 Hey, welcome to this new cultural mobility webinar dedicated to the international mobility of disabled artists and cultural professionals co-funded by the European Union and produced in collaboration with whole round. My name is Jan Schlock. I'm the director of on the move. I'm the director of operations for people with visual impairments. I'm a white man in my mid-40s with brown graying hair. I'm wearing glasses. I wear a colorful shirt with a beige sweater. Today, our conversation will focus on equal access to cross-border mobility and its many opportunities that are yet to be achieved for disabled artists and cultural professionals. Thanks to our wonderful moderators and speakers joining us today, this session will therefore allow us to take stock of the situation after the latest initiatives at national, European and international levels and will continue to propose steps to foster change in this area. Your participation today is very welcome. Throughout the webinar, we kindly ask you to please keep your camera and sound turn off for the entirety of the talk. There is a live transcription in English that you can activate at the bottom of the screen or in a separate link shared in the chat. Please feel free to share questions, comments, insights, resources in the chat during the entire conversation. My colleague, Marie Le Souvre, the secretary general of on the move and my other colleague, Bernardo Carus, a communications officer will convey them and also we will have the time to exchange at the end of this conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. We invited our dear colleague, Jordi Baltap-Otolis to facilitate this webinar. Some of you may know Jordi as a consultant, a researcher and a trainer in cultural policy and international cultural relation is an advisor on culture and sustainable cities at the Committee on Culture of United Cities and Local Governments, the UCLG, and a member of the UNESCO Expert Facility for the implementation of the 2005 Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Jordi also contributes to the life of many European and international initiatives and together with John Ellingworth and myself, he co-authored the Time to Arc Studies commissioned by the British Council to on the move, as part of the European Beyond Access project. It is now my pleasure to pass the word to Jordi, who will introduce today's conversation and our guest panelist, Jordi. Thank you very much, Johan. Thank you very much to Wander Mo for the invitation, for putting this panel together and for the opportunity to share today's session with all of you. And I would also like to invite Juan Socny, Lizette Reuter and Maria Vlahou to turn on their cameras so that we can start the conversation. My name is Jordi Valta. I'm a white man in my late 40s. I've got dark gray hair and I wear glasses and today I'm wearing a dark blue top. And I'll be sharing this session today called the International Mobility of Disabled Artists and Culture Professionals, which is part of the On the Moves Mobility Webinar series. And as in the case of other sessions in this series, the aim today is to reflect on the situation of the topic we are addressing today, and particularly the International Mobility of Disabled Artists and Culture Professionals. Some of the challenges that we encounter in this context, but also to explore some of the good practices and try and formulate some recommendations, which can later be hopefully put in practice both by public bodies, but also by international networks and other arts organizations. The focus today is on the International Mobility of Disabled Artists and Culture Professionals. That of course has to do with the importance that international mobility has for all sorts of artists and culture professionals as a core part of their professional development, in terms of learning, in terms of broadening of working and learning opportunities, in terms of mutual enrichment, in terms of peer learning. I mean, there's many reasons why international mobility is important. And at the same time, while we reflect on international mobility, we will of course also address challenges and opportunities that exist at the domestic or the national level because they are closely connected. We are using in this webinar the term Disabled Artists and Culture Professionals. And we acknowledge of course that there's many different terms that are used to refer to the disabled people or to people with disabilities and that in different contexts, there's different ways of addressing this reality. On the Move uses the term Disabled Artists that's consistent with the work that On the Move has done with the Time to Act series of reports that Johan was mentioning earlier. But of course we acknowledge that in other contexts, there's different terms and they are perfectly valid as you will see ours because of the panel today might use other terms both to refer in general to people with disabilities or to artists with disabilities or disabled artists but also to address the diversity of forms of disability and impairment that exist in this case. And hopefully in the course of the session we will be able to see or reflect on this diversity of cases. We have a very rich and interesting set of panelists today and I will briefly introduce them. With us today is Maria Vela Hu, who is a founding member and the executive director of Aceso Cultura, an organisation based in Portugal. She's the author of several books including What Have We Got to Do With It, The Political Role of Cultural Organisations and Musing on Culture, Management, Communication and Our Relationship with People. And she's also the author of the bilingual block Musing on Culture in the Past. She was communications director of the Sao Luís Municipal Theatre and head of communication of the Pavilion of Knowledge Ciencia Viva in Lisbon. She was a board member of ICOM in Portugal and the editor of its piloting between 2005 and 2014. And she's collaborated with different programmes of the Cloustical Benkian Foundation. She's a fellow of the International Society for the Performing Arts and she's taken part in several international initiatives and training programmes. With us today as well is Ansogni, who's the country director for Epic Arts and an Obama leader, Epic Arts in Cambodia and then Obama leader. And she has over 14 years of experience to advocate for Cambodians with disability. She pioneers inclusion in the arts, empowering marginalised individuals through creative experience. Sogni also saves as an advisor to the Cambodian Ministry of Fine Arts and Culture, where she utilises arts, inclusive education, community work and social enterprise to drive positive change. She actively engages with policymakers promoting inclusive policies that underscore the critical role of culture and arts in Cambodia's equitable development and her passion lies in cultivating leaders committed to serving people with disabilities and advancing social inclusion in their communities. And last but not least is Lizette Reuter, who since 2006 works as project manager, trainer, curator and consultant in the international, inclusive art and cultural sector. She's the founder and executive director of the Social Enterprise Unlabel based in Cologne, Germany. As an expert on inclusion, Lizette advises and accompanies cultural stakeholders and organisations throughout Europe in the field of accessibility and equal participation. She's a bridge builder and a border crosser. She's a coach, a project developer and a master of networks that head and head approach is always border crossing in every aspect. She sees inclusion not as a social project but as a matter of course and as a normal part of art. So having done this set of presentations, I think it's very much the time to give them the floor. And I would ask Maria, Sokni and Lizette to who I mean, as you've seen in their profiles, they have an extensive experience in supporting disabled artists at national and an international level and who also work in very diverse different contexts. I would like to ask them first of all to introduce themselves visually for the audience but also if they could tell us what are some of the main challenges faced by disabled artists that they identify in the contexts where they are. And this would be the face round. I'll face give the floor to Maria, then Sokni and then Lizette. You can start, Maria, when you want. Thank you, Jordi. Hello, Lizette and Sokni. I'm a white woman in her fifties. I have shoulder high, straight, light brown hair. Very nice. I'm dressed, I have a black sweater and white shirt. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Access Cultura is an association of cultural professionals based in Portugal and we reached out to the disabled artists with whom we normally collaborate. And the first point I would like to bring up is that one of them told us, great, this is all about mobility, but please think about the changes for artists who cannot travel. That said, a number of other points we would like to share with you. Really, the first ones, it doesn't make a difference if it is a national or international level. It's all the same. And the first one, perhaps the basis of everything is lack of knowledge, lack of knowledge of what the specific artists, the specific needs of disabled artists are, lack of knowledge as to what constitutes a barrier actually and how we can solve or adapt in order to create access conditions for disabled artists. Then another point that is probably associated to our lack of knowledge is lack of empathy. Because when we don't understand certain issues, we tend to think that disabled artists are being difficult or spoiled and one thing I believe is related to the other. Some of the issues that come up is lack of good communication, lack of answers to emails and that can be particularly stressful for a disabled artist that has to think in advance before traveling on a number of specific conditions. So lack of answer to emails, the contract is not being sent on time, payments are not made in time and this is actually quite stressful. Then of course, transport and whoever has a family member or a colleague with disability knows what it means to travel by plane and the horrible stories that keep coming up. So it is important that these bookings are not left for the last moment as it often happens and that we consider carefully transfers and then it's access itself because many times when we organize something, we think about the main venue of the event and then we don't think about other venues like the hotel, like public transport in the city where we are like restaurants, et cetera. A couple of artists were quite clear about the lack of adequate communication before when we are organizing everything, either with themselves, the artists or with their personal assistant. There are issues of lack of access backstage, dressing rooms, toilets, showers and then also related to our lack of knowledge schedules, the pauses, the exhaustion, the time a disabled artist might need in order to keep their body in a good condition and the time it takes many times to do certain things that some artists call creep time. So it's not the same. We cannot plan a residency or show or a performance without taking into careful consideration the specific needs of disabled artists. So just to conclude, together with the artists that talk to us and our experience, we think it is fundamental to consider training in this field for cultural professionals and actually the time to act report was a trigger for us to create a seminar for producers when working with disabled artists then access riders, for instance, we have one in English and one in Portuguese and it can be the artist sending them to sending their access rider to the organization they're going to work with or it can be the initiative of the organization when they know they're going to work with a disabled artist to send the access rider so the artist can give them feedback and then always to evaluate, ask for feedback after the event has taken place. Two quick notes, one artist who told us in Finland, I felt I was seen as a person and another artist who told us, I've shared all these issues with you but in Brazil, especially in the big cities, this was not an issue. Access conditions have been taken care of in many cultural organizations in Brazil. Thank you. Thank you very much, Maria, for this comprehensive review and for bringing in the voices of many, many disabled artists and their experience. Sokni, would you like to share some of the challenges that you encountered in your contacts? Thank you. Thank you, Marion and Jodi and Heloli De Sipter and a whole room here with us, with me. I'm honored to be here with you. I am a woman, Asian woman, brown skin. I have black curly hair and I'm wearing the red top and also myself is a woman with disability as well. I'm so honored to be here with everyone here in the room and for me, it was so surprising to introduce by visual that it's something the first time I have an experience because Cambodia is just such a different way of access, disability accessibility. So that's a good practice for me to learn online when we introduce ourselves, which is something that I learned from it straight away. And I'm here today also to listen, to learn, but also to be your ally together. And of course, I learned a lot from our panel here, but also it's good to thank you for listening to my issue in Cambodia, science for disability artists. And I really sharing the same comment like Marion had mentioned already about the challenge and we face such quite similar challenging. I was cut right to the three or four, five different cut right about the challenges we face in Cambodia, but also international as quite similar. One of those is funding for the arts. It's quite a lack of the funding for the arts. If we talk about Cambodia contact, it's, we don't have a national funding for the arts. We have to find funding from our own projects or own works or different donors. We have an arts, you know, art partnership that we work with that provide funding, but it's not kind of specifically to access for people with disabilities. So we have to be put ourselves in mentoring to get there, but sometimes we need a lot of access to be able to access to that funding. Other one is a market for artistic disability. The art market is really low here in Cambodia. We don't have a public space for us to go perform or sell tickets or regular performance or generate income. The art space either we have to rent it out and do it event or we have to do our own sell in our own center here. And most likely connected with it, the art space is very inaccessible for us to go perform. So it's always add on when we get on a stage, which is kind of for Cambodia is kind of great initiative to make, work it out with the resource we have, but also sometimes it feel like to add on. So it's sometimes not completely designed for the accessibility accessible for people with disability or artistic disability. Pay scale, that is something that in general, I mean in Cambodia, artists have to work in different job to be able to keep doing what they do. If you talk about artists with disability in Cambodia, what the experience is, the pay scale are quite low and the art here we work with us here, we cannot, they cannot work at the other place because it's not much access opportunity for the job outside Epic Artwork. So we fortunate enough to employ our artists for full time job, but apart from our place, it's quite hard to find another job for artists with disability because the access need an understanding about the arts and culture with disability. The other one is education and knowledge like Mary had mentioned. The artists that we working with in general, in general education in disability sector in Cambodia, it's quite low. People with disability really had to access to education because of accessibility at school. So the artists that we working with, most likely they not know how to read or write. So also they don't even know how to do the sign language themselves, who are hearing impairment. So we start from scratch a lot, we have to work with them from very the beginning in term of access to information, learning their own sign language, but also teaching literacy numbers and stuff like that to be a bore for them to basic access to information. So the knowledge artists knowledge, it's quite lack in term of access to information or get to know more information out there in the world. Or even in the country it's still hard. So we need to support a lot and we will forget to support a lot to share that information to other artists. And art space, let I mention already the markets for the art disability, but also in general art space, there's not such a thing that start to think about accessibility for the art space. So when we work with the public space in Cambodia or the private space in Cambodia, in the same time we have to advocate for that to be a bore for us to go and perform or advocate for the right spot for the sign translator to sign for our deaf dancer. So we have to, in a way it's a good advocate on arts and national and local in general, but we have to put up a lot of prepare and work and make sure our artists don't feel like they're not being sought through about their needs. So we have to work a lot on emotional support and also work a lot on accessibility support for them. And the last one is the other one is quite hard and that's what we actually fighting for every day is a mindset, mindset about people with disability and about artists with disability. In Cambodia, knowledge about disability awareness is quite low. It doesn't mean they don't, they doesn't want to understand that, but the education and when they're raising its limits, so the information quite lacks of that. So we have to do a mindset, we have to do a lot of mindset changes or advocate for mindset change from the negative side to the positive thinking about artists with disability, especially when down into contemporary dance, platform that our team is, it's quite interesting approach that how the audience in Cambodia take on about the art form, because contemporary dance also quite a new one as well. And on top of that, we are artists with different disability performance. So it's a lot of top picture challenge on the stage, but it's a good way to put it out there, advocate for talented and professionalism for artists with disability. The last one is policy because Cambodia Ministry of Fine Arts and Culture it's very supportive and very want to bring to make sure that the might mention the art in Cambodia. But although the policy, it's that in 2014, it's a long time ago and a lot of aspect that miss out in terms of integrated with inclusive, you know, disability inclusion or disability art inclusion then in the sector of the policy, it wasn't that mentioned that well. So it's still need a lot to do to promote diversity of arts in the policy a little bit more in Cambodia. And to sum up in general, we work out what we have and available results in Cambodia in terms of artists and diversity in art. We turn around to the place sometime under the tree we have to put a mat on and perform or sometime a lot of stair we have to make sure one of our team are ready to carry our artists on top of the stair. So we try as much as we could in our lack of results but at the same time, we're trying to mainstream our work within the mainstream context of arts and culture which is kind of good advocate in general that Cambodia kind of start to accept the new dance form in inclusive dance group and also in the same time they start to talk about the talent of the artists which I think that's a good advocate that we have a long way to go but that's how we do it in a smaller piece of we have and for the international level, I think almost the same similar situation but probably in terms of education and access to funding probably better than Cambodia that's from my understanding. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sogni for introducing a range of topics ranging from the accessibility at venue level to the broader aspects of social mindsets and how this also translates into policy and funding. We'll now give the floor to Lizette and Lizette, there's many things that have already been said but hopefully you have some others to add or just to reinforce some of the things that Sogni and Maria have shared. So the floor is yours. Thank you so much for the invitation. To introduce myself, I'm a 44 year old Central European white woman with blonde curly long hair going over my shoulders and today I'm wearing like a roll neck jumper, a black one and I have blue eyes and my sign language name if somebody is also in the audience who's deaf is like the L of Lizette at the curly hairs. Yeah, a lot of issues already tackled from Maria and Sogni but I would like to add that I see one of the biggest challenges really like the lack of budget in this traditional cultural funding programs because the cost for accessibility must then usually be taken from the production budget and as unlabeled started as a performing arts company this was really our biggest challenge in the past also doing our international big production projects funded by Creative Europe and Erasmus Plus and we always faced like a huge reach problem to get the budget for accessibility costs together and this leads every company who's working mixed-abled inclusive in like a disadvantaged position to every other companies who do not work inclusively because they have to take the budget from the normal production costs and there are no additional costs where you can apply for and it's interesting because in Germany this is changing a little bit since the last two years I would say so funding organizations are more aware but still, for example, in North Brain Risk Failure we have the possibility to ask for another 5,000 euros for additional costs for accessibility costs if you think about working with deaf artists in a production and you need sign language translators for a six-week production time you need 30,000 and not 5,000, you know so this is really like one of the biggest challenge and for example, there is finally or hardly no country except UK where you have like this Access to Work program which is really wonderful in UK and the Access to Work program provides financial support to help individuals and not only employees because in a lot of countries you have the possibility, if you are employed to ask for support money but not for individuals so not for freelancing artists and I think this is really one of the biggest challenges and with this Access to Work scheme from UK also freelancing artists freelancing independent people can ask for support and they are supporting not only specialized equipment but they are also supporting travel expenses and support workers and especially support workers are really needed when you work mixed-ables in productions another challenge I say is that there is hardly any access to state training opportunities and to educational programs from art universities and in Germany for example just to give you a number there are only six professional trained actors and dancers studied on a state university in the whole country until now there are of course a lot of private initiatives actors schools where you can be trained but this state educational system is not accessible and this leads to another problem because a lot of state theaters, city theaters they are only working with professional trained artists from state university programs so they are saying we would like to have like disabled artists in our ensembles but there is nobody out there so I think really one of the main key points is that we have to start with our educational systems and the situation in Germany is not so different to the most other countries I know in Europe and I can just confirm what Maria said and I think this is really the biggest, biggest challenge the lack of knowledge among cultural stakeholders about inclusion, accessibility not only about the needs of the artist but also about the needs of the audience and I think this is really where we also have the best chance to work on altogether because it's about giving training about giving the possibility to find the knowledge there is a lot of knowledge out there but people need to know where to find it and they need to invest in being trained and educated so as I'm looking a bit on the time I think I will make a point here Excellent, thank you very much also Lizette for this initial introduction to some of the challenges you see and as you will have seen over the contributions of Maria, Sokny and Lizette there's a wide range of challenges that are observed I mean many which have to do with aspects related to information, knowledge, awareness, raising, education which interestingly echo one of the main focus of the time to act reports which were commissioned by the British Council to on the move in the context of Europe beyond access and which you can access by the information that has been shared in the chat but also we've encountered many other aspects and of course many of those can be addressed through information and knowledge but we've also seen access related to the accessibility of both venues for artistic work but also the many other infrastructures that are relevant in terms of international mobility then many other things that are relevant at the domestic or the national level in terms of adapting policies and funding programs and recognizing the specific needs which relate to accessibility and which mean that as some of you were saying potentially artists with disabilities can be particularly disadvantaged when that specificity is not recognized and then there's broader aspects related to the mindsets and the perception of disabled artists in the minds of people and to what extent we can change that to a recognition of the value and the right of disabled artists to pursue a career as well and what that means also in terms of adapting policies and programs. So we've seen a wide range of difficulties and challenges and now in order to adopt a more constructive role of course the participants in the panel today also have solutions or at least in their own work they have developed programs and activities that have tried and address some of these challenges. So I would like now to give the floor back to them we'll start with Sogni now and ask them if they can share an example of a project or an initiative in which they have been involved and in which some of these challenges have been addressed. So Sogni the floor is yours. Thank you Jodi, thank you. Yes, Epic Art we believe in the art as a way of to transform but also to spread the message about the issues also issues we have. So we created in 2006 based on the one of the founders who she is a dancer and also her father also is a person with disability from UK. So the art is the sole of the organizers as it holds. So we have three programs that are running every day here in the organization. We have the we call inclusive education program which is that the one of the education in under the education program is inclusive art course because we provide the education for youth with disability from 18 years certified because it's hard to identify the age of children with disability or the youth with disability. So they joined us a two year course to learn different skill in dance, drama and visual art. We've been running since 2009 and that is quite intensive course full time two years and we provide accommodation also the stipend for youth with disability to be able to make us for them believing for what they have to do with us. But each generation have been changed a little bit because the job market needs as well. We've been running for five generations now the last generation lately we run in 2003 we adapt our curriculum a little bit because the job needed for the market needs. So we change slightly just dance purely to dance the arts and hospitality skill because we also know that we find out that the youth with disability when they joined with us through the process of selection after they experience with dance and drama they also don't want to be a dancer so our job is not for them to be a dancer our job is to explore and be a bridge for them to explore what they want to be. So the program is tailored based on the need of the youth with disability in the center that we have. So that one of the program that could produce the new artists to join our dance performance team that we also have our own group called Epic Arts Dance Company they are the professional dancer but also they came from the inclusive art course since 2009 until now so we generate the new generations each course when they graduate in this then that because when they joined with us there's a lot of needed support within the family, within the access, within the budget but also at the same time within almost no support because the inclusive dance it's not just only provide them skill but also the place for them to explore what they want to be but also explore their potential and be confident as well. So some of them sometimes when they graduate they got a different job not being an artist or they become quite a well known visual art or they have their own self created, delivered, they are talented so that what is something we really trying to do for tellers the need of youth with disability who needed support or who want to be explored in arts and dance being a dancer but also to say that so the like I mentioned from the beginning the contemporary dancing company quite new so the trainer it's actually from UK that's what we're working with the teacher, the choreographer from UK to work with our artists here so we fortunate to have different teachers and choreographer come work with us in long term like every two years and then we might be have the same teacher or maybe change different but we find it more effective because the higher proper skill from the teacher from UK then what we find in Cambodia so our artists who explore and expose with new different way of constantly done with the trainer from the UK that one of the you know program we have but also on our side we have the Epic Art Cafe I know that's not a it's not an artist but also hospitality is a way that also to create a job for disability who are not interested in art but they want to work in a restaurant so that job opportunity creating for people with disability which is now organized and of course like I mentioned already the dance team the company they are six of them and they have different type of diversity in group and they perform and different issues related with Cambodia at the same time when they perform and they advocate for disability inclusions through the art so they perform in national and international to different different vegetable but also the partnership as well in the country we work with international school to work with with the theme also inclusion so that how we advocate why there's been outside the organization work as well through the company and overall we promote the the percentage of people with disability in organization we have 54 staff together probably quite small for compared to other but 70% although people with disability that we're working with and we play such a we're trying to be up our game in terms of like being part of different networking of arts networking general arts and culture networking in Cambodia they're actually not such a thing specific for disability networking artistic disability networking in Cambodia so we not have any other platform apart from just general art networking in Cambodia so we founded more interested internationally in terms of if we want to explore our you know opportunity or increase our skill on disability inclusion and art we're looking for international in the countries quite a little bit of lack of opportunity at the moment that I have thank you thank you very much for sharing your experience and Lisette the floor is now yours to share some of your experiences thank you yeah I would like to