Harbourfront Centre, Toronto: making sure ‘everyone is imagined’
Harbourfront Centre, Toronto: making sure ‘everyone is imagined’
Case Study
Harbourfront Centre is an international centre for contemporary arts, culture and ideas, operating a 10-acre campus in Toronto, Canada. Joe Turnbull spoke to Iris Nemani, Chief Programming Officer at Harbourfont about its engagement with disabled artists and audiences over several years, culminating in CoMotion, its first international Deaf and Disability
El Alto: Bringing together disability arts from across the Americas
Case Study
El Alto is the British Council’s review of arts and culture in the Americas. For its second edition, the focus was on the d/Deaf and disability arts movement and ‘crip’ culture. El Alto was edited in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability (Canada) and 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos (Mexico).
Relaxed Performances: a comparative study across six countries
Case Study
Between April 2018 and April 2020, French-based organisation Ciné-ma différence commissioned a comparative survey of 16 organisations* delivering Relaxed-style Performances in France, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland. The resulting report also includes a toolkit with a series of recommendations so that other organisations can implement
Country Profile: Canada (northern Turtle Island)
Country Profile
Glasgow-based disabled artist, Sandra Alland, examines disability arts in her birthplace, the settler-occupied Indigenous territories in the north of Turtle Island – known more widely as Canada. *Note: After English and French place-names, I list in parentheses: Indigenous place-names; names of First Nations territories occupied by the city/province; and/or numbers/names of
Sync Leadership – leading online in Canada
Opinion
September 24, 2020
Sync Leadership is a disabled-led programme exploring Deaf and disabled leadership in arts, culture, heritage and media which combines leadership theory with one-to-one coaching. It was founded in 2008 by Sarah Pickthall and Jo Verrent, two disabled leaders based in the UK. Sarah Pickthall shares details of the latest Sync programme
The development and availability of accessible books
Opinion
June 4, 2020
Sandra Alland, co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press, 2017), explores the accessibility on offer for disabled audiences within the publishing industry. A person reading an e-book. Photo credit: Petr Kratochvil Braille has been around for 200 years, and audiobooks for almost 100 –
Sick and Twisted
Artist
Mandate Sick + Twisted is a theatre company dedicated to creating work exploring the experience of living with a disability. Mission Artists with disabilities enjoy many advantages in the development and pursuit of our craft: Living with a disability means living in a world that is dangerous, therefore artists with disabilities are accustomed to
Joe Jack & John
Artist
Joe Jack and John is a theatre company that produces original, bilingual, multidisciplinary performances combining video, dance, and the spoken word. Our artistic approach is deeply humanistic and interdependent; our creations represent a social microcosm by collaborating with professional actors living with disability or from diverse cultural backgrounds. We favour devised
The development of captioning in the performing arts
Opinion
December 3, 2018
Following the launch of National Theatre’s smart caption glasses in October, disabled writer, artist and curator, Sandra Alland, explores the development of captioning for live performance, highlighting a range of international innovations. A scene from the Canadian Opera Company’s 1983 production of Elektra, the first use of surtitles. Photo credit: Michael
A Wider Angle: the evolution and future of disability film festivals
Opinion
December 4, 2017
UK-based disabled journalist and Agent of Change at Theatre Royal Stratford East, Kate Lovell explores the development and international outlook of disability film festivals from around the world, considering issues of access, agency and representation. Oska Bright Film Festival. Photograph: Paul Mansfield November is an exciting month for disability arts: