I have written a paper called “Whose work is it anyway?”. The paper was one I wrote for Conquering Public Spaces conference in Prague in November 2011.
I wrote it because I am cross that the national press don’t seem interested in learning disability arts and performance. This link will let you download an Easy Read version of the paper, I would like to know what you think.
Click here to download the paper
By Mark Richardson
As one of the chairs from the CM brighton. – am much looking to see talk about ” Our kind Of Art” go on and forward.
Firstly we made a “Human Quality Machine”. We all found sounds and actions about what quality means to us. We each came into the performance space and repeated our sounds and actions three times until we’d made a whole machine together.
Ideas that came out of this were:
Quality is…working together to better ourselves
• This is what practising is about and rehearsing
• Getting stronger
• Working at it more so we get it better
• Working at drama properly
• The effort of improving
• You’ve got to work at it a lot to make it quality
• From day one when we started, as we’ve done more shows they’ve got better and better, and that’s about quality.
Quality is… always keeping moving
• We don’t keep still, we keep going on and on and on
• And while we’re going on we’re developing
• By developing that’s how you get quality
• We’re getting better year after year
• We want to go ahead, look ahead, develop
• We’re learning all the time. We’re still learning.
• There’s still room for improvement
Quality is… working together
• Working as a team
• What we do together as a group – we get the benefit and the essence of our work
• Friends
• Being a theatre company
• Disabled people working together
Quality is… providing a service to our audience
• Quality assurance – it’s like in business
• Getting it right on the night
• We’ve got one show on the night and we’ve got to get it right
• It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality
• If it’s not quality people aren’t going to want it
Next we made some frozen images in smaller groups. We worked together to make images of what quality means to us. Some of the images we made were:
Image 1
Three people are standing in a line. At the back the first person mimes writing. Her word is “Planning”. She repeats her sound and action 3 times. The next person is raising his arms as if he is lifting up a weight. His word is “Effort”. He repeats his sound and action 3 times. The person at the front is pointing in front of him. He repeats his word: “Forward, Forward, Forward….”
Image 2
One actor is standing in front of a group of people. She moves her hand across her chest proudly as if indicating something written on her T-shirt and repeats the word “Logo”. The other group members are facing her. One makes a thumbs up sign and says “good”. Another puts her thumb and forefinger together and says “Quality”.
Unfortunately we can’t make it to the Creative Minds event in Brighton, although some of us are hoping to come to the Bristol event. We look forward to meeting people from other companies to carry on thinking about these things.