We aim to explore artistic creation processes with mix-abled groups and facilitate participative processes about accessibility and radical inclusion with local agents in order to foster visibility and participation of disabled people in urban and rural areas, creating a report that can expand the wave.
Zaragoza (mid-city), Mallén (3000 habitants) and Alagón (7000 habitants) in Aragón, Spain.
Urban and rural day a day life seems to be from different planets, because of long distances and difficult and short transportations through the dry mountainous landscape. Almost 9% of the population is disabled, and a main challenge is to get reliable and accurate data about their day a day situation and opportunities, especially in small towns and villages. Most of the population with disabilities live institutionalised and subject to rigid and imposed schedules and habits. There is a lack of chances of participation in social and cultural life for them. In our disintegrated and compartmentalised society, there are few opportunities of living together. The confinement and isolation of disabled people has been aggravated in the current situation.
We target to affect the communities we work on by mixing people and offering inclusive dance as a way to relate, communicate and create together.
We will be working with local agents somehow linked to culture and/or disability: cultural centers staff and programmers, librarians, social services and entities, teachers or educative staff, even families.
Our main beneficiaries are people who dance. All our groups will be mix-abled in different ways, so we work with disabled people and aim to provide mixed proposals to relate to others, to facilitate spaces of coexistence. In rural areas, mix-abled groups will also include young people related to educational institutions.
The project is structured in 3 interwoven lines of intervention:
1 Creative processes (2 urban, 1 rural) that will comprise the following phases:
- Presentation and participants attraction
- Co-creative process
- The community on stage - open rehearsals
- Conclusions and closure
2 Preparation of a good practice guide. Discussions on accessibility and inclusion with local agents (2 rural, 1 urban), each consisting of two sessions:
- Exploration of needs and diagnosis
- Consultancy and possible improvements
3 Project documentation and report
In all 3 lines we will foster the participation of all agents using methodologies as inclusive dance (disabled and non-disabled dancers as equal contributors), collective reflection and decision making and autoethnography.
The project would empower participants both in their relationship with their bodies and in the social and cultural spaces of participation, resulting in more proactive and sensitive individuals with improved skills for demanding, negotiating and decision-making.
The agents involved in the discussions will take actions to improve the access of disabled people to new spaces of participation, such as the removal of architectural and communication barriers in institutional or private spaces or the inclusion of people with disabilities in participatory decision-making processes in the municipalities.
The project will challenge the views and practices of the spectators, exceeding any narrow understandings of either disability or dance.
Our project challenges to set dance and culture as a common territory to mix-abled groups, exploring the diversity of bodies, expressions and positions, and widening the participation of disabled people. We aim to:
*offer inclusive dance experiences and workshops in mixed groups of people, to be rehearsed or performed in public spaces (both rural and urban),
*promote brief participative meetings with local regions’ agents (social, cultural, educational, institutional, etc.) to get information and diagnostics of their situations and needs regarding disabilities, and to provide tools and consultancy to enhance equality and democratization of access to culture and participation,
*report the processes and provide a participative and polyphonic narrative of them.
We aim to promote and facilitate an equal access to “the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”, as Human’s Right Declaration’s 27th article proposes.
We believe in diversity and creativity: every single human being is unique and has a creative and artistic potential to explore and offer. Dance and theatre are powerful tools to express, create and relate to oneself and the others.
Disabled people are discriminated in many ways, also in arts and culture. Invisible, forgotten, so often not even accounted as audience. We advocate to realise the right of disabled people to access the cultural community life, believing that is a democratic and common benefit.
Total budget
Funding requested from Civic Europe
Personnel costs 30212 EUR
- Project manager
- Local choreographers and teachers
- Guest national choreographer (Guillermo Weickert)
- Accessibility and inclusion consultants
- Accountant
Travel and accommodation 2430 EUR
Filming and photography 2915 EUR
Costumes and materials 1200 EUR
Dance studio rent 2070 EUR
Documentation and report 6021 EUR
Insurance and management 1050 EUR
We would like feedback about how to make a creative process in a participative way.
We would love to learn more about inclusive perspective and performing arts as its tools.
If you know any other related project exploring diversity, dance, participation and community culture, please tell us.
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