Messaging and intention Expand Being aware of your goals, intentions and how to communicate them is key to this process working successfully. This applies from the recruitment phase right through to the public celebration or acknowledgement of what has been created. If the intention is to increase disabled representation in your programme, then consider how you are communicating this representation to the public and stakeholders. Is there a reason why you commissioned a disabled artist in particular? If so, what was that reason? And will you be using the same language to report afterwards what took place as you plan to use to select disabled people in your programme? How does this language portray disabled people? Does it empower them? Clarity and continuity of messaging and intention is important, but so is the language you use when working with and talking about disabled people. Before you start any external communications, consider what it is you are actually representing, and how. Projects with a focus on social engagement are likely to support positive change. So what is that change? Who is leading on the change, and what are the dynamics involved? And how is all this represented? For example, there is a huge difference between making statements with a general message, such as: “We were delighted to further diversify our programme this year with bespoke commissions to people from under-represented communities” … and messages that are more specific, or focus on an individual, like: “We look back with great pride at a year of fantastic commissions, including a moving new work by blind artist G” Does this empower artist G? Or might it risk isolating them in some way? What is the reason to identify G as a blind artist rather than simply an artist? Does G describe the work they make as ‘moving’? If they don’t, then where does this idea come from? Try to be conscious of any bias in the language you use. Context is key, of course. Let’s say you commissioned artist G as one of a group of artists for a project: perhaps they all responded to the same call. Is there a reason why the disabled artist is identified as such, if the artists are not identified in a similar way with regards to protected characteristics like gender, age, ethnicity, or sexuality? There may be reasons to be transparent about targeting disabled people in particular for your commission - your organisation may wish to demonstrate how it is improving its accessibility and inclusivity - but beyond the recruitment phase, does the awarded artist want or need to be identified as disabled? In other words, if they do not define themselves by their health condition or impairment, why should you? And if they do use certain identifiers - for example, an artist might describe themselves as neurodivergent - in which context do they use such a term, and what is its relation to their practice and the way they describe their work, and its relation to the work they are being commissioned for? One way of approaching varied descriptions of disability and access is allowing artists and team members to share an Access Rider with you. Find out more about Access Riders To give another example: “This year we are commissioning three artists from Scotland and a disabled artist from England.” This automatically creates a two tier construct in the way that the disabled artist’s work will be approached or received. The reason we make this point is because often there are lower expectations around work made by disabled people. Whether consciously made or not, the public perception may be that the three works from Scotland are of a certain professional standard, while the work from England has something about it that requires a different kind of evaluation. Compare this to: “This year we are commissioning four artists from around the UK, three from Scotland and one from England.” This latter description creates a level playing field of expectation about the artists and their work. The follow-on question is likely to be, what if all four artists were disabled? “This year we are commissioning four disabled artists from around the UK, three from Scotland and one from England.” This certainly is factual, and treats each artist in the same way. It would work if you were meeting certain funding criteria, targeting support for disabled people, for example. The point is to be aware of the motivation for the commission, and how you achieve consistency of messaging that is helpful to disabled communities. As mentioned, there may be occasions where the artists are profiled individually. So, thought needs to go into whether the focus is justifiably on the artist being a disabled person versus their artistic work or ability. For example: “D, whose experiences as a wheelchair user informs his approach to film making…”’ This is a neutral description that tells us something useful to know and does not dramatise the fact of the artist being a wheelchair user. In another example: “H, a lifelong achiever, having being diagnosed as deaf at birth, paints large canvases using huge, heavy brush strokes…” Here, audiences are immediately taken into a stereotypical narrative about expectations of what people can or cannot do, even if it is unclear how their impairment or disability has any connection to their work. Returning to our four UK artists example again, dramatising the fact of them being disabled is certain to be counterproductive: “This year we are commissioning four incredibly inspiring disabled artists from around the UK, three from Scotland and one from England.” Whatever the intentions behind this kind of wording, setting people up as ‘incredibly inspiring’ places them in a charitable narrative that is usually divorced from reality. It also jeopardises the likelihood of their work being taken seriously (as professional artists) before it is viewed or experienced, thereby working against their career interests. Why? Because it suggests that we are evaluating them instead of their work. Where does the term ‘incredibly inspiring’ come from? Is this how they define themselves or their artistic practice? Another way of asking how language might empower them is to ask: in what ways can the messaging support their agency as artists? It is important to remember that (in the media and elsewhere) disabled people are often portrayed in using tropes, such as heroic people, superheroes, figures of inspiration, objects of pity, or objects of scorn, such as the 'benefits scrounger' stereotype. If your commission is founded to some degree on these notions, or chimes with this kind of language, it is quite possible that the commission, while perhaps useful to the awardee, can add to the barriers that disabled people face more widely. In order to ensure you are not reinforcing these unhelpful messages, consult with disabled people directly, or disability-led agencies such as Shape. The Social Model of Disability, which Shape works to, outlines ways to achieve consistency of message and build in language that empowers disabled people. Find out more about the Social Model
Individual or community? Expand There may be times when your commissioning opportunity is designed to reach a particular impairment group or community with a common link around barriers they face. This might be to broaden or diversify your organisation or programme, or to build on an existing framework of confidence and experience in your provision for disabled people. Valuable time and resources can be saved, and misunderstandings avoided, if that particular community has the opportunity to inform what ‘good’ looks like in terms of support. For example, your organisation may have gained confidence and raised its ambitions around working with deaf communities, and now wishes to commission a deaf artist to lead on a series of engagements with that community. This can be done through informal meetings or focus group-type research, or working with a deaf-led company as a partner. The latter approach, often thought of as a co-production approach, can yield numerous benefits, and removes the reliance on you having to work out for yourself the best route through, having canvassed a variety of viewpoints. This kind of discussion can also help you to determine your project’s legacy, so that the same community is not left hanging after the event is over. Disabled artists rightly have concerns that these kinds of processes serve a limited purpose, after which the artist is jettisoned and the community they are a part of no longer has a meaningful link to the venue or agency concerned. While it is true that no venue would be expected to endlessly re-commission the same artist or re-run the same project, thought should be given early on as to how to build on learnings or success in a meaningful rather than a tokenistic way. For example, artists might become associates of your venue or programme, continuing to provide input on selection panels or programming. Any access working party the venue draws ideas and information from could benefit from that community’s representation in the future.
