here comes David Gregg with his thoughts. DAVID GREIG: Can everybody hear me? , is this, is that better? Far from reaching a destination, I would like to share some thoughts on a journey as a writer and a director that I feel I have been going on, which I am looks I suppose a question of, questions like inclusivity or these sorts of ideas that flips it. I guess it started with a thought that emerged out of trying to respond to birds of paradise conference at the festival last year when I was thinking about the question of casting and writing for people with disabilities and it reminded me of some of the work I had done in the Arab world where, made my think about representation and when you do a play from the Arab world you can get into a thing, we need to have Arab actors, very difficult to find Arab actors from let's say, Armagh, so you say, this guy is from Morocco, it is very far away and culturally different. Is that better than casting a British actor? Well we can't get someone from Morocco for this other role, is someone brown, is that all right? You start going down a channel and it is plainly insane to think that way. So you start to flip it over and say, let's actually do, let's do this play; think about representation the other way around. Let's think about the troupe of people performing the play. No one is an exact mirror or match of the so called character, doesn't work like that. We are all degrees of difference. Think about the true instead of the individual, that unlocks in a different way. That was the moment it occurred to me, the problem is not theatre per se, which is by its nature I think extremely open to all kinds of performers and performance, the problem is actually naturalism in effect and something which is true of film Page | 48
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and television, but doesn't have to have a particular dominant hold in the theatre. Once, I then connected that thought with something that Martin crimp right writes at the beginning of the play says something like: the cast for this show should resemble people in the world outside of theatre. That struck me as a hugely liberating and opening thought. So, what I began to do, was both to articulate as a practice, but also something I have been doing in my own work anyway. I took out character descriptions; cast listing, anything like that from my play texts. I even took out stage directions being labelled separately which was connecting for me with the audio description, the thing that was going on as well so that the text I am writing, I feel that when I write them, they feel like storytelling. Then I am offering the text to the troupe in order to perform them and they have choices about how they do that. That, the casting of the company to perform becomes a creative choice. When we think about the troupe you think about Shakespeare's globe or think about the Baraka troupe in Spain, the travelling troupes of actors throughout history. They were groups of like pop bands; there was someone who could sing and someone who could do really good gymnastics and somebody who could do something else. Then those people would tell stories, they would adapt the stories to themselves. The way they told it would be exciting. I will be quick, I want to draw to a final so the troupe is a key to this, writing for the troupe is something I am trying to do. Creating writing that troupes can perform. I want to draw a thought from what I think of as being the root theatre. I was thinking about you know, when in the far distant past, you know, sort of human tribe was tumbling across the Savannah, hunter gathering, after their material needs were catered for they would find themselves around the fire at night and, as that long, long darkness sat ahead of them, what they would do is tell stories and the way they would tell those stories it seems to me would be by saying, did you see the mammoth earlier on today? You be the mammoth, I will be me, you go on, you be the mammoth and you be the bird and you go over there and do this. They would begin to tell the story that way. So what that connected with for me is, a way that children stories and, a way that a troupe tells the story, but a way that story telling in theatre is about the world outside of the theatre, it is about community, it is about the community speaking to itself and it is, once you Page | 49
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realised that, it becomes creative to say to Alison Peebles, you be the king, I will be the horse and she can be the princess rather than being a sort of PC gone mad it is a really creative thought of about how you explore power and as I say, I found it, I not only think it is natural to human experience but I would also say when I give these texts that have no, none of the paraphernalia of the 20th century scripts, when I give this to actors, they fall on it with delight and just do it. There is no difficulty, there is no, it feels natural and I think that is maybe my point would be that by thinking about the troupe, I don't want to give rules and demands or place manifestos, I think if we think about the troupe, what that leads us to is, a philosophical thought about theatre, about where it comes from and who is transformed by it and what that transformation means. It gives us political thought which is how can we ensure that every single person within a community sees representations of themselves but also I think it gives us an artistic opportunity that I certainly that is what I am experiencing as I write in this way. It gives us an artistic chance to be more imaginative in our practice. CHAIR: Thanks David, thank you very much. [applause] Next up is Ann. [Louisa] ...
New Speaker: I was thinking about this over the last few years ago. I attended a similar conference 20 years ago about women in theatre. About 10 years ago it was a conference about black people in theatre and now its about disabled people in theatre. This has opened my eyes to possibilities I hadn't thought of before. Mat said something yesterday that made me think disability in the arts, for a while, was like a moaning teenager. I feel at this conference the teenager has grown up, now they are not complaining and saying you are not letting us do. Now its a grown person saying I don't care what you think, I will do it anyway. Page | 50
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That is great and a really liberating place for disabled people to be in the Arts. I spent a lot of time as a casting director working in film and T.V and have become back home, to the theatre, in the last five years. I find it very frustrating in film and T.V and that is why I stopped doing it. When you have a script and ask, could this person b e black, they would say, well he is not a drug dealer Anne! I did A Very British Coup a long time ago with a character who was the head of MI5. This was the late eighties. I asked if the character could be a woman and I was told not to be ridiculous, a woman could not be head of M15. I think she was at the time and we didn't know it! I can see parallels in other areas. I want us to leave the conference, this is not the end but the beginning and we all in our own way must do something positive . We must say to people, do you think this person could be in a wheelchair, could be deaf, if everyone does that with every production rather than take what is on the page, we make big steps forward. Its very difficult.. I know people say the casting director has no imagination and I know lots like that - I admit it! But in the end I am a facilitator and I fulfil the vision of my director. So it needs directors and writers to be thinking along these lines. We can be there stabbing them every so often, saying have another think about it. What David said about having a troupe is a fantastic way of opening up the possibilities for disabled actors in film, theatre and across the Arts.
New Speaker: Thank you.
Robert Softley: I will keep this abnormally short and to the point. Whether we are there or its behind us, I think that is a question. Is there evidence we can put forward for the idea of destination. The NTS has employed and worked with disabled artists, and the national theatre has employed and worked with disabled artists. So there is progress. There must be stuff happening in Ireland - there always is. If the only way of getting success is looking at the big companies we are missing the point. There is a whole range of disabled artists just creating work Page | 51
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some of it fantastic and some of it pretty crap. If we look at the Arts in general that is what artists tend to do - create work. We need to broaden our idea of what success is. The idea of one destination doesn't work for me - there are a whole load of destinations and some we have got to, others not yet. Companies that are run throughout the U.K tend not to be run by disabled people. The employ disabled people but until we get to the top I question how included we are in the process.
I offer that to the question around destination. My second point is , as simple as this, I look around this room and there are two types of people here. The first type are the people with the power to do something - the casting people, the directors and the heads of institutions. You get the choice on Monday to do something, employ or cast a disabled person. Do something. If you are scared by that, go and find someone who can. There are plenty of organisations out there who will support you to do that. Not to blow my own trumpet but Flip will do that! [LAUGHTER] Also, if you don't WANT to do that, if you are sitting thinking someone else can do it, fine. IF you don't want to do it, we won't force you. But we want others to do it, to go ahead and make good work involving disabled people. If in five or tens years,you are left behind don't say we didn't warn you! [applause] The second type of person in the room are the people who can influence the first type. Those are the only two types we have here - you can either do it or influence the people who do it. There are a thousand ways you can have influence. Artists can question the people who don't include others. We all have a role to play in this and we can all have an impact. Hopefully after this event moving forward we can all do something. [applause]
Jo Verrant: My provocation is around stop moaning. For me we said at the beginning of the conference, some of us having the same conversations with the same people has been part of our lives for 20 years. This has been a different Page | 52
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event because there hasn't been much moaning. The problem with moaning is that it doesn't just get it out of your system but stops people working with you. If you moan you get known as a moaner and don't get invited to the table. There is an awful lot to moan about but we must be creative about how we moan - we can moan through the work and not just take it to a negative place.
An example. It was interesting hearing about Dundee Rep having an open casting process. Seven years ago I was working on a programme with arts organisations in the South East of England trying to get them to embed disability access into their work. I met with a small rural touring company and the artistic director didn't want to do it . He would change the processes but didn't want to hear about disabled actors. We went to lunch and I nagged and moaned at him. At the end he said he would prove it would not work. He would organise a casting day, talking to the other rural touring companies and get them together and have an open casting events. He got 7 or so casting directors in the room. They had a conversation and he came up to me and said, you bastard! I have got two now! He said he was interested in people who are interesting. He saw a deaf guy and a blind guy and the signing would fit with Under Milkwood. There was a blind guy whose vocal range was amazing and he had to take both on. He did and they did the touring production and he learned masses, so much more through the inspiration of meeting the people and saying I will work with you, than he would have learned through me changing his policies. He had to see it and want to get involved, to do that you must be engaged creatively. We must do that, get people to see the actors and say I don't care what the script says, that is the person I want to work with. [applause]
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Chair: So is everything fine then? Can we have an early cuppa? If anyone wants to respond to each other or anyone wants to make a comment or be more specific about the next step, now is your moment? We have half an hour.
