This post is slightly overdue, since the sessions I’m reflecting on took place in late November / early December 2022. This is mainly due to the need to sit with and digest what I learned from those sessions, which built on the work I did with Quiplash earlier in 2022. I found my sessions with Touretteshero were nothing short of transformational.

Touretteshero is a disabled- & neurodivergent-led project - now also an NPO - co-directed by artist, writer and activist Jess Thom. The aims of Touretteshero are “to celebrate and share the creativity and humour of Tourettes in an accessible way, with the widest possible audience”. In collaboration with Battersea Arts Centre, Touretteshero pioneered “Relaxed Venue methodologies”, which “offer a warm welcome to people who find it difficult to follow the usual conventions of theatre behaviour”. I had one session with Director of Research Will Renel, and one with Will and Jess together.

The first thing I noticed and really appreciated about Jess and Will is that they don’t pull any punches; their commitments to inclusive practice, anti-ableism and principles of collective liberation are rightly uncompromising. They are constantly looking to improve their own practices, and expect no less from the organisations and individuals with whom they work.

They provided an incredible space for me to explore several fundamental questions and themes, in how I think about and how I enact inclusive practice. They included:

My thinking

how to think and work really expansively around accessibility and inclusive practice (and the differences between those things: an event can be technically ‘accessible’ but this does not ensure that it is experientially inclusive)
to be aware of access hierarchies, and remain vigilant about who is or is not being prioritised on a project
to think about how access tools may be valuable for wider audiences than those for whom they are typically provided - so, thinking expansively about how access resources are offered so that anyone could benefit from them, including those who don’t necessarily identify as needing a specific provision
how to ensure at the outset of a project that I and the team are making commitments to equality of experience for all (while not necessarily expecting all experiences to be the same)

My action & practice

how to enact inclusive practice as a non-disabled freelancer, on my own anti-ableism journey, usually working with teams made up of non-disabled people who have varying levels of knowledge, understanding and experience of working in accessible and inclusive ways
how to ask, at the earliest stage of any project, the question of what the opportunities are for D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people to be involved
to always ask who is and is not in the room, what the barriers will be for them, and how do we remove them

Beyond these topics, we also discussed a specific, real world example of one of my projects, through which we really dug into a key aspect of my entire DYCP project; namely, my accountability.

Up until now, I have thought about achieving accountability through a few methods.

By creating a (living) document which outlines how I work with artists on one hand, and with organisations on the other (I discuss this in my previous blog post).
By keeping a ‘project reflection sheet’ where I evaluate my own work on a project, what I feel I did well or could have done better, and so on
By giving a brief evaluation form to organisations and individual collaborators for feedback (this may be done through a ‘wash up’ meeting. Whatever form of evaluation is planned in a project, I ensure that individual collaborators are paid to feedback)

With Jess and Will I explored being accountable to D/deaf, disabled & neurodivergent audiences. Through my specific project example we discussed how some decisions I and the team made meant that we missed opportunities to do this, and what those opportunities could have looked like.

Beyond these questions, the sessions with Will and Jess made me think very deeply about my positionality. On recent projects I have been acutely aware that I am advocating for anti-ableism from the position of a non-disabled person in non-disabled teams. I am on a journey to increase my experience, expertise, and knowledge. It is impossible for me - or indeed, any one person - to be responsible for embedding anti-ableism in a project, or in a team, or in an institution - least of all someone with no lived experience. That being said, I feel it’s essential that I, as a non-disabled person, and albeit imperfectly, assume the labour of advocating for accessibility and inclusive practice that usually and unreasonably falls to disabled people.
I am also acutely aware of the dearth of disabled leaders in the arts sector, which is one of the reasons why arts organisations are moving so excruciatingly slowly in terms of accessible and inclusive practice, and why they/we get so much of it wrong. It is crucial that all non-disabled arts workers are committed to anti-ableism in their practice, and part of my DYCP has focussed on ensuring that I articulate these values up front for future clients / collaborations. Butin thinking about some work I’ve done lately, along with an observation made by Touretteshero, it is important to consider whether, for some organisations, there may be an appeal in working with a non-disabled collaborator who is committed to anti-ableism so that they can feel that they are making a gesture towards ‘doing the work’ without necessarily engaging disabled practitioners / producers. That has given me serious pause for thought. It is absolutely vital that non-disabled people working in the arts are committed to anti-ableism, but it is all the more vital that there are more disabled people in senior and leadership roles to produce more embedded and long-term change, as well as creating opportunities throughout creative projects to work with disabled collaborators.