Recruitment phase Expand Planning the artist’s route through the project, from selection to the execution of the work, will help you set out an accessible foundation for them. It will mean it is less likely that you will be reacting to events, and instead using your resources and energy to guide their course - as you would usually expect to do. Getting your recruitment or selection right is critical to the success of the commission. The commission should be founded on the quality of the resulting work or contribution, and to ensure this, the recruitment process should have the usual rigour to it. Part of this involves requiring the artist to have a certain amount of skill or experience. The main caveat we suggest you consider here is: Whether you are setting the bar at an appropriate level for disabled artistsor Or whether this is ruling out people who, with a certain amount of support, could deliver the commission equally as well, or better In particular, if you are running the commission in part to scout new and emerging talent, then some flexibility here can be rewarding for all concerned. The reason to say this is that there is a lack of high quality and accessible opportunities for disabled artists, giving them much less of a chance to broaden and deepen their experience. Disabled artists often find that their career starts to stall very early, when they come up against barriers to entry (finding a studio, financial issues, dealing with applications and processes), and end up applying for opportunities at a certain grade or level many years later than their non-disabled peers. In addition to this, it is important to ensure your call out is accessible to disabled candidates and that you provide comprehensive information phrased to encourage disabled artists to apply. Providing a range of application formats will reach people for whom purely text based documentation is inaccessible. Consider including visual material and audio versions of your documents, for example. Because of the reasons given above, many disabled artists may be apprehensive about applying, fearing they lack the talent or experience required, or they may not be clear on what the commission involves them doing, or if support is provided. Check out our Ways of Seeing resource Simple steps can include providing a contact number or email address offering support with an application. Using welcoming language that is clear in its intentions, around targeting disabled candidates. Also, consider ways that you could break information down regarding the commission, and allow for people to ask questions. For example, disabled people receiving benefits may have concerns about how commission payments might work alongside this. Apart from offering support with an application, you could run a session where access support is provided and someone in your team goes through what the commission involves and answers questions from potential candidates directly. It could be recorded in a way that benefits those unable to attend in person. There can be hidden benefits to doing this, in terms of understanding how clear your messaging is. Also, the questions you are asked at such an early stage, and by people who might be unfamiliar with you and your work, can be very instructive about areas of planning you may not have thought of previously. Learn about arranging accessible interviews and meetings Any application process can take time and be demanding for an individual, requiring some people to give up precious time and energy they might devote to other important areas. With no guarantee of success, this can be daunting for disabled people considering making any kind of application. One approach that is more supportive is to invite applications from a pool of candidates, and provide them with a fee to take account of their time, while offering them support and advice while they work up a proposal. The advantage of this is that it may introduce you to a variety of new artistic talent without the (often anonymous) admin process involved in a standard call out. Rather than all the focus being on one individual who may win the commission, it can help to connect you to a wider range of artists, and vice versa. There is a better risk and reward dynamic involved, and an opportunity for less experienced artists to gain valuable experience in creating a proposal that may help them in other areas, where they are applying for funding or describing their work to others. It may encourage them to apply where often they may not do so. If you plan things on a flexible basis, remember: this itself is a form of access support.
