Despite losing our main venue and production partner, London Pleasure Gardens, three days into the Olympics, in 2012, Together!
- Created a participatory cultural programme, led entirely by volunteers, bringing together disabled people of all ages, from every impairment group and from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds;
- Showcased the work and talents of 45 locally based disabled artists, in exhibitions at Eastside Community Heritage’s pop-up museum and gallery in Stratford in August and at the Hub for Disability History Month;
- Involved 31 locally based disabled people in arts workshops covering poetry, storytelling, photography, film-making, wheelchair dance and crafts (as well as people from further afield);
-
Brought in nine international disabled artists and five UK-based disabled artists to share their work and act as role models;
- Organised four exhibitions; a three-day film festival; and six events involving live performances;
- Delivered this work in 12 locations spread throughout the borough;
- And produced this with 25 official partners, including London Borough of Newham and East London NHS Foundation Trust.
- Festival participants also created ten pieces of mail art for exhibition by Cooltan Arts, over 50 poems (many of which were performed live at our Pop-Up Cafe and have been published online), festive cards and decorations, and a short film funded by Channel 4 which will be available on our website in the New Year.
Disability Arts Online described the festival as: “A launch pad rocketing culture in Newham to the skies.” It said of our re-launch event for Disability History Month: “The community is intact here. It shares a glory in the achievement of work well done, well presented and a festival well-organised.”
UKDPC would like to thank Artistic Director Dr Ju Gosling aka ju90, Young Producer Malini Shah, Poetry and Spoken Word Producer Sarah Hughes, and key volunteers Dawn Barber, Blake Gibbons, Georgia Drysdale and Des Blake, as well as all of the artists involved and our partner organisations.