Working Parts

… the hub of Black Country arts and disability news and views.  Please sign up today and join our exciting, vibrant network.

Working Parts is an informal steering group of arts organisations in the four Black Country boroughs – Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

Current steering group members are Black Country Touring, Walsall Council Creative Development Team, the Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Multistory.

Join us if you are interested in the arts and disability, whether you’re an artist, venue, promoter, audience or want to follow what’s happening…

See website to tell you all about it www.wwad.info

Windows with a Difference have invited artist Bobby Baker to the Black Country because she is uniquely placed to bridge the Arts and Mental Health worlds, it is the ambition of her company Daily Life Ltd to access, connect, support and inspire people and organisations across the UK via Bobby’s performances, exhibitions, and related outreach and engagement activities. Windows with a Difference share this ambition in large print

“Exceptionally funny, Bobby Baker is a performance artist of rare quality and distinction” – The Daily Telegraph

If you were involved in Carnival Buzz in Summer 2011 or just want to see what happened and what people thought about the event please download the PDF. One Voice are currently applying for funding to explore ways of increasing the impact of a public event for involving artists, participants and audiences. Watch this space. One_voice_Report_Carnival Report by Alan McLean

Working Parts report, Phase 2 2010 Please download the report if you are interested in Working pARTS. It’s brief, colourful and concise. Well done everyone.

A good night was had by all at Brook Street Centre Tipton, Steve Day delighted the audience and Jessica Heller did a great job of BSL interpretation. Jonny Fantastica did his audience participation as Doctor Deaf and invited people to join his Surgery of Laughter. Following this event Black Country Touring’s  promotor in Dudley wishes to set up a diary of events, so that events and local activities do not clash, enabling Deaf people in Birmingham and the Black Country to have more access to great entertainment by deaf and hard of hearing artists.

http://www.vimeo.com/20915646
Working Parts became aware of ‘SUPERHEROES’ – the working title for a new performance-based project to be created by and with an integrated company of Deaf and disabled performers.  The project (centred on Graeae Theatre, who delivered our artist training) will be interdisciplinary, employ an accessible aesthetic drawn from the vocabularies of sign language, audio description and written text, and combine traditional theatre spaces with outdoor theatre.  It will be international in ambition and will be developed through participatory work with Deaf and disabled young people at Hereward College and Penn Hall School in the West Midlands.

I have been a member of the Working Parts steering group now for the past three years and it has always been hugely rewarding and beneficial to me, both as an individual and for the organisation I work for. Working Parts has enabled me to discover and learn about a wide range of access and disability issues as well as find out about disability-led organisations and organisations working with disabled people in the Black Country, who may have otherwise gone unnoticed. It has provided essential and useful information about the issues surrounding accessibility and the arts and opened the debate around how creativity and arts can be used to benefit and add value to organisations and individuals’ working practice.

As a result of the networking and advocacy events developed by Working Parts, Multistory have worked with a number of disabled artists, attended and facilitated numerous networking events and recently developed a pilot digital storytelling project at Hallam Street Hospital, West Bromwich.

This pilot project developed as a result of Alan McLean speaking to the psychologist from the hospital who attended a Working Parts networking event. Alan mentioned the aims and the benefits of the group and the psychologist discussed how she would like to use more creative activities within the hospital. As a result, and an informal conversation with me following the event, Alan put me in contact with the psychologist to discuss setting up a series of creative workshops in the hospital. The digital storytelling project was formed as a result of these informal conversations and networks.

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http://www.vimeo.com/19829001
Over 25 deaf and disabled people attended focus groups in late January at the Public in West Bromwich and the Arena theatre. It was organised by Black Country Touring for Alison Smith of Pesky People. Paul Annett and Lizzie Ostrum of A&E facilitated the focus groups. People who attended said,”There was a clear purpose to the meeting, and that they felt very welcome. Access had already been sorted out prior to the meeting which meant that the meeting flowed well.  That someone is actually interested in the needs of Deaf people and prepared to involve Deaf people in the creation of accessible information has to be good.”

http://www.vimeo.com/18896119
Videos showing how art helped groups from Wolverhampton’s Learning Disability Advocacy project get involved in International Day of Disabled People, which was organised by the Wolverhampton Disability Network. Co-ordinator Kevin Bailey  asked Working Parts to help make International Day of Disabled People a success, working parts offered outreach workshops with artists, in the lead up to the event, and identified a disabled artist to run a workshop on the day. On the day was the Disability Film Festival organised by Paul Darke of Outside Centre. Working Parts responded by providing an artist Peter Chaplin, who has creative approach to film making. Working Parts are now helping the network use the arts in the future, to create events and deliver activities that demonstrate user involvement.
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photo by Mark McNulty

Working Parts supported Expressions up until March when they continued to work with Vocal Coach Sami Cornick. After 6 months of singing, and as a result of been part of the Working Parts Network, Expressions were invited to sing  by Director of DadaFest Ruth Gould at an event called Festival of Choirs, this was a brilliant experience for the group. Have a look at the video on vimeo,  thanking Dadafest for the invitation and explaining what it meant to the group.   Read the rest of this entry →