Working Parts

Are you a Culture Vulture and a Deaf and or Disabled Person?

If you love going out to gigs, plays, pubs, clubs and more, we would like to meet you. In a nutshell, we want to end the hassle of hunting round for the right information online, lengthy calls to box office, or getting the right seat booked. Above all, empower the user of the service to tackle the issues that Deaf and Disabled People and their parents or carers encounter when wanting to attend an event. And of course make the visit, free of obstacles and confusion.

We are meeting Deaf and Disabled People at the Arena Theatre and The Public, on Monday the 24 January and Tuesday the 25 January. If you are interested in getting involved please download information by clicking link Info_Pesky_People.

I am the coordinator  of the Wolverhampton Disability Network.  98 people attended the event I organised at the Lighthouse for International Day of Disabled People on December 3. 70% were disabled people, representing all types of disabilities we managed to get 15 out of the 31 groups from our network to the event, so I am well happy. We had a good number of deaf people attending, which I was pleased about. I think having a deaf artist helped and the films were subtitled, well nearly all the films. Success on the day was the result of disability groups in the network pulling together and making this whole happen, for example Paul Darke’s Outside Centre kick started the event with the Disability Film Festival. Working Parts helped involve disabled people in the event by providing artists who delivered workshops with groups before December 3 and found a deaf artist to run a brilliant workshop on the day.    Working Parts benefited the event in two ways,  firstly participants came along to the event and secondly the quality of the art work created.  Groups who were involved in more than one workshop with an artist, understandably produced better artwork, giving more depth and telling a visual story about their experience of disability. Stowheaths and Oxley’s work was more defined. Working Parts also contacted Expressions Choir to sing at Lunchtime, who were great and very well received.

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A unique training opportunity for artists to explore a deaf and disability perspective to Superheroes with children from Penn Hall School. One interpreter Jessica Heller  said “Last week was probably the most challenging yet enjoyable week of my career so far and feel so privileged that I was part of the experience, It was brilliant to meet so many amazing and wonderful people and to feel so much apart of the project” Deaf artist Linda Bagnall said “It was Fab working as part of a team”  Penn Hall school are presenting Superheroes artist training project at the School of Creativity Conference on March 9 2010.

Have a look at photos of the event on the microsite Superheros

I was asked by Kevin Bailey of Wolverhampton Disability Network to create a banner for International Day of Disabled People. I was asked to do this by running a workshop with Deaf and Disabled people during the Disability Film Festival at The Lighthouse. I met Kevin and Alan McLean from Working Parts a week before the workshop. This helped me to get the general idea and they were keen to visualise people’s ideas of independence. I really appreciate the fact that it was a face-to-face meeting because it’s easier for me to understand. The access for the workshop was brilliant – I would have not coped if it wasn’t for the wonderful interpreter Natalie. It enabled me to confidently communicate with everybody and allowed them to get used to me as a signer. I cannot think of a better way to improve this as I received the support I needed (thank you to both Alan and Kevin!) Read the rest of this entry →

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 →