Checking on access needs Expand Even if you are asking people to identify as disabled in order to qualify for your scheme, it is their access needs in relation to the task at hand that is the focus of the access support. There is no point in asking if someone identifies as disabled and then not following up on it; equally you cannot assume you know someone’s access needs just because they identify themselves as disabled. Access support might include: Support developing and submitting an application Interview-stage access support such as live captions, BSL interpretation, or questions provided in advance Opportunities to familiarise themselves with the space and the team involved The more applicants know which actual processes are involved in the commission, the more straightforward they can be about discussing their access support needs. Successful applicants could also be asked to complete an access rider. If they are not used to this kind of form already, it can help them to identify their support needs in a structured way. Again, the support should be focused on the task or need at hand, rather than to make generalised statements which can be open to interpretation and may not be relevant for your project. It is also a way to avoid asking invasive personal questions about someone’s health: the focus is on support, not working out how someone’s mind and body works. Find out more about Access Riders In planning your access budget, consider the full cycle of the project and to what degree the artist may be involved in public-facing activities. As this is also an area where access support may be needed. Access support can come in a number of forms, and some of this may be delivered by people with specific skills sets or qualifications (for example sign language interpreters or PAs,) who usually charge at rates in line with their experience. The artist in question may have an existing person or people who provide them with support, or they may not. They may have some form of external funding in place to pay for such support (like Access to Work) or they may not. Artists may have preferences about the kind of support they receive. The key is to ask the questions without making prior assumptions. Open and honest discussions about this are not just useful, but essential to ensure a smooth path ahead. Check out our resource on developing an accessible project for some practical tips and suggestions: Developing an accessible project resource Some artists may have reason (based on previous negative experiences) to be hesitant about asking for support or guidance, and in some cases even fully disclosing their access needs. One way to standardise this process and prevent things slipping through the cracks, is to build an access support check into any review points or milestone meetings. This can be an opportunity to check in on any wider issues that might get overlooked when people are busy on the project. Having a main contact who oversees the relationship can be helpful to build in consistency. Again, thinking about how this is communicated, what budget do you have for access provision and do you know what kinds of access provision might be used by the people you are targeting? Consider how the process can be streamlined to achieve the same results. You may find that following it, you end up streamlining all your recruitment processes of this kind, no matter who you are targeting.
Disclosure Expand The process above outlines where people may need support along the project’s critical path. It is always better that the disabled person proposes the kind of support they need, and this is likely to be based on what has worked for them in the past. Earlier, we looked at the option of the access rider, which disabled applicants might find useful as a prompt to list access needs relating to the commission. You may find this useful as a way of keeping a record or note of what provision should be in place. Your budget will impose certain limits on what access provision is available and so as part of the streamlining process, look for win-wins and ways of making your access budget stretch further - and discuss them with the artist, of course. For example, if paying for the services of a support worker on a particular day, is it possible (without being counterproductive to anyone’s wellbeing) to group meetings or sessions together on that day, to prevent having to pay for a series of individual bookings, which are likely to be higher, when call-out and travel costs are factored in? Overall, the more planning is in hand, the easier it will be to identify opportunities to make the access budget stretch further. Over a period of time, you may find that one project incurs low access costs and in the next project these costs are much higher. Building in contingency funding for access in each project can help with unforeseen or escalated expenses.
Suggested steps Expand 1. Consider why the commission is taking place, and the sought-for benefits or outcomes for you and the disabled artist. What is the basis of the commission, and how will you frame your messaging in the recruitment and delivery phases to avoid common pitfalls around stereotyping? 2. Consult with disabled people/disability-led groups to inform yourself where you have knowledge gaps. The artist should be asked to identify their support needs and it is these needs that are to be addressed. Merely asking someone if they are disabled and then guessing or assuming what their access needs will cause problems. Equally, don’t expect the commissioned artist to know everything that you do not, or act as a consultant when they are principally a creative leading on a project. Identify the commission’s critical path and at what steps along it might an individual require access support, and in what form might this be provided. Support with completing an application may involve a very different kind of skill or input compared to communication support at meetings and events. Consider the different phases and what the artist is expected to do - what kind of facilities might they need and how much travel might be involved? How much of the process can be streamlined and can this feed back into streamlining the way you commission more generally? Build access costs into your budget on an informed basis - the panning above will help with this. Not sure what these costs might be? Revert to Point 2. Linking to Point 1, consider the commission’s legacy and how you might build on the results of the commission in terms of learning and confidence. While you should not expect the artist to haul in new audiences by virtue of their disabled identity, it may be that audiences you previously found hard to reach or did not have connection with at all, responded to the artist and their work. Monitoring audience responses in an accessible and imaginative way can provide key insights into ensuring these audiences return, combined with programming relevant to their interests of course. Every commission will have its high and lows on its way to bringing something new into the world. Using the commissioning process to try out new things, experiment, and take risks is likely to be integral to the way you work as a commissioner, or creative entity. Commissioning a disabled artist ought to be just the same process of blended excitement, creativity and planning, with support put in place as appropriate to keep things running smoothly. By taking a few additional planning steps and being prepared to ask the right questions, have an honest conversation here and there, the ‘risk’ element can remain centred in the work and its creative impact, not in the way you are delivering it. Interested in knowing more about the artists Shape supports? Browse our artist profiles Want to find out about the commissions and projects we've worked on before? Check out Shape's commissions Uncertain about starting out? Contact us to find out how we might be able to support you with consultancy and training. Email [email protected]