Cultural Shift was a three-year disabled-led strategic project funded by Spirit of 2012 and delivered by Little Cog in partnership with ARC between 2015-2018.
This project changed us and the way we work, it transformed our organisation, it touched everyone we worked with, disabled people and non-disabled people alike. The journey we went on wasn’t always easy but the change we have achieved made every challenge worthwhile.
Before Cultural Shift, there was a massive gap in our work: the voices and stories of disabled people were not being included. As an organisation, we were missing out on the creativity, skills and perspectives held by disabled people, and our audiences were missing out too.
In the North East of England 25% of people identify as disabled, that is a huge proportion of our communities and an absolute priority for us to ensure they were represented in our programme and workforce.
To address this we split the project into three strands: Creative Practice and Participation, Strategic Shift & Dissemination and Sharing.
Creative Practice and Participation was all about the work we offered our communities. Work to see included
- Theatre shows by disabled-led companies;
- Commissioning and touring new work, including three new pieces by Vici Wreford-Sinnott, Artistic Director of Little Cog, one of ARC’s Associate Artists and Creative Lead on the project
- Working with Full Circle, a learning disabled group brought together by Stockton Council Day Services who transitioned to an independent theatre company during the project and created and performed three new shows.
The participation side brought together three new groups that took part in creative activity leading to exhibitions, performances and a regular Club Night at ARC for learning disabled people and their friends. We also ran an introduction to directing course for disabled people funded by the RTYDS.
The strategic shift was all about how we changed as an organisation. Starting with Disability Equality Training was key to this, as it really challenged our thinking about disability and ensured everyone was starting from the same point, with shared knowledge and understanding. We created a language document for staff built around the social model of disability so everyone would feel empowered to speak about the project.
For the Dissemination and Sharing strand we wrote a final report which was made public and can be found on ARC’s website. We hosted a sharing event and invited venues and artists to come and experience what we had achieved over the project.
Since 2018 we have continued to learn and work with disabled people at ARC and some of our learning has changed. For example we offered staff a 10 week BSL course and immediately following the training BSL was used as required on our bar and box office.
However BSL is an incredibly complex language and hard to sustain if you’re not using it regularly. It can be expensive and time-consuming to train staff, and they move on, so we’ve realised that perhaps this isn’t the best model. We’re currently exploring alternatives such as whether we can employ access hosts alongside FOH staff.
Our learning from Cultural Shift continues to develop and last week we hosted an event for venues to share our model. Around 80 people attended the online event from venues and organisations around the country, it was amazing to see so many people who wanted to make a change.
To accompany the event we have written a guide that details our journey and offers useful advice on how other organisations can start their journey too. Today we will be publishing the guide on both ARC and Little Cog’s websites for anyone to download, the links are provided at the end of this blog.
I want to end by sharing some of the essential ingredients to embedding disability equality in an organisation that we identified during Cultural Shift:
- Trust
- Disability expertise
- A truly open organisation
- Budgeting and budget choices
- Commitment
- Clear communication
- Planning
- Ambition
I hope that anyone reading this will think about positive changes they can make to improve how they work with disabled people. There are links to the guide below and my contact details, please do get in touch if you would like to discuss the project. We would love Cultural Shift to be the catalyst for national change – I promise it’s achievable and your organisation will never look back!
More info:
Cultural Shift: Ideas for your venue and disabled people
Contact:
[email protected]
01642 665400