Resilience and Inclusion: Dancers as Agents of Change

无形的差异：舞蹈残疾和法律项目独特地汇集了舞蹈和法律领域的研究人员和从业者的专业知识，以解决有关残疾舞蹈的制作，地位，作者和所有权的问题。该项目引起了独立残疾舞蹈艺术家和艺术组织的极大关注，导致人们认识到普遍缺乏对该部门相关法律框架的认识。这项研究是在英国大幅削减残疾人福利的背景下进行的，这已经开始对包括舞者在内的独立残疾艺术家产生负面影响，进一步减少了对艺术的参与，需要对残疾人舞蹈社区的恢复力进行一些创新的思考。沃里克委员会（Warwick Commission）最近的一份报告（2015年）也对福利削减的影响提出了警告，这意味着需要采取其他策略，使艺术家能够开发出生存和繁荣的创造力和资源。在财政紧缩和削减艺术公共资金的背景下，版权可能会在舞蹈界支撑起新兴的商业模式。但是，在这种情况下，专业舞蹈部门对更多地了解版权法的需求很高，而这些艺术家能够茁壮成长的另一个持续障碍是缺乏对残疾艺术家作品的批判性参与。特别是，一般公众和负责残疾舞者工作的人（戏剧节目编导、制片人、导演、策展人等）对残疾舞者的工作生活以及这对舞者创作、制作和分享作品的能力的影响缺乏了解。部分原因是残疾医疗模式根深蒂固（在卫生部门内普遍存在），这种模式往往成为人们看待该部门参与者的一个镜头，而且人权框架尽管有希望，却未能为舞者的日常生活带来切实的好处。我们的研究表明，观众倾向于关注身体差异和偏离“正常”舞蹈身体的二元概念，而戏剧专业人士往往难以做出关于艺术质量的明智决定，以及如何以自己的方式推广和营销作品，而不是专注于包容和整合。该项目将直接解决整个行业残疾艺术家缺乏观众和法律知识的问题，通过创造易于获取的资源，使残疾舞者对文化景观的贡献得到更广泛的认可，并刺激舞蹈新商业模式的发展和可持续发展。通过与国家舞蹈和艺术组织牵头的倡议合作，包括英格兰艺术委员会的多样性创意案例“变革者”计划和舞蹈变革的“包容性舞蹈质量框架”计划，我们将创建一个在线工具包，以传播有关关键问题的知识。该工具包将包括专业残疾舞者排练的电影，重点关注他们的工作方法和工作条件，并谈论他们的工作。为两个主要受众设计；该工具包将免费提供给残疾人舞蹈界和表演编程人员，以改变人们对残疾的看法，并展示如何应用版权法来支持残疾人舞蹈艺术家创作和表演的舞蹈的可持续性和影响。该项目最后将举办一个利益攸关方讲习班，以传播该项目、工具包，并为一套面向部门的项目简报收集反馈。

The InVisible Difference: Dance Disability and Law project uniquely brought together the combined expertise of researchers and practitioners in dance and law to address questions concerning the making, status, authorship and ownership of disability dance. The project has generated a great deal of attention from independent disabled dance artists and arts organisations, leading to the recognition that there is a general lack of awareness of the legal frameworks relevant for the sector. The research was undertaken against a background of significant cuts in welfare provision in the UK for disabled people, which has begun to have a negative impact on independent disabled artists including dancers, further reducing participation in the arts and requiring some innovative thought about resilience within the disabled dance community. The recent report by the Warwick Commission (2015) also warned of the impact of welfare cuts meaning that other strategies are needed to enable artists to develop the ingenuity and resources to survive and prosper. In the context of austerity and cuts to public funding for the arts it is copyright that could underpin new and emergent business models within the dance community. But whilst there was a high level of demand from within the professional dance sector to understand more about the law of copyright within this context, an additional and ongoing barrier to these artists being able to thrive is a lack of critical engagement with the work of disabled artists. In particular, there is a lack of knowledge amongst the general public and those responsible for programming the work of disabled dancers (theatre programmers, producers, directors, curators etc.) about the working lives of dancers with disabilities and how this impacts on the dancers' ability to make, produce and share their work. This is in part because of the entrenched nature of the medical model of disability (prevalent within the health sector), which becomes a lens through which the participants in this sector are often viewed, and the failure of the human rights framework to deliver tangible benefits to the everyday lives of the dancers, despite the promise that it holds. Our research revealed that audiences tend to focus on binary concepts of bodily difference and deviations from the 'normal' dancing body and theatre professionals often struggle to make informed decisions about artistic quality and how to promote and market the work in its own terms, unleashed from a focus on inclusion and integration. The project will directly address this lack of audience and legal literacy for dance by disabled artists, across the sector, by creating easily accessible resources to generate wider acknowledgement of the contribution that disabled dancers can make to the cultural landscape and to stimulate the development and sustainability of new business models for dance. By working in conjunction with initiatives led by national dance and arts organisations, including Arts Council England's Creative Case for Diversity 'change makers' scheme and Dance for Change's 'quality framework for inclusive dance' programme, we will create an Online Toolkit to transmit knowledge about the issues at stake. The Toolkit will include film of professional disabled dancers in rehearsal, focusing on their working methods and working conditions, and talking about their work. Designed for two main audiences; the disabled dance community and performance programmers, the Toolkit will be made freely available to change perceptions about disability and to show how the law of copyright can be applied to support the sustainability and impact of dance made and performed by disabled dance artists. The project will conclude with a stakeholder workshop to disseminate the project, the Toolkit and to capture feedback for a set of sector-facing project briefings.