From Production to Festival: Crafting Accessible Films with We Crip Film
(transcript below video)
8 October 2024 Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) panel discussion in collaboration with the BFI’s We Crip Film. Moderated by Clare Baines (BFI Inclusion Partner), Charlie Little (Matchbox Cine, film exhibition access consultant), and Tara Brown (the queer fat crip film programmer). Topics discussed include access coordinators, including actors with disabilities, audio description, descriptive captions, funding for films and festivals, avoiding burnout, collaboration and resources for funding and increased accessibility.
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Clare Baines: Welcome to the opening event for SQIFF, which is “Crafting Accessible Films with us; We Crip Film. Before we get started with today’s event, I shall do a little bit of accessible housekeeping.
So the exit is just out here. The accessible toilets are just to the left.
There is a quiet space up on the second floor. Feel free to wear masks. Feel free to make movement. This is very much a relaxed vibe. If you need to leave, leave. If you need to make noise, make noise. Very much a relaxed environment.
I want to say thank you to our BSL interpreters Lucy and Louise and also thank you to our live captioners Andrew and Louisa.
Clare Baines: First off everybody, hello, my name is Clare Baines. My pronouns are she/her and today I will be moderating the panel. I’m an Inclusion Partner at the BFI. I’m also a filmmaker and I run a podcast called Crip Club, which is all about authentic disability representation.
I’m now going to self-describe for anybody with sight loss, I’m a white woman in my twenties. I’m wearing a rather fabulous red, new romantic style top, leopard print trousers, because leopard print is neutral and I’ve got some Kill Bill yellow and black trainers on.
CB: Today I have my BFI hat on and I would love to introduce you into the world of We Crip Film. So We Crip Film has been running for the past five years and it’s acted as our disability screen advisory group. It’s made up of disabled film professionals and they advise on everything from policy through to activity through to what kind of films are we making? What representation is the BFI creating? We Crip Film is all about disability justice, the principles born by Sins Invalid. So we’re very much into anti-ableism, cross-disability solidarity, gorgeous, gorgeous intersectionality. This is why we’re here at SQIFF. And also collective liberation.
CB: So we’re going to do this session today in two halves. So the first half is going to be a classic panel. We’re going to be yapping, we’re going to be discussing things. And then the second half is a more nontraditional networking. It’s something that we’ve definitely discussed a lot in terms of networking not being accessible. It’s not a very welcoming environment. How can we disrupt that? How can we change that? So we’ve put together a “Lonely Arts Board.” So we have a Polaroid film camera. You can take a photo if that’s something that you’re into. Put up there your picture, your Instagram, your email, whatever works best for you, and just kind of talk
about what you’re looking for. So perhaps you’re looking to make connections in terms of filmmaking. Perhaps you’re just here to make other disabled friends. Yeah, it’s kind of, try to disrupt it. Also like if taking photos isn’t for you we also have a little postcards, so you can draw a little design. You can do a little creative situation, and that’s going to be the second half of today’s session.
So there will be an opportunity for you guys to ask questions. So I’m just putting that into your brain. So if you have any questions, there’ll be time at the end to ask.
I’m joined by some really wonderful people. To my left I have Charlie Little and Tara Brown.
Please can you introduce yourself and self describe.
Charlie Little: Hello, everyone. This microphone working okay? My name is Charlie Little and I’m really excited to be here at SQIFF as SQIFF definitely has a lot of special memories and a place in my heart and, you know, one of the first if only accessible film festivals that I could really engage with. My pronouns are she/they. And I am a queer deaf-blind film exhibition access consultant and film curator, and of course a member of We Crip Film
Charlie: For a visual self-description, I always find this hard especially as a partially-sighted person myself so it very much relates. I’m a white young person in my mid twenties, I’ve got curly dark blond hair styled in a wolf cut — if you know you know. We have been talking about how I look like a gay 12 year-old boy! (laughter) I have blue jeans, Sambas, SQIFF t-shirt – shout out for the merch table – a black shirt, and a gold chain. Yeah, I think I look really handsome, very handsome.
Clare: Now over to you, Tara
Tara Brown: Hello everyone, my name’s Tara Brown. I use they/them pronouns. I can describe myself as a black fat disabled trans queer feminist film curator. I also do evaluation consultations, creatively because I don’t have a degree . I am wearing really shiny green lace up boots that aren’t Doc Martens, orange, sort of lacy tights. I am also wearing the leopard print and I’ve got a pink fake satin pussybow blouse, and my hair’s in a canerow. I have a stick, my stick’s sort of poking me in the back. I’ve been doing film curating since 2013, doing it all the wrong way, all the time, which is the best way to do it. And always fighting to make films as diverse and accessible and brilliant as possible.
Tara: And I’ve been in lots of places. I started off with one of my besties, Theresa (Heath) doing Wotever DIY Film, which was also a disabled-led queer DIY film festival. I also work for Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Fest (really funny saying Fringe in Scotland, which is also queer. I’m currently working on the London Film Festival and Sheffield’s Doc Fest.
Clare: Let’s hear it for the panelists!
Clare: The way that we pitched this is kind of taking you through the whole film birthing process. So I’m going to start with development, with story, with character. So the first question I have for my lovely panelists is that let’s say somebody has an idea for a film that doesn’t involve a disabled character, like it’s fleshed it out, then they say: ‘Here’s my story, there’s no disabled character.’ How does somebody add one and ensure it’s not just like a tick-boxing exercise? How do you involve the disability within film? That’s the question.
Tara: I think my first note is that you can cast a disabled actor into any role that you have in the film. Like that’s kind of the easiest most-makes-sense way to do it and go from there. Go for talent and just ensure that the person who is your actor is not a sort of a person you can put all the tropes in, they’re not a character that’s sort of used in a really skeezy way or “cured.” It’s about good writing. You’re just writing a real character like you would any of your other roles.
Charlie: I think fundamentally people just need to reframe the thing, the way that they think about disability. So the way that non-disabled people even think about disabled people’s roles in society, and I think so many of us have unconscious biases that we have to learn, well learn to unlearn. So, you know, if your default is that someone is white, straight, a man, non-disabled, I think it is a huge issue. Like all of us are on a journey of unlearning.
Charlie: But I think in terms of character development, like Tara’s saying, making sure that they’re not just the stereotype and that they’re not just a plot device or a prop for other characters, I think is just fundamentally about creating characters that