Jo Verrent, senior producer, Unlimited
This isn’t a minority issue
We do need to be joined up, yes, but not just disabled artists. This isn’t a minority issue. If the work of disabled artists is impeded, the whole of the cultural sector and the general public lose out. We are a tiny sector with tiny resources. How can we all group together to offer support?
Education inside the sector is vital too
A lot of organisations still don’t know anything about the current situation and many disabled artists don’t know either. Most people are battling cuts on so many other fronts, this is just one more angle on the whole austerity issue they can’t get their heads around. The thing is, for many disabled artists, it’s the key one. If you can’t operate independently, and you can’t get your access support costs met, then you simply cannot work professionally. That’s not about a reduction in work, it’s a complete full stop.
These cuts limit the arts as a whole
Plain and simple. The arts are about everyone, both artists and audiences. If we limit who can “be” an artist, we limit the work that all of us get to see. We limit ambition and expectation for disabled people, but most importantly, everyone loses out on what can be exceptional, provoking, stunning and incredible work. Art is transformational and disabled artists are being restricted from being able to contribute.
Jenny Sealey, artistic director, Graeae
On cuts to Access to Work
I cannot reiterate how important Access to Work (ATW) is for Graeae core and freelance staff members. I’ve been very public about our very real fear that the company will fold in six years’ time if we have to cover access costs. This is true of Graeae and other disability arts organisations. It feels like we’re going back 30 years and once again, the arts are the domain of the non-disabled privileged. This is a human rights issue.
On a purely emotional level, I wake up feeling sick. I am so aware that I’m placing a huge financial risk to Graeae if ATW doesn’t cover my interpreters. The company simply cannot afford me. The job shampooing poodles is starting to look likely; I’m seriously (very seriously) having to rethink my job. This is me being emotional, but it’s the truth and I feel a burden, unclean and very weird.
On the legacy of the Paralympics
It feels like 2012 didn’t happen. ATW was instrumental in the success of the Paralympic Opening Ceremony and the fantastic Unlimited Festival, but since then, from feeling like the world has finally got the whole disability thing, we are back cast as benefit scroungers, not worthy of access and a drain on society. The fall from grace has happened at an alarming speed, without any consultation – it’s a system that now feels like is built on sand.
Lisa Hammond, actress and theatre-maker
On touring
If you’re touring across the country with a theatre show, you get a weekly subsistence to find digs in various places. This subsistence is usually very low. Most able-bodied actors will have to venture out of the centre of town to find somewhere to stay. That’s fine if you can use public transport easily, share a house and live in one room in the attic of a recommended “digs list” – but these places are never accessible.
So, due to either transport, energy, pain or physical access, you might need to stay near the theatre in order to do your job effectively, but that subsistence will never cover the cost of this type of central accommodation. So you ask ATW to help with the shortfall. I had a theatre job last year in Manchester. It took three months before the job started to fight to get help with this and I was still completing admin on the claim four months after the job ended. If it wasn’t for the theatre’s help in paying the accommodation cost up front with a view to getting reimbursed, I would have lost the ability to do it.
What next?
I’d love to see a joined up approach on this issue. We are all struggling here, both as organisations and as individuals. I would like to see all the big arts organisations and unions joining together to engage with this, rather than the scattergun approach of us all doing our separate things.
Vanessa Brooks, artistic director, Dark Horse Theatre
Organisations are being attacked from all sides
I don’t feel disabled artists can play equally in the light of the current cuts. The past twenty years or so have seen tremendous strides made in the representation of people of difference in the theatre and broader arts spheres. Increasingly, equality had been made possible via a benefits system that went some way in redressing an uneven playing field. Cuts to ATW and – pertinently for us as organisation that trains and works with learning disabled actors, many of whom rely on personal assistants to do their job – the Independent Living Fund robs talented individuals, the companies who work with them, audiences and society as a whole of the richness of the arts.
This is the first prong of a double attack for organisations like ours. The second is the reduction of funding within the national portfolio for diverse companies. So what’s the message the policy makers are sending? Yes, times are hard, but equality of opportunity is a fundamental right, surely?
We must remember what diversity means
Quite literally, diversity doesn’t mean everyone is the same. There’s been a homogenisation of view – a bracketing in the past year or so that’s meant “one size fits all” has become an opt-out for those seeking a box to tick. At Dark Horse we train actors with learning disabilities to work in text-based theatre and in television. Because this isn’t “standard” it feels as though it’s been overlooked. We’ve crossed the Rubicon into the mainstream, but this isn’t usual, so it’s decreasingly understood. In a speedier and speedier soundbite-driven world, diversity as a word has come to mean one thing rather than many. This has negative effects for us all.
Mike Layward and Paula Dower, DASH
Higher education has a part to play
We work with artists, many of whom have gone through an education system that does not support the self-definition of being a disabled person. Indeed, many are brought up “differently-abled” so then they don’t have the knowledge and support that is available. Higher education art departments also have no knowledge of ATW and find it difficult to respond to disability art.
Suzanne Bull, CEO, Attitude is Everything
On the impact of the cuts, changes and threats
In our last three recruitment rounds, there has only been one disabled person applying for a position. The last round was out of 101 applicants. This is very rare for us because of the nature of the work we do: supporting the music industry to improve deaf and disabled people’s access to music. The best candidates are those who have both a professional and personal experience of disability. Up until last year, we were getting the majority of applications from disabled people. This has dramatically dropped. It has to be that people are being put off because getting support has suddenly become so hard – especially so if you are a freelancer.
The media should do more
I’d like to see stories about the value of what disabled people bring to arts and culture, and how this will be seriously damaged. But I also want stories to focus on how disabled people are contributing to the economy, as are their interpreters and support workers, but this is never or rarely reported. We aren’t draining society.
Commenter, Potpourri
Divide and rule
I work as a BSL/English interpreter. The sad thing for me is how these ATW cuts are being used also to divide and rule – in some circumstances, making it seem as though deaf people’s access needs are too expensive to fund because of greedy, overpaid interpreters. This is an awful situation. I know some extremely talented interpreters who are seriously thinking about leaving the profession because it is all too precarious. It’s a horrible situation. It’s also very short-sighted; you get two people paying tax if you have a deaf/disabled person and their interpreter/access worker – doesn’t George Osborne want my money?
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