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Together! 2012 CIC is led by Disabled artists and is based in the main London 2012 Paralympic Host Borough of Newham. We are proud to have been voted East London Community Heroes 2022 for ‘Outstanding Initiative in Art and Culture’. IMPORTANT Refugees are welcome to join in with our activities. Everything we do is free and has been created to be accessible from participants’ homes and hotel rooms.

  • Click here to find out more about our 2023 activities, including our international Together! 2023 Disability Film Festival (2-3 December), our Clubs, our Youth Together! programme, and our Events including recordings of past events.
  • Click here to go straight to our ‘Join in from home’ pages, where we have a variety of inclusive creative activities that you can join in with from home, including Zoom-based Clubs and The Kitchen Carnival.
  • Click here to watch a recording of our ’10 years and more than 2012 events later’ lunchtime event on 16 June for Newham Heritage Month 2022 and find out more about our history and our work.

Follow the Menu links above for lots more!

Read our Twitter stream for updates or subscribe to our mailing list. We are also on Facebook (Together 2012 CIC) and Flicker (together2012)

Together! 2012 CIC is led by locally based disabled artists under the artistic directorship of international artist Dr Ju Gosling aka ju90, and is creating a Paralympic cultural Legacy in East London by making the main Host Borough of Newham into an international centre of excellence for Disability Arts. Together! 2012 CIC has already received significant recognition for our work, winning the first Rotary Stratford East London Community Heroes Award for Outstanding Contribution to Community Cohesion in June 2019 and being shortlisted again in 2021. We have also been Newham’s Green Business of the Year in 2018 and shortlisted again in 2021.

With ongoing support from Arts Council England and Newham Council, we run a free year-round programme of creative workshops for disabled people and their companions led by mid-career artist Alison Marchant, and free disabled-led exhibitions, events, performances and screenings for everyone, culminating each year in our month-long Together! Festival for Disability History Month. We help to strengthen existing Disability Arts groups in East London and create new ones, and work to connect local communities with other Disability Arts events and activities. Since March 2020 we have been delivering this programme online and by phone, extending access to our work across the UK and beyond.

“Together! is where the next generation of grassroots Deaf and Disabled artists will come from.”

Colour photograph of a group of disabled people lined across the stage behind cage bars, with words including Useless, Animal and Sad projected behind them

Our associate company Act Up! Newham premiered When You See Me at Stratford Circus on Friday 23 November 2018 to open the Together! 2018 Disability History Month Festival.

We also run the Together! 2012 Consultancy led by multi-gold medal-winning Paralympian Robin Surgeoner MBE, empowering organisations of all sizes to be Inclusion Confident as well as delivering inclusive events and activities on clients’ behalf.

‘Together’ is our philosophy, and we work with a wide range of local and national partners whose support has made our progress possible (see below for partners’ logos and links).

Locally based poet and singer Dwain Bryan at the Together! tent at the 2016 Liberty Festival

Locally based poet and singer Dwain Bryan at the Together! tent at the 2016 Liberty Festival

We bring great art to people’s homes in a borough that at the start of 2012 officially had the lowest level of arts engagement in the UK. Within our programming we prioritise emerging artists, together with established artists making work that takes them in new directions, and artists who have remained undiscovered for too long. We are always particularly interested in work that reflects the lived experiences of disabled people, and represents communities who too often remain invisible.

Our year-round Clubs programme brings together amateur, community, semi-professional and professional disabled artists to learn and share work on equal terms. Learning is important in all we do, including training Disabled people to deliver live events and produce exhibitions, and providing opportunities to experience a wide range of roles related to careers in the arts. Our main programmes are intergenerational, and bring together Disabled people with learning difficulties, physical and sensory impairments and mental health difficulties from across age and cultural groups. In addition, we are currently developing our bespoke offer for young people under the leadership of emerging artist Kate Rolison.

Photograph of a man in a dark hat and sunglasses, with a brightly coloured wig and make up on and a red and white spotted handkerchief around his neck, dressed for carnival or a parade.

The late David Morris in festival mode

Together! is inspired by the late David Morris (1958-2010), External Inclusion lead at London 2012 and the Mayor of London’s disability adviser, whose work changed the lives of many disabled Londoners. David’s unique ethos underpins our aims and objectives.

We are committed to making all of our activities free to access for audience members and participants. You can make a donation to support our work by clicking the ‘Donate’ button at the bottom of this page, or email us on info@together2012.org.uk or call 07973 252751 for more information or to volunteer.

 

Photograph of a canvas banner, with the name Together! 2012 written at the bottom in colourful graffiti, with spray painted symbols above of different art forms such as a palette and brushes, camera, book, needle and cotton, clapperboard, microphone etc

The banner created by participants in our Summer Together! graffiti art workshop with Graffiti Life.