Jo Verrent, Senior Producer of the Unlimited festival, will look at barriers in modern society and try to answer questions including: Are cultural sectors world-wide elitist, hierarchical, gated? How can disabled people gain equal access to such structures?
Unlimited is the world’s largest commissioning programme for disabled artists, focusing on art that is disability-led, delivered by a team that is disability-led. It has influence at a national and international level, causing us to perceive the impact of disability on the arts differently.
The concept of “disability-led” is central to Unlimited. Artists and companies applying to the program describe how creative control within their work is led by disabled people, selection panels for decision making include a majority of disabled people, the staffing of the program has disabled people in the majority, as does the senior team. If a program is to support a specific focus area, then those with lived experience should be in control of any and all processes connected to it—but often this is perceived as a minority viewpoint.
Using Unlimited as a model, the purpose of this session is to provide a blueprint for change, recognizing international cultural difference and yet applicable globally at different scales and levels.
The lecture is part of the series “Theories and practices of cultural leadership” organised by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy.
The lecture is part of the series “Theories and practices of cultural leadership” organized by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy.