Hello
🤗 I hope all is well where you are. I know it’s been a tough time for lots of folk in lots of ways. In Edinburgh things are full on and our sometimes peaceful wee city is overwhelmed with people and performances. If I’m honest it’s simultaneously the best thing & the worst thing to happen.
🏋️ It’s been a busy and intensive year with lots of time and effort going into an increasingly competitive and challenging fundraising context. Things feel tougher and tougher for individuals who work independently as well as those managing large teams of folk. Everyone feels so stretched. Repeated standstill funding for culture as well as rising costs have led to an increasingly challenging financial context for all of us.
🍀 We’re very fortunate at IAP that we’ve been able to continue to produce projects throughout this time when many have had to reduce, stop or close. I’m very grateful for the brilliant team we have and how we’re able to support each other through increasingly challenging times.
🙏 Huge thanks to those that joined us on our spring/summer tour of Shō and the Demons of the Deep. We really enjoyed touring Scotland and the team on the road had a lot of sunny summery days to enjoy travelling across Scotland.
📔 Our wee ones are back to school (or on their way back shortly). It’s at this time of year I like the “back to school” excuse to pretend we’re starting a new year ourselves and look at things afresh. At the very least it is an excuse for a new notebook.
🚐 Autumn sees a number of quiet but exciting projects in development as well as the return of One of Two by Jack Hunter that will tour schools across Scotland as part of the Theatre in Schools Scotland project. More information (and the link to pass on to your child’s school to book high quality in-school shows) is here.
👏 In our last newsletter we included a wee bit about our Associate Artist Lou Brodie, and today we’re sharing a bit about another of our Artists Max Alexander and his work with IAP this year.
Take care,
Mhari & Team IAP
PS – Thanks for supporting IAP.
PPS – We’re not producing shows at any of the festivals so I’ve had more opportunities than most years to see new work, and I’ve enjoyed lots of what I’ve seen so far. Especially:
- 🪼 Gracie and the Start of the End of the World (Again) at Assembly Roxy (Outside)
- 🎤 June Carter Cash: The Woman, Her Music and Me at Summerhall
- 🍪 The Show for Young Men at Dance Base
- 😚 VL at the Roundabout, Summerhall
Workshop series for socially engaged artists
A series of five day-long workshops for artists and practitioners looking to expand their practice into making work more inclusive to neurodivergent audiences, explore their own playfulness and creative processes and widen their understanding of communication, connection and interaction.
Each session will involve visual and verbal presentations, opportunities for sharing, discussion and asking questions alongside guided activities and opportunities for play. Participants will be encouraged to participate in ways that are comfortable and enjoyable for them. We understand that this will look and feel different to individual participants.
All sessions will be facilitated from and informed by a neurodivergent affirming and celebrating perspective.
Sessions run 10am to 3.30pm at Platform, Easterhouse:
❤️ Call to Play, Fri 20 Sep
🧡 Expansive Communication, Tue 24 Sep
💛 Meaningful Connection & Interaction, Tue 1 Oct
💚 Sensory Access for Neurodivergent People, Tue 8 Oct
💙 Autistic Creativity & Play, Tue 15 Oct
Places are FREE for socially engaged artists in Scotland, thanks to Creative Scotland, The National Lottery, Imaginate, and Platform Glasgow.
>> For more information and how to sign up to sessions click here.
Speculative Care Futures; Reimagining Being in Community with Sensory Beings
📆 Online Sharing via Zoom, Wed 4 Sep, 4pm-5.30pm
Join Max and IAP as we share stories and threads of inquiry about the role of play and creativity in collaborating with and supporting individuals described as having Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) or as Sensory Beings, and those who support them.
During a three month period of working with Cherry Road, a day service in Midlothian which provides programmes of activity, community, support and care to adults described as having PMLD, Max began to explore the potentials of play with staff and service users to provide meaningful and connective experiences within the community of the centre.
In conversations around this project and what a written resource might look like Max was given the provocation to think about the longer term future of those he was working with and what role play and creativity could have. So, rather than producing a report talking about what has been done, Max has instead produced a ‘Speculative report’ written from the perspective of an imagined social care facility who are questioning their practices and exploring new ways to nurture a meaningfully connected community of individuals with profoundly different ways of being. Prior to the session you will be posted a physical copy of the report and emailed a link to the digital version.
In this session Max will share the process, introduce the report and invite you to share your thoughts, experiences and provocations about how we, as artists, carers, workers and fellow humans, can better engage in supporting and collaborating with those described as having PMLD or as Sensory Beings.
This event may be of particular interest to artists who have a collaborative practice, wish to develop one or anyone who shares their lives with Sensory Beings or individuals described as having PMLD.
>> Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3X1hLCU
Our Associate Artists
From autumn 2023 to spring 2025, we are grateful to be receiving funding from Creative Scotland through the National Lottery Extended Programme Fund for Organisations and Culture Collective to work in a more sustained way with artists and arts workers. This continued support allows IAP to offer our team space & time to explore new ideas, work in different ways and/or develop areas of practice.
We believe that allowing increased time, space and more secure working conditions will benefit our team, their wellbeing and lead to the delivery of higher quality work for our audiences and participants.This brilliant opportunity has allowed us to make some shifts within our team, so, at this point we’d like to introduce or reintroduce you to some of our team following these changes.
Max Alexander (he/him)
is an artist, playworker and creative facilitator who specialises in working with neurodivergent and/or disabled children and young people. Working as ‘Play Radical’ Max creates and co-creates spaces for play, exploration and connection with a focus on neurodivergent joy and ways of relating.
Max is passionate about access to artistic, playful and creative experiences for neurodivergent and disabled individuals and the idea of beautiful creative accessibility is at the centre of his practice. He has worked with numerous organisations in the arts, theatre and education to make their practices and services more accessible to neurodivergent and disabled audiences and uses writing to further explore and share ideas in this area.
As an autistic artist Max’s practice is a space to communicate in his primary language, which is inherently a sensory one. He creates playful objects and environments which offer different ways of interacting with people and the sensory world. He is drawn to repetition, pattern, movement and loves to dive deep into things that might seem mundane or insignificant to discover new detail, beauty and very often absurdity and humour. Max is currently very into light switches, sticks and the colour orange.
See PlayRadical.com for more.
Enormous thanks to Creative Scotland, National Lottery and Scottish Government for this catalytic core support for our organisation.
