LIVE: Disability and...2012's Legacy with Tarik Elmoutawakil, Deborah Williams and Kaite O'Reilly

Disability Arts Online and Mind the Gap present The Disability and...Podcast

A special live edition of the Disability...And podcast, recorded at the Southbank Centre's Unlimited Festival 2022. Disability Arts Online founding editor Colin Hambrook is joined by writer, programmer and creative producer Tarek Elmoutawakil, multi-award winning poet, playwright and dramaturg, Kaite O'Reilly, and policy maker and theatre maker, Deborah Williams, for a lively debate about significant cultural moments that have shifted the narrative over the last decade. This podcast contains some strong language.

We would like to thank the Southbank Centre and their staff for their support on this podcast. However, at the time of our event we also learnt that our Associate artist whatsthebigmistry's work The Empire's Old Clothes was cancelled in light of the death of the Queen and we would like to make it clear we strongly disagree with this decision and would like to share solidarity with the artists whose work was pulled from the Unlimited Festival as a result. We have issued a public statement here.

Speaker biographies:

Tarik Elmoutawakil is an artist, programmer and creative producer as well as Founder and Co-Artistic Director at Marlborough Productions in Brighton, the UK’s only performing arts orgnasiation dedicated to intersectional queer arts. His current public work is entitled 'Brownton Abbey', an evolving Afro-Futures Performance Party that centres disabled QTIPOC (queer, trans and intersex People of Colour). Brownton Abbey reclaims and reinterprets QTIPOC spirituality and ritual, channelling it into an out-of-this-world, accessible party. Tarik is plugged into a network of disabled qtipoc artivists across the globe, contributing to an ongoing movement to reshape access and leadership. A spirited public speaker, Tarik uses his joyous brand of activism wherever he can to transform the perception and treatment of marginalised QTIPOC.

Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning poet, playwright and dramaturg, who writes for radio, screen and live performance. Prizes include the Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Theatre Award, Theatre-Wales Award and the Ted Hughes Award for new works in Poetry for Persians (National Theatre Wales). She is a two time finalist in the International James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama (2012, 2019) and The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was honoured in the 2017/18 International Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy for her work in ‘Alternative dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and disability perspective.’. She works internationally, her work translated into fifteen languages worldwide, and is part of the visiting faculty teaching intercultural dramaturgy at ITI: Intercultural Theatre Institute, in Singapore. She was the resident dramaturg/playwright of The Llanarth Group for many years, collaborating with the director, performer and actor-trainer Phillip Zarrilli. Kaite’s plays Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors and The ‘d’ Monologues are published by Oberon/Methuen/ Bloomsbury. Her first feature film, The Almond and the Seahorse with Mad as Birds films, will be released in 2022, featuring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg. www.kaiteoreilly.com

Deborah Williams started as the Executive Director at Creative Diversity Network in November 2016, leading on organisational development and business planning. Deborah brings over 30 years’ experience working above and below the line in television, film and theatre, as well as policy development across the wider creative and cultural industries. She is an adviser to the UN and UNICEF on the rights of disabled people to cultural activities. She previously designed the BFI diversity standards and Arts Council England’s equality analysis process; for public sector equality duty compliance. As well as sitting on panels and steering groups for many organisations, Deborah is known in her own right as an artist provocateur having won awards and nominations nationally and internationally. Her work in theatre is acknowledged as a catalyst for challenge and change in perceptions of disability and difference. In 2019 she was awarded the Life Time Achievement award from Inclusive Companies for her body of work in the area of diversity and culture. She is a Disabled Powerlister 2018 and 2019.