give you a little insight in our three year access major access makeup project which we launched exactly three years ago so we are in the final two weeks writing the reports and everything but so what we did we focused with access maker on the support of three large city theaters in our region so this would have a show houses like a state theater Teata Dortmund is like huge theater with opera house inside children in youth theater so it's like a five Spartan house it's called in Germany so it's really large theaters and children in youth theater in Cologne over here and we focused for three years on the inclusive opening process with workshops seminars training programs production supervising so we really joined their productions and supervised on the artistic process on accessibility and inclusion and we also offered for every interested cultural actor in Germany free cost telephone advice and online advice and so called creative labs which are four days really intensive training courses with international experts so we invited more than 20 international experts to our creative labs and we reached out to over 140 participants in this creative labs we also somehow focused on smaller groups to have like really an intensive training and I think one of the main points was that we always focused on all areas of culture so we looked into the program the audience, the stuff PR and the partner so we always had like all this different areas of culture in mind and try to make all the areas more accessible and more inclusive and the idea of the whole project came because of our own experience as a touring performing arts company because we were touring on national and international level and we always encountered the inexperience and the lack of knowledge of the stuff in theaters especially also of the leaders and heads of big cultural organizations but we also faced the fact that there was always like a really great willingness to go on this learning journey and so we always got the feedback didn't matter if we performed at the national opera in Athens or at an opera here in Germany or at a festival in Sweden we always got the feedback that they learned so much from the work was mixed able performing arts group and that the diversity we brought on stage and we brought in this working environment was really enriching not only for the audience but also for the stuff in the cultural organization so and this was like the basic idea why I created the concept for access maker because I said like yeah there is like this huge leg and we have to do something to train the cultural organizations and if I look now to the numbers of the three year project it's really exciting because the three theaters we advised really closely over the three years they created more than 20 performances which are accessible and they didn't do it before four of them are created with aesthetic of access which was a completely new field for the big theaters and it was really exciting because you have to work artistically completely different so we reached out with these productions to over more than 35,000 audience members and we trained more than 1,400 employees from the theaters and other cultural actors in Germany and we always trained with a tandem team of disabled either just disabled cultural workers or a tandem team of disabled worker and non-disabled cultural worker so 80% of our coaches, of our trainers are cultural workers with disability so this is also like a big step and we are facing a lack of good trained cultural workers with disabilities who can train cultural organizations so what is the next step now for us is to set up a training program for cultural workers with disabilities who are going to be trained to give the advice to the cultural organizations so what we also realized that through this big project AccessMaker we are getting so many requests from all over Germany so starting from the good institution to the big city theaters to operas small companies small individual groups who really starting to work more inclusive and they all need training so the request is just so huge that we can't really offer everybody the training courses because we don't just have the resources and we just had last week our final gathering for this program and what is really great that we will get much more support from the federal state and from the region and from some sponsors to scale up this project on national level so this is for me like really the step where yeah so I think there is a rethinking also in the policy in the cultural sector of policymakers that they are now starting to support this kind of project and that they see that they need to promote sustainable capacity building projects to which are able to train people and this wasn't the situation three years ago when we started AccessMaker so it was really hard to find the budget for it and now everybody is so keen in funding this project which is nice of course and so I really see also a big change in among cultural organizations that they also invest time that they invest money that they invest resources and they really want to initiate a transformation process and what I think the situation is not different in other European countries but when I look to the dimension of diversity in the cultural sector people with disability were always coming last so there were a lot of programs focusing on migration LGBTQ etc but people with disability were always last and this is changing so I really have the feeling now it's time to start and a lot of people do have the willingness and they see the huge needs to do something and maybe to add also on this project what is nice so I said already so the request on training is so huge and this gave us as a company also the possibility to have another business model as a performing arts company because of course we are also gaining some money with our services so first of all we can put it back to our artistic programs but it's also like a security for job opportunities for disabled cultural workers so this is really a nice thing which goes along this project so I think it's a really sustainable concept and it's a great possibility for artists with disability to train others and also to raise some income of training others so yeah I think this is like the example I wanted to share. Excellent thank you very much Lisette for sharing your experience and the work you've been doing in recent years and we'll now give the floor to Maria to share also your own practice. Thank you so as I said in the beginning we are an association of cultural professionals and cultural organizations and since the beginning I think that our core business was training specifically directed to cultural professionals and consultancy I think I shared Lisette's view that there's much more awareness at this point if we consider 10 years ago when the association was created and the 10 years before that we were an informal group working in the field it's totally different I wouldn't say though in Portugal is a small country that in terms of practice putting fear into practice is such impressive results but there's a core group of cultural professionals and cultural organizations that are actually investing on access in these training programs and consultancy of course some of the colleagues that are involved are people with disabilities who are consultants as well our more recent program that I think it's worth mentioning it's called All Areas Access it's a creative Europe it's fun but creative Europe I could actually put here the link on our chat and it is it involves Portuguese-Italian and Belgian partners and we work on making live concerts more accessible to deaf audiences which is very exciting it's a whole new world opening up and of course with deaf performances stage as well apart from that and yes we are investing heavily on this I mean lack of knowledge was set in the beginning it's probably the cause of the first barriers it's the basis of the barriers it's our sector's lack of knowledge and maybe I could share three small episodes with you so that we have an idea of how things then happen in practice some years ago we invited a British colleague from an organization called Attitude is Everything that they are also working on making live concerts accessible to disabled people in general it was the first time we saw an access rider our colleague once we invited them she sent us her access rider and remember I remember the first thing on that access rider was no one will pick me up and that was of course with us no one would pick anybody up but it was very important as I said and I would repeat it now on our website you may find a basis in English and in Portuguese of what an access rider can be and then each artist adapts it to their needs then recently we had a colleague from Latvia over she's also a member of our association and you can't imagine or maybe you can how difficult it was to find an accessible hotel especially because many hotels once they are contacted they will confirm that they're accessible and they're not either because it's not understood what accessibility means or because they assume that all disabled people have the same needs and two wheelchair users do not move the same way do not have the same needs so it is important also to understand what it means to be accessible then we had the chance to visit with her in many places a number of cultural venues who have worked with as consultants so that she could see the kind of work that was undertaken but again there were so many others that we could not visit either because of transport issues or because the venues themselves were not accessible and then of course choosing a restaurant to go out for dinner it's extremely I mean it's such a stressful experience first of all to find a restaurant with an adapted bathroom restroom sometimes there are one thing but they're not the other and then the third experience I would like to share is that a few months ago we were going to speak in a literary festival and one of the colleagues invited was a writer who has a condition that is called osteogenesis imperfecta I think in English it's the brittle bone disease it's called anyway she's a woman of a low stature her members are short and her bones are quite fragile we are invited to go on stage all speakers the chairs were made of plexiglass plastic let's say and nobody had thought she would slip her clothes also in the material of the chair she would slip she couldn't hold herself on that so in front of everybody and an audience full of young people her assistant picked her up she's an adult woman picked her up as if she was a baby and everybody watching and trying to find a solution at that moment so this is totally avoidable it's not respectful it's a total humiliation for many of the disabled artists we work with we have the curiosity and the openness to treat each person as a person and find out what their specific needs are on the other hand a week ago I think it was a week ago the Metropolitan Museum organized a debate which is available online they have an exhibition called women dressing women and they organized a debate where Sinead Burke a British activist took place took part I'm sorry in the material she called herself a little person and just watching that on that stage before the speakers came in I saw a small stool in front of one of the chairs so Sinead got on stage on her own got on the chair on her own and had some support for her legs while she was participating in the debate so that would be my last point here each person is a person with basic knowledge we should have we should look for it and then of course adapt to the specific needs of each person thank you thank you very much Maria and after listening to all of you and let's say in the first part of the discussion we were focusing quite a lot on issues of information and knowledge and nothing by presenting your experiences what comes up quite clearly is that in the context you very much operate with learning organisations that basically have observed what are the difficulties and what are the challenges and you've interacted with others and then on the basis of that you've really designed activities that correspond and are very tailored to that kind of challenges and at the same time try and be sustainable whether it's by fostering the building of capacities to transform infrastructures by providing employment opportunities somehow at your own scale to try and address those systemic difficulties in a few minutes we'll be opening the floor for questions for the audience and indeed as it has been said in the chat if anyone has questions do feel free to share them there but before opening to questions I would like to share a final question for the speakers and I'll ask you to try and be brief here maybe if you can speak in say about 3-4 minutes maximum that would be ideal it's now time to try and formulate recommendations or ideas for what should be the next steps I mean some of you have already hinted at things that have moved things that you are advocating for so thinking of policies and thinking also in terms of networking for organisations like on the move what could be the priorities in the near future I'll first give the floor to Lisette in this time I think it's again the same we have to build up the knowledge also from funding organisations and this is the basis for everything and what we did was unlabeled during the pandemic we had the chance to set up this project United Inclusion and the base walls built on the report disability artists in the mainstream a new cultural agenda for Europe which some of you might know otherwise it's really good to look it up and what we did so we created online seminars with funders from the different levels so federal, state level, regional the community level but also private foundations private sponsors and we put them together with cultural workers with disabilities again in this online seminars to be trained by the cultural workers and artists and to learn about the needs about accessibility for artists but also for the audience and what came out it was the first time that policy makers and decision makers from big foundations got in dialogue with people with disability so and we created a really safe space and a good atmosphere that the decision makers could ask all the question they always wanted to raise and ask and it came out they had no idea about accessibility cost most of them didn't know about the cost for sign language translator by our for example and the result of this project is like a guideline which is also free of charge and we created it somehow together with funders and it's a guideline how you have to change the funding system to become more so that the funding system is becoming more accessible for artists with disability but also of course for all cultural organizations and to become more accessible also for the audience and since this program we can really see like a change in the design and concept of a lot of funding programs in Germany so they are thinking now about accessibility cost so they are including rows in the budget lines for example about accessibility costs and this is like a major change so but it's again about creating a space where you can get in dialogue where they can learn from each other and where you also can build up trust I think trust is really important and we can only we can only reach a huge change if we go on this learning journey together so we have to learn from each other and so I think this is the most important for policymakers as well to to listen thank you Maria so yes I'll try to be brief of course the first thing as a recommendation is invest on training invest on our lack of knowledge and try to deal with this issue that is actually basic then fund access adaptations which in most countries would mean comply by the law comply by the law and then also to link to what Lisette was saying and the report she mentioned disabled artists in the mainstream is quite clear it's short and clear is fund the extra costs of disability know what they are and