New Speaker: I want to pick up on the point about conservatoires - he is being too generous. I share your dislike of the work and try to use the world Evolvetoire. We have only started to call ourselves the Conservatoire in the last few months but it goes alongside a redesign of the entire set of the undergraduate degrees over the past two years, which we will start to deliver in September 2012. We must not let the conservatoires off the hook. There are a number of conservatoires that DO conserve. Our process of change which has so far taken 4 years, has been a difficult and complex process and a whole raft of teachers and practitioners have resisted the notion of change. But we must adjust and accept change.
Chair: On the issue of that, there was the beginning of a discussion in the theatre group this morning, about whether at this stage there is a place for specially designed courses for artists with disabilities that will specifically address their issues and work with their capacities or whether that would be seen as a backward step. There are people here with experience of existing courses that are relevant to the debate. If you have anything to add to that, please do? Is mainstreaming the way to go?
New Speaker: I maybe have less experience and more of an opinion about the specialist training. There is the notion of separate but equal that I struggle with. There is also... what disabled people? As non disabled people we tend to lump disabled people together as a homogenous group. They don't exist. I struggle Page | 54
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with specialist courses but there were two people today talking about specialist and mainstream schools and they said they want both. Since there is no highway to the profession - a clear destination, yes. Maybe we need to do all the above and mix them up and don't institutionalise them and make them so rigid there is no flexibility there. I am torn.
New Speaker: You actually summed up what I was going to say! Having experience of both all my life, I would say you can never as a disabled person live a life completely separate. You can't have that separate life and you must integrate with the world around you all the time. You do have to integrate with the world and be involved with it, otherwise you run into the danger of becoming a ghetto. But there is the need for specialist training and both are of paramount importance.
Chair: Thank you.
New Speaker: Concurring really and adding one other aspect to that. As long ago as the eighties Steve Paxton identified useful learning situations to share particular learning needs. The work they did with blind dancers is a good example of that. my experience over the years and exemplified over the last couple of years at the university with student feedback with non disabled students, in two cohorts who worked with the disabled students - it was about how much they learned. We are still thinking that it would be great if disabled people could be involved in mainstream. It would be great but the amount of learning, Isabel Jones came and worked with the students and said of all the universities she visited that year there was something very particular about these students. She said they had been educated. That is our main aim. The notion of some areas of Page | 55
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skill specific work with an overall desire - we belong in the same places and buildings and an art form that is shared.
New Speaker: When we talk about the Conservatoire we ignore the needs of learning disabled people. The way the courses are structured doesn't mean they can't act, sing or engage critically with those forms. If we only look at those forms we ignore that way. Recently there was work down by Mind the Gap using some of the schools in the dance award scheme. The non-disabled students were involved in learning with learning disabled students learned so much too. The learning is both ways. Its too easy to say we will separate it out. The academic greenness means we are still excluding a huge number of people who could contribute to the diversity. They are still outside the theatre door.
Chair: I see Clare and another lady there.
New Speaker: I want to go back to the point. Not sure about the issue of specialised training. For me there is a bunch of things there - one being about disabled teachers. Being the more important part than specialised training that separates training but enables practitioners to be there. There is something about shared experience that is very valuable and was an important part of my development and fascination with physicality. How I explored dance, was about meeting other disabled dancers. At the risk of alienation, one of my most fascinating experiences was in Caroline's disabled artists residence as part of the Agents for Change. I turned up and there was non-disabled participants in the room. I was intrigued and I came partly because I am fascinated to know what happens if you only put disabled artists, or those who self identify that way. If there is a specificity of the shared experience that creates something unique? It Page | 56
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was a discriminating laboratory. It was really fascinating and we have talked about hosting another one. One of the most interesting moments in that, was a body work session. We had a big discussion and asked the non-disabled practitioners to step out of the room. There was something about them not being there as a guinea pig or someone to be observed, a shared experience of being in a room or in an environment where we weren't ... we were all adapting and we were so diverse, we weren't following anyone's model. A body work session between a room of people with physical disabilities was one of the most fascinating experiences in my life. The guilt was thrown out. I am usually in the minority.
[ Louisa stops at 15.15 ]
Caroline Bowditch: Around the room are SDT people with post it notes. take a post it note and write one thing you will do as a result of being here. Write down the thing you will do tomorrow or on Monday. Take a post it note and jot down at least one thing you will do as a result of being here today. Put them on the flip chart outside the door as you leave.
Mat Fraser: Whilst you do that, I will speak when the rustling diminishes a bit, and you don't have to particularly listen to this, let it be a subtext to your writing, in the same way my short limbs will do in a project I have been cast in. When I started as a disability artist, I went to the world of disability arts because I perceived a misunderstanding by the mainstream arts, I did seek the same confines, the nice warm ghetto of disability arts. Its where I sharpened my teeth and learned to be comfortable on stage because I didn't get formal training. I'd love to think the young people coming through now don't need that as much as I Page | 57
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did and the educational establishments are more friendly to the diversity presented by disabled people. But there always will be feminist and black theatre companies and Graeae because some people want t odo that stuff and should be allowed to do that. But it would be lovely to think the need has been diminished for disabled people to flower in those environments.
Jurg: There is something in the air and the theatre artists and training students, someone did a great job of getting people together here to take something away from the event. I have a paradox notion, sometimes the concept is the quickest thing. It moves and it takes a long time to embody it. Sometimes an action is the most immediate thing and it takes a while to articulate it. Some of us are conceptualisers and others are the action people and some do everything. Think of concepts such as the dream of light and how long it took to get there, a baby trying to get a cookie from the counter, it takes a while to get those skills. We strive for excellence but it should not stop us dabbling. There is something about mediocracy in the everyday life we pursue, we will get to excellence as well. There are multiple destinations and the different strands that people come from, taking something away from here ,will create change. The circularity of the profession and the community, it keeps feeding back on each other and there is the concurrence of planning and doing. I have to encourage myself to do that as well. One off the wall idea I have - it would be good to form a travelling circus or a hit team. There are people here but also those who are not here and if the travelling circus could come to town with the ideas . I like Caroline's title - Agent for Change. If we can take that title with us and be agents for change wherever we are, the people we meet on the plane, the job I do. That wraps up what I found here.
Mat Fraser: I know what I will do on Monday with the conceptual post it note. I am an incidental character on Fair City in Ireland, like the Irish Eastenders. I am Page | 58
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the first disabled actor to be a regular in any production in Ireland. I do a lot of firsts - they are inadvertent. What I will do is say when are you going to bring the second character into Fair City. I will go to the producer and say its great to be back here, the fictional town with no gay people and the one black guy is an extra. lets have another disabled actor in. That is my bit. What will you do Caroline?
Caroline Bowditch: I will be in a darkened room! [LAUGHTER] I wanted to quickly just tell you, when I first started the role, I used to think wherever I went, I was taking the elephant into the room with me. This thing that no-one wanted to talk about. This thing that followed me wherever I went. I realised I could only eat the elephant one bit at a time. Its really big and I am quite small. It takes a long time to eat an elephant. In four years I have probably got through an ear. I discussed this with Janet not long ago and said I had to invite others to the elephant eating party and I feel we have consumed the elephant in these two days. Its now gone. I am pleased to thank you on behalf of me for assisting me eating the elephant.
Mat Fraser: We have got rid of the elephant man in the circus. What will your post it note on Monday be?
Jurg: I have video work to do, implementing universal design of access and doing voice overs and subtitles. There has been beautiful creative work, not just as part of the access arrangements, but as a poetic layer that goes with that.
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Mat Fraser: We are ahead of time so we will throw it back to the audience. Lets keep it forward moving in terms of the rhetoric. Adam has his hand up there. Lets throw it out there.
New Speaker: For those in the world of dance, particularly those actively running projects, let me know and I will put you on the map currently held on my website. If you have projects up and running, pre university level or at some point on the trail towards university let me know and we will put you on the map, particularly Northern Ireland. Thank you.
Mat Fraser: Anyone else want to say anything? Sally?
New Speaker: Thank you. So what will I do? On my Braille post it note that exists only in my head, I will make a mistake and revel in it! [LAUGHTER] In my life, even though I am a disabled person - and this is ridiculous because I have always said I enjoy being imperfect - I said when my baby was born I enjoy the fact she is perfect. I realise I am the Nazi I always went on about. I realised I can't stand imperfection. I will make a bloody mistake. [applause]
Mat Fraser: Anyone else?
New Speaker: Yes. Hello, I am Sarah, an actor.
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New Speaker: Wow!
New Speaker: I am a musician when I can't get acting parts. Only joking! The thing I would like to do is go to an audition and not tell the casting director I am blind. I have wanted to do that for a number of years. I am with a specialised agent and the parts that come through him are the blind parts. No disrespect to the writing but I don't know what age they are living in, its the touch face parts that went out quite a while ago. We are just people who can't see well and do things a different way around. I want to go to a mainstream audition and not tell the casting director I am visual impairment and see what the reaction is.
Mat Fraser: Your specialised agent, does the agent tell them you are blind?
New Speaker: This is the problem. I found this out when I did a mainstream production, I had a conversation with the director and she found it practically impossible to find a blind actor and had to punt high and low to find me, through a T.V documentary thing I did. I discovered that if people can't find disabled artists, there is another problem that wasn't mentioned - mainstream agents, sometimes they don't take disabled artists seriously. I know this through talking to other actors and problems they incurred through agents. My agent is specialised ...
