ICO spoke to Helen Wright, Festival Coordinator at Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) about her experience of ensuring the festival is accessible to all audiences. Helen explains how SQIFF integrates access across their organisation and events, making this integral to their work from the very start.
Welcome to the 2019 Shaw Trust Power 100. Britain’s most influential disabled people.
In 2019, This Way Up took to Nottingham for the event’s sixth edition, which kicked off with opening sessions reflecting the key themes of the overall conference: Celebration, Resilience and The Future.
The conference featured more talks around inclusion than ever before, and we at Inclusive Cinema captured four of our favourite talks so those who couldn’t make the event could still get the benefit of case studies and insights shared.
The talks below are provided by the following speakers:
Rabab Ghazoul, the Founder & Director of Welsh cultural organisation platform Gentle/Radical, shared her vision of what the future of working with audiences could be. What does ‘outreach’ look like now, and what could it become?
Karena Johnson, Artistic Director and CEO, Hoxton Hall, shared her experience of re-launching Hoxton Hall, a Victorian music hall, and tackling the sometimes uncomfortable issue of diversity. She led a workshop session where delegates were invited to explore their own approach. She spoke about shifting organisational culture, bringing a team with you on a journey and how to manage expectations.
Rico Johnson-Sinclair, Director and Programmer of CineQ Birmingham discussed campaigning for queer, trans, and intersex people of colour’s stories on screen and how he reaches audiences.
Nikki Stratton, Co-Founder & Director, Deaffest looked at the best ways to market to D/deaf audiences. Catherine Downes (Co-Founder, usheru) discussed their work aiming to reach those that start the ticket-buying process but don’t complete the all-important checkout process. With tips and tricks to maximise the potential of your marketing output.
In our multi-tasking world, few of us sit down at our computers to watch online videos. In fact, 75% of all video plays are on mobile devices rather than desktops or laptops. And since we’re watching these videos while we’re on-the-go, a huge number of them are watched with no sound. At work, on the … More
An enormous number of people with unimpaired hearing are choosing to watch with words. Why? And is it time captions became the norm?
I tend to tell new people that I’m diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome fairly quickly. I see it as pragmatic. They get a slightly better idea of how my brain works, they can help me with things that I find more difficult, and they understand why Leicester Square’s crowds are my personal seventh circle of hell. … More
Includes “The Deaf Cinema Experience” Last in the series. Deaf Funny is back for more comedy sketches based on Deaf life!
I want people to know autism is another way of being. I am weary of stereotypes that make us out to be less human than neurotypical people. I have listened to people talk negatively about autism since I was diagnosed and, as a result, I learned to hate myself and think I was a monster … More
We are Hijinx. We work from Wales but reach the whole world. We make strikingly different theatre. We are acclaimed for our award-winning theatre productions, community projects and diversity training. We are unashamedly ambitious for our Hijinx Actors. We want to see a learning disabled and/or autistic actor win an Oscar by 2030.
Deaf Awareness Week, co-ordinated by UK Council on Deafness is a campaign in which many different organisations participate, each able to promote their own work within the broad spectrum of deafness.
Many organisations collaborate and work together in a joint campaign of UK wide national and local events to raise awareness of the needs of the 1 in 6 deaf or hard of hearing people in the UK. Deaf Awareness Week aims to promote the positive aspects of deafness, promote social inclusion and raise awareness of the huge range of local organisations that support deaf people and their family and friends.
There are many ways in which cinemas and exhibitors can get involved to promote d/Deaf awareness within their organisations and for audiences. From staff learning some basic BSL signing to programming more captioned subtitled films to always adding subtitles to social media content, here are some resources to get you started.
When planning film exhibition initiatives online it is important to think about access and inclusion for everyone.
Things to think about regarding d/Deaf awareness and online film exhibition:
We would love to know about your film or cinema project at Inclusive Cinema. If you’d like to submit your own case study, please download this Inclusive screening case study template and submit it to toki[at]filmhubwales.org, so we can share your experiences, too.