fund the extra costs of disability with a dedicated budget because otherwise it's up to each company to decide do I wish to invest on access or not and then many times they don't wish to take out from other things in order to invest in access and maybe a last point because I was remembering our conversation last year when the second part of time to act was launched let disabled artists work on their art they are not the consultants it is very often that our artists go to different places different venues to do the work and there's always somebody who says oh it's a good thing you're here let's take a walk around the venue to see if we're okay in terms of access that's not the artist's job to do let them concentrate on their art and look for consultants disabled not disabled look for consultants in what relates to access thank you thanks indeed Maria for highlighting these key elements what would be your points thank you it's all good points already I only have sort one is the first one is about the access funding for artists with disability shouldn't be barrier by country I think that is important because if you put the country as a barrier it's going to be kind of you less behind artists in other countries with disabilities have no access to it and the other one I think is the global network like today it's such a great evidence that we come together from different countries understand each other talent works and challenge I think it's a great way to go that we should come together at global and you'll even not know what to call but that's great if you have space to come together to share our strength weakness and challenge we face so then we could learn a lot from each other at the same time we become as one way we fight for it and the last one I think I agree with Maria that this should be a better policy for artists with disability especially including access costs for artists with disability there's not going to be a long way to go for for the country policy here but it's great to have international policy have that so we can learn from that experience and best practice I think we work better kit for that and now at the moment in last message that we have I have at the moment in community access I would just say accessibility is that from the heart at the moment because that we don't have much in resource but people around support it to make it have access that's a cambodic contact from my perspective thank you thank you very much indeed Sokni and I think we have quite a wide range of elements to work on indeed as it has been said I mean the focus on knowledge is something that we also found in the time to act reports one of the points that was made there was there's often a lot of knowledge that is already out there whether it's in guides in toolkits in the knowledge of people that have had the experience and at the same time often this is not sufficiently well known and of course that's also one of the areas in which international networking and whether it's at the European level or at broader global level can make a difference in facilitating a lot of knowledge out there and also through the practice of those projects also facilitating the addressing of those issues I don't know if I've been seeing some comments popping up in the chat and I don't know Johan or Marie if there's any any questions that you've collected or if you should give the floor to someone in case Yes I can just share that I mean thank you already for all the input that you've all shared in the chat we see many resources have been shared including by the speakers or on the projects you were mentioning and I would say that we will probably prepare an info sheet with all the resources and all the links so that could be published and available on the move website in the coming days because all the examples are so rich and this is one thing that comes quite clearly from the conversation the needle has moved from the time to act report and from the many initiatives that were launched years ago we see that many projects many initiatives took place and there is a clear awareness raised in the conversation in the chat we had several comments and questions I'm going to bring one that is echoing what Onsokni was mentioning about the international network the one by Chiara Alborino who is a contemporary choreographer and dancer and she was commenting that as a professional based in Italy and co-founder of the school she was working on inclusion issues for disabled artists and workers and she would like to become a member of corporation network like this and she was wondering how an organization or cultural professionals that are committed to advance the conversation and to deliver quite similar initiatives that the one you presented how do you do that I guess it's a question for all of you maybe I can start there is the European disability arts cluster out which is like a huge network from organizations, freelancing artists, individuals so a lot of people are seen in the zoom are already in this cluster and this is a great opportunity for networking of sharing knowledge and it's now organized by European access and so it's also like in a transformation process at the moment but I think this is I would say on international level the best network you can be part of it and I guess it's not a big problem to send the information also then in the sheet and to become part of it so we are meeting every I would say three months Maria tell me if I say anything wrong and so it's really informal and it's great, it's really wonderful and really impactful yes Maria I would also add because Caris Italian to look also for national organizations that can then help also connect to international organizations and the first one that comes to mind in Italy is Al di Qua the association perhaps the first association created by disabled artists themselves so that's also a good reference I think Caris. Wonderful thank you for this for this this advice I would say that we will also include a link towards a series of resources that exist online including a database of existing active organization working already on these issues we had a couple of other comments including one from Billy Alvin who was commenting that we talk of course a lot about the accessibility for artists to performance spaces or cultural venues but we didn't touch a lot on the access issues for audiences and I guess this one is more connected to the very theme of the webinar that is focusing on the mobility the international cross-border mobility of artists and culture professionals really the focus of this webinar but of course and I guess this is something we heard a lot from the speakers that there is a not official dimension to focus only on the international trajectory of artists and professionals as we know that many of the access issues opportunity available for artists and workers are very much connected to national or local realities and the infrastructure but also the structural weaknesses that exist in every context around the globe so I hope and I guess we will be proposing other conversations and other formats also to investigate the access for audiences and I see Ben Evans being a part of this our morning conversation also posting the website of the European access project in the time to work studies we spend quite a lot of time actually to reviewing and studying the access issues for disabled audience members so I guess the time to work studies will be also a source of information but also of conversation to investigate these further and I don't see more questions or comments I see that some of the participants are posting more links which I find it fantastic because it shows that in many countries you have guidance that is available in several languages which is also something that came up very often in the conversation sometimes the guidance or the material the technical I mean the writers etc are not accessible in several languages so it's good that we share guidance open to more context Jordi do you still have a last word you want