We dedicate this video, and recommend it, to all those trapped waiting without anything else to do.

Saturday 27 October 12 noon-1pm: Together! 2018 Disability History Month Festival Launch and World Premiere of ‘Always Waiting’. Outside Beckton Globe Library.

Waiting for housing, benefits, social care, tribunal decisions, repairs, NHS treatment, transport – or just for someone to answer the phone or reply. We always seem to be waiting, in a never-ending series of queues, doing our best to follow the rules, only to find the rules changing and ourselves at the back of the queue again. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh…

Jamie Beddard of Natural Diversions

Street art specialists Natural Diversions from Bath are Together! Festival favourites, having first performed for us in Stratford’s Cultural Quarter in 2014. Since then, director Mark Bishop has been working with locally based Disabled artists, assisted by members of the professional company. For the Together! 2015 Festival, local performers restaged Natural Diversions’ popular performance Sheep in Stratford Centre, following a workshop that took place as part of the Summer Together! 2015 programme. In 2016, Together! 2012’s Artistic Director Dr Ju Gosling aka ju90 worked alongside Natural Diversions to create the first piece original to Newham, Alien Tourists, which has since been performed successfully in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford Centre and Gallions Reach Shopping Park.

Always Waiting is our second collaboration, performed here with the inclusion of guest artists from Montréal thanks to the support of the British Council in Canada. Always Waiting is available for booking in 2019, along with Alien Tourists. A third original piece is planned for 2020.

Mark Bishop of Natural Diversions

Directed by: Mark Bishop for Natural Diversions.
Produced by: Ju Gosling aka ju90 for Together! 2012 CIC.
Performers: Dawn Barber, Jamie Beddard, Mark Bishop, Thierry Carrière, Hannah Facey, Jean Francois Hupé, Kathleen Jackson, Awa Jagne, Paizah Malek, Menka Nagrani, Pritesh Patel, Sterre Ploeger, Abdul Qureshi & the Public.
Music: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46: I. Morning Mood, Paavo Berglund & Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, from the Spotify Playlist ‘Relax and Unwind’, created in association with the Together! Music Club for Disability History Month 2018.
Thanks to: Act Up! Newham, Vicarage Lane Community Centre, Doug Holton, Sarah Hughes, Beckton Globe Library, Beckton Community Neighbourhood Team, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Les Productions des Ppieds des mains.

Queueing outside of Beckton Globe Library