Mat Fraser: Is it Louise?
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New Speaker: Yes. I didn't want to say that. She is obviously the only agent who takes on disabled performers.
Mat Fraser: Apart from mine.
New Speaker: Who is that?
Mat Fraser: She is the only specialised agent for disabled people as far as I know. That is an interesting place in the theatrical arts. Its extraordinary that so many agents don't know about the Equity disabled register which has at least 25 people on it.
New Speaker: The parts that are for disabled people, if someone wants a blind person for a blind thing they go to Louise., The number of things where people want me to stand there with dark glasses on - I said no bollocks to that. its not realistic. The scripts that come through are not for normal characters. They are not just for characters who just happen to be blind - there always has to be some reference to it. That is the problem I find with getting acting work: the writing. People just casting people in normal roles without reference to the disability.
Mat Fraser: The writing around blind characters is historically inaccurate and you are demanding the right to play the person next door and the lover. Thank you very much. [applause] Anyone else?
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Janet Smith: Got a mic?
Caroline Bowditch: Amy is coming.
And we lost that sense of I might not be able to do some of these tasks the way, there is always a guilt in the background sometimes I found was a kind of running theme for a lot of the disabled practitioners that was out of the way, everyone was having to find their way of doing things. I think there is interesting experiments within that, that I find very, there is a specificity of things that come from that experience that is vital. CHAIR: I think it is classic in any history of oppression and I am strongly against oppression, there is moment in the groups experiences that, has to be on their own. That has to be the women’s experiences in the 70's, the whole black power phase of struggle for racial equality; I think there is no doubt there are situations in which people that have had that experience need to work without the presence of the people that haven't. I, you know, and the guy from Solar Bear, the company that works with young deaf in Scotland, we are an inclusive company at the moment, what we are doing is working and giving opportunities to young deaf people because they are the ones who need them. So you have these moments I think in any kind of struggle for full representation. There is somebody else there who wanted to get in. Then, just, NEW SPEAKER: Hello, I would like to go back to Jo's point, Jo and myself met some years ago at another seminar. I spent 28 years working in a day centre using dance and movement with learning disabled adults in west Yorkshire and I would like to put the points somebody once asked me what I would like to do with the day centres, I said tear down the walls. I now feel very similar about the Page | 63
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universities because I am now doing a dance and education degree which I am loving, however, I think that to go back to having totally separate provision or courses for learning disabled adults, there might be a use, however only if it is run perhaps in parallel or as a positive step in the path way to go forward as a transition their thing and there is also a place for learning disabled adults I feel and students within the tertiary sort of educational side. Perhaps very much modelled on the community dance practice model. I think that one area has a lot to offer the other and vice versa and I think there is a lot that we can learn from each other and share. So that is my point really. CHAIR: Thanks, now someone yes, in the front here, then the lady in red. NEW SPEAKER: My name is Jane Goddard; I am based in queen’s university, a PHD in drama and disability. I am very interested in the whole ideas of inclusion and inclusivity and what that means, I don't consider myself disabled personally but I work a lot with people who are disabled and, we have a very interesting situation in Northern Ireland where 20% of people within the general population are registered with disabilities which is I believe double that in the rest of the UK. There is also no real history of disability arts because, the, disability movement as a political movement didn't happen in the same way as Northern Ireland as it did in the rest of the UK. We don't have the same models of working or the same history of those models working as here. So it is very interesting talking about, you know, I feel some strong things when hearing what Clare had to say about, about the disability and people with disabilities being by themselves because I am not sure that that would operate actually in Northern Ireland in that way, what position does that leave me in, as someone with not disabilities. My sister has disabilities, I am here with lots of questions, my biggest question I suppose, are there different ways in which things can happen in a slightly different context. So I think for me that is my destination or it is the beginning of a destination rather than coming to an end. CHAIR: Yes, great, could you pass the mike to the next NEW SPEAKER: Just wanted to respond to your comment about knock down the walls and Adam's frustration with Conservatoire and the idea of it being Page | 64
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conserved and behind walls. It is an observation; I don't know whether it is intentional. It seems like a lot of the destinations for performers we have been talking about, maybe orientated towards indoor performance. Having worked out in the outdoor street theatre for a long time, it is just to flag up that I think there are maybe more open mind because there aren't any doors or buildings and that in terms of mass audiences as well, ok, so we are not talking TV and film, but certainly we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people and just that, I just pose that, I think in terms of outdoor performance, outdoor theatre, there is a huge, huge platform there. I think the festival directors are often much more open and in terms of your main stream audience, some people wouldn't even go near you know something called theatre or dance they will see it because it just happens to be there. CHAIR: Good point. I think this will have to be our last point from the audience. We have got time for the panel to have a final word. NEW SPEAKER: I just wanted to say something about what is lady before said. When I was at the Manchester decibel show case in Manchester surprisingly, I saw stop gap do an outside performance in the middle of Manchester and it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen just because I have never seen this theatre done outside and these people that were surrounding me had probably they have been to the theatre and now, and probably never worked or seen a disabled person without being told that they can't look by their parents or something. Now, there was David Toole just doing his do and all the rest of the guys. You saw people looking and appreciating and it was the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen and I think we can reach an audience like that of someone, of people that will never have been to the theatre and never seen a disabled person and don't know about disability arts and really making an impact. I think that is just, that is just fantastic and I think that is a really good way forward. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Right I will come back to the panel in a second. I have got one question to throw into the pot, literally only 5 minutes left now. The question is this: are we slightly talking about 2 different things here. As a critic looking at what goes on in theatre, I can see and I think somebody said this in a session earlier, it is easy for companies to select people they think are good artists Page | 65