to add? Yeah I might just start one of the comments that has been in the chat from Eva Debreceni who was saying that if we provide accessible programs the more people with special needs will feel motivated to participate and she argues that she sees this as a process and believes that it is up to organizations to propose first and then the artists and audiences will be encouraged to join these initiatives and she also echoes the feeling which speakers have also highlighted that there is a demand even if sometimes it's invisible we don't necessarily have the decision in our hands and then she's wondering how we can encourage organizations to become more accessible and inclusive other than by laws so what are the other elements that can accelerate or facilitate this change and I don't know if Sogni, Lisette or Maria would like to respond to that I could share with you perhaps that the National Theatre in Lisbon is undergoing works now in order to become more accessible in backstage offices etc and it was not only a surprise it was so exciting to hear the architect that is responsible for that work saying we are going beyond the law and that's amazing because all of us in the field actually it doesn't matter what the law says once you become aware how many people you exclude because of the decisions you make every day because of the way we build the world the world around us then we start working on it and it doesn't matter if it's in the law or not that's what we want to do, we want to be together we want to work together we want to be in performances together and that again I associate I'm sorry I think I'm repeating myself but to knowledge, we need to know knowledge and awareness we need to know what the barriers are and work around them maybe I can add so I completely agree with Maria we have the law already out there so there is the UN disability convention and in the most countries there are also national laws so we have the law what I would like to see is a change in the funding structure so that if you are working more inclusive if you are working towards accessibility that you benefit from more funding but that you also for example are judged by priority so I think this could make a big change so there I see a big responsibility from funding funding companies state state funding programs that they should judge cultural organizations who are really putting in effort and engagement and accessibility and priority so this is just my opinion but this could change a lot I could jam in quickly as well to add a little bit on that I think one or two things might be difficult to make it work but the tax on entertainment it can really hurt the artists who perform sell the ticket and then we on top of it pay for the tax on the ticket and tax on entertainment especially when we do like disabled artists who do so the income itself could be not generate money for private business and she also enterprise tax tax aspect kind of killing the income from the artists with disability who are trying to make a living from the personal so I know it's going to be hard a different country but for my perspective it really take away a lot of guard from us when we are trying to find money to generate for the artists but then we have to pay quite a huge amount of tax so far at the same time I'm not quite sure that policy is going to be adapt or change but that one thing might be help for disability artists when they sell a ticket and sell their work maybe some way it is considering tax or a bit more friendly on tax and that and my idea thank you Thank you very much everyone just before giving back the floor to Johan just final word from me first to thank Onamu for putting this all together and for disseminating the event and for sharing the resources on the chat and as Johan was saying this will also be the basis of an info sheet so that will give us quite a bit of food for learning and for thought thanks to everyone for attending the event and for sharing lots of ideas and resources on the chat as well I was just now seeing the message from Irena from the Balkan Museum Access group and the information that Ben even shared about the forthcoming call of the European Access the open call for co-productions coming up next week I mean there was also if you haven't seen there's a message from Ruben Burgum asking what colleagues active in fine and visual arts so if someone wants to share you can also reply to his message and then the thought from Billy Allwin on the potential of being an integrated company on stage and how that contributes to transforming audiences and transforming the mindset so just a few final thoughts thanks everyone for being here it's been a pleasure lots of good experiences and lots of things to learn and will definitely hopefully this provides a lot of opportunities for us to continue learning and to improve the practice on the basis of everything so thanks a lot and Johan thanks thanks to the speakers and Johan now the floor is yours thank you very much Jordi I think what you say is so true it is very inspiring to see all the initiatives that are taking place and tackling a lot of different issues at the same time it feels like we are active at targeting different elements of the global value chain and from education to the funding system and the infrastructure but also working with all these gatekeepers in charge of cultural institutions and in charge of selecting artists in charge of supporting them through different opportunities so it feels like the takeaways that we have from this conversation is both that we act of course towards the policymakers and try to change the frameworks we operate in but I felt from the conversation we all have a responsibility to train ourselves to open our own minds and that the cultural players play a big part in changing the mindset and the actual reality of our cultural field from the conversation also I see that the training aspect is so important not only for the soft skills but also for the hard skills like how to and how we collectively work the talk and I like very much this idea that we need to develop further our training abilities capabilities and opportunities so for on the move I can say this that we will continue to advocate for equal access especially equal access to cross-border mobility for disabled artists and professionals I think this webinar is just another step in our collective journey to collect examples to collect messages also to channel them and to channel policy recommendations to many stakeholders in our field in particular we will be publishing at the end of June a new cultural mobility flows report on this particular topic with the contribution of George de Balta and another colleague Sophie Daudon and I'm very much looking forward to elaborate on this I mean to elaborate further I mean to use all these take-aways from today's conversation and integrate them in our report I want to thank you George but also Lisette Ansogni, Marie-Havlard for this conversation because you brought so many interesting examples and we could measure the progress I know there's still a lot to do but it is also very positive and inspiring to see all the progress that were made these past years so thank you for everybody also for your active participation you know that this webinar will be accessible very soon on our YouTube channel and on all around we would like to post in the chat a very very quick evaluation form so we can collect your feedback also not only on the content but also on the format and to collect further ideas and recommendations or resources that you might want to share with us of course I can only encourage you to subscribe to on the move newsletter to be also aware of not only the mobility opportunities but also the future webinars and publication we will do and I want to thank my colleague Marie Le Soure and Bernardo Caeros for contributing so actively to the management of the chat and posting and selecting many resources that appear so thank you very much and hopefully we will connect very soon thank you