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who have a disability and to say, go and do your thing; make your show; everyone will appreciate it; it will be great. Where there seems to be many more actual barriers in people’s minds particularly but also practical barriers is when it comes to the process of people with disabilities moving into the big power structures of theatre where people are often making decisions on quite a traditional basis, i.e., if you are going to play hamlet you have to look like him whatever the stereotype is. In the sense these 2 areas are different. If you are an artist and you want to make your own work, one set of career difficulties you have to overcome. If you are a disabled artist that wants to display hamlet, that is a whole different ball game and it requires a struggle which is not yet at such an advanced stage shall we say. So I think maybe when we are kind of rounding this up we should bear in mind definitely different things going on here. There are kinds of access which is relatively easy to offer and kind of access that organisations find much more challenging. I will come back from the panel in the order that they first spoke and give them all a chance to say a few final words and I am so sorry it has been short but I will agree that a lot of interesting stuff has come up that we have all got a lot to work on. So Adam. Like to say a few last remarks? ADAM BENJAMIN: I think just coming back to the again the notion of cultural shift, I think it is in the air, I think I have spoken to people like Petra and ... and Sandra, at one level to gain information, that is culture in terms of culture in the petri dish about to grow something. Then these herb shoes, at the top end of the organisations, for me, just a hugely encouraging conference, hugely, I am sure this is repeated again. Each one of us has an action to take or something to implement and just as a final point, a kind of sense of some of us feeling like dinosaurs, a new generation of artists and makers and teachers who are so clear and so visionary, and that is a very interesting place to be and a delightful place to be and a great fruit really to have from this old tree. CHAIR: Thank you, David. DAVID GREIG: Listening to all these comments, and just slightly wanted to develop my theme, I was thinking about performance when I have been doing shows recently I require performers who can sing, they need to be able to move, Page | 66
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be choreographed, they need to be able to, a number of them need to play musical instruments, need to be able to act in a traditional sense. I find it very difficult to find people who have those abilities because we have tended to train actors who only if you like are expecting to follow a certain set of movements and across the stage and pretend to be someone else. Now that then opened up the thought for me, that I want the Conservatoire and other places to train performers. Once you think about performing, you realise everybody can perform, anyone been around children, they see no barrier to performance and will give you their performance whatever it is that they may appear to have as a disability or not. So it seemed to me, we engage, we engage with performance as audience, we engage directly and that then leads me to the last thought I suppose which is. We can forget the amount that an audience can shape the performances that it sees and demands. I think when we think Alison Peebles being in a show, we perhaps don't think of a disabled person being in a show. We think of Alison Peebles being in a show, she is a star, we want to see Alison. I think there is something about whether it is training, whether it is about the way we think of our work as writers, directors and so on, if we think of performance and connecting to the audience as performers they will start to demand seeing hamlet as performed by whoever it might be because, because they engage with that human being. I suppose that is really what I would hope is the primal underlying thing we can reach by thinking about the troupe, by thinking about the performance is to human to human contact. CHAIR: Thank you. ANNE HENDERSON: I think I just wanted to say that I will take away so much from the last 2 days, I found it inspirational, aspirational and I think, I just want to say what everybody has said especially today, just, you know, we have all just got to get out there and do it and stop sitting on your bottom and saying you can't because you can. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Robert. Page | 67
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ROBERT SOFTLEY GALE: Yes, continue that theme, do something now, go plan to do something because with no plan and then next year you plan it again and then the year after that. You know it we are doing this again in ten years’ time, so don't plan, do something now, you will make mistakes, hundreds of mistakes that is fine, do it again. Make mistakes and then do it again. That's it. Jo Verrent: do it creatively, we have said mapping. Employ creative artists, you can solve; we saw it earlier, when, Caroline looking at whether a disabled artist can cover a nondisabled dancer in that role. We can do it through action and research, surely? Thank you very much. [applause] CHAIR: Well, what a great panel, I would just, I think you have all been absolutely fantastic and I have just got 5 tiny words written down here. The first one is, it is a political process, there is a struggle going on here and people different and different organisations will be at different stages of that struggle and that means that you know, people have to not make assumptions of where we are, sometimes it is going to feel as if we are moving back because you are encountering some organisation that just hasn't dealt with it but in other places you will find that things are moving forward faster and we may be at the tipping point that people have been talking about today. Education, education, education, integrated education and sometimes education that really looks after addresses and makes opportunities for people who have specific issues they work with and that they need to be creative around. So everyone in education just has to be thinking flexibly about that all the time. I would say, the troupe, I mean, what Jo said about the casting process in the touring companies and what David said about the troupe just meshed together exactly. If you are serious about ensemble theatre, that must represent the world, that will include some people who have, what we categorise from time to Page | 68
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time disabilities. The more we go through; I think they are more like opportunities than disabilities particularly when creative people are involved. The power holders, I think it is quite clear from a lot of the discussions that we have had when it comes to the big structures people talk about it taking a long time but actually it is not so much a long time as a eureka moment when someone in a position of power just suddenly says, right, this is it, I am going to do this. If the critics don't like it or if elements in the audience are taken aback by it, tough, we have to move forward. That is what always happens in the struggles it feels as if it is taking forever, but actually at the end it is someone who has the power saying, enough is enough, this is going be done. I think there are people now in big arts organisations are at that point or already moved beyond it. That is a great moment. I think you can feel the atmosphere around this conference. Then finally thank you to all the artists, there are so many artists here, as in Jo’s story, anyone in their right mind would want to work with, regardless of whether they are disabled or not. They are people of tremendous creativity, carving out lives for themselves; everyone can admire and be filled with joy Thank you to everyone who is here, and the artists who have contributed to these two days, I will hand you back to Mat, thank you very much. [applause] MAT FRASER: Thanks very much Joyce and panellists, while we reset, Caroline is going to join me, keep the table, one of our nice purple people are going to help us. Great. So, well, so I started by bemoaning the high level barriers with my opening speech yesterday, if training is more official and the qualifications gained by relationships in all concerned bodies are bolstered those barriers we have surmised begin to break. All work in education must lead to curl churl shift allowing expansion in the main stream. Alongside that we need the existing professional houses, to continue and push forward in commissions casting and developing new audiences that want that. Page | 69
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I think the last panel we have seen has sort of expanded on that brilliantly and helped us sort of singular polyform of ideas around that. I found the troupe thing very inspiring, I really did. Yes. I found all of it inspiring. I remember when Euan Marshall, the previous director, he got a posting at the duke's theatre in Lancaster, a disabled director with a main stream producing house. Of course, immediately, a change was reflecting and for that year, I don't know if it diminished after. For that year, there were more disabled people in productions. I think back to California, where they did the first positive discrimination, insist that 5% of the students were disabled, the tide turned, they discontinued the policy and went back down to 2%. I don't know with what that has got do with everything, seems to me, it has. So I would like now to pass down to Caroline and Jurg for their thoughts and reflections on it. I know that progressively throughout the conference have felt more and more dinosaury. I will be 5 in 8 days’ time. I started in disability arts in 1994, I feel the winds have changed and blowing up my jaxy, I think it is a good thing. I am lucky, I am an actor and a writer, one of the joyous things about the profession, it doesn't matter how old you are, you can always get work. I am not threatened. I have said I want to fuel the wheels, I use the wheelchair metaphor, I want to be run over by a young person in a wheelchair, seeing what I got and had and wanting so much more and now I am don't like the rubber burns on my buttocks. Probably extended that a bit far, so, let's hear from Caroline please just too well, we will save the thank you's for later. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: I will. JURG KOCH: I use this one ok. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: I think for the last 2 days, I have heard people say, this feels different; there is something about this conference that feels different. I think that Ann for me summed it up when she said we have moved from a Page | 70
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moaning teenager to a grown mature adult who can have a grown up conversation and I feel like that is what we have had for the last 2 days is we have had a grown up conversation about this area that, we have been moaning about for a thousand years. So I am incredibly proud that I have been involved in that process. Hearing David talking about writing for the troupe and also hearing Jurg this morning talk about using the principles of universal design. This idea about we need to get with the programme actually and we need to start looking at who is around us, rather than harking back to the past. I think that is part of the maturity. Robert's point about many destinations. I remember I was at an event that Luke from Candoco organised last yore and I remember that Jo facilitated and one of the questions that we asked was, where are we aiming to get to? People not being able to articulate what that looked like. Therefore it is really hard to develop a strategy about how to get there if we don't know what we are aiming for. I feel like this idea about many destinations is fantastic so long as we can be clear about where we are going. We can have many of them but just with a clarity of actually it is over there that I want to get to. Robert's point also about don't say we didn't warn you. I love that idea. It is kind of like, ha, yes, you know, that is so ten years ago, we have been having that conversation and you just missed out. I think that is going to be my motto for the next little while. Don't say I didn't warn you that this was going to happen, because it is. Maggie's evolvator, evolvatwoire, if only it could be called that, knowing that is the philosophy within that building excites me hugely. I also feel that seeds have been sewn and new relationships, new connections have been made. In talking to people they have kind of said, I made this connection with this person and this is going happen and I feel like, we are in a
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[This transcript was provided as communication support for deaf and hard of hearing people. It should not be regarded as a fully checked and verified verbatim record; it has no legal standing.]
seabed and things are going to grow and that is incredibly exciting and I am going to get you, before we finish to do a short piece but I will finish what I want. In the ways in film both Clare, Mark and I firmly believe and reiterated again today, people need to see it to know it is possible. There is miraculous power in possibility and I remember Jo telling me a story about taking a DVD of incidents to Serbia and people being completely overwhelmed because there were 4 disabled performers in amongst a main stream dance company dancing together. That was outside of their realm of even contemplation. Someone had done it and that then starts people on a path. So young disabled people and Jodie is a fantastic example of this, needed to see that it was possible. I also liked the idea about being brave and asking the question. Could this person be disabled? Could this person? ... maybe not be who you think it is really asking those questions. One of the things that I continue at SDT and they are now incredible at it as you can see is about making inclusion a habit. If we do it enough at someone else on the professional panel said it becomes a habit and therefore something that we just do. It is not a big deal, it is just the way it happens, it is the principles of universal design, it is all of those things. So. Around the room are SDT people. [Louisa] ... JANET SMITH: My destination would be to leave the word disability behind when talking about art and training and performance and excellence. To be at a place where we don't understand when that word is brought up in the room. That is my destination to just get rid of disability, the word and it is just about equality and access for everybody but it is about excellence and the art in performance. [applause] MAT FRASER: Thank you, yes. The lady with her hand up over there. Page | 72
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NEW SPEAKER: I, yes, my next move, I am thinking I am going bite the bullet and that isn't it by the way. I am, I have been thinking about doing stand up for ages and been talking about. I think I am going to do it. If I make a fool out of myself then, who gives a monkeys, I am just going to go for it. Yes, that is about it really. Nothing more. [applause] MAT FRASER: Good luck. Ok, I am sensing, call it a sixth sense, a sensing conference fatigue, inevitable, not the normal one where we are bored out of our skull and we want to leave. But the one where we want to go away and digest. Unless anybody has a thing we will go into the round of closing comments and thank you's, anyone want to object to that. I have got a list of thank you’s here, I will say them. If you have any extras, say them too. Wisely not gone for names, far too many people involved. Gone for generic descriptions and [counting, 5 rounds of applause requires, all speakers and contributors, the BSL interpreters and the palantypists. [applause] Not allowed to applaud themselves. The symposium partners, without them and their resources, this would not have been possible. Let's support them. Staff and students at the royal Conservatoire for filming the event [applause] This was very much a team effort so can we please applaud team symposium, you know who you are. [applause] Obviously we want to thank the west park staff here and the Dundee rep. Page | 73
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[applause] As we said before we are not going to not let you out of the place without filling in one of those interminable forms, no we will let you digest, refresh and they will come to you as a survey monkey circulated on line. Hopefully you will take the time to feed into. I am invigorated. Remember how cynical I was yesterday morning, what's the point! I am so invigorated by this that I know that I am going to fill in my feedback form, I am now really looking forward to whatever the hell the next symposium is going to be. All of us, in the room, everyone who has left and anyone who can hear in the ether, I have had a few people pass away, they have been influential to me, I would like to invoke them as well. To say, we owe ourselves a round of applause for being here, in ten years’ time we might be able to say as Max Boyce said "I was there", so thank you. [applause] CAROLINE BOWDITCH: A huge thank you to Mat for his amazing time keeping, chairing, keeping us on track, an keeping it real, that is pants, but that is what you have done. Thank you. [applause] MAT FRASER: I think some tea and coffee left. We are finishing half an hour early, there is a final chance for networking. CAROLINE BOWDITCH: Please put your post it notes on the board as you go. Thank you so much, safe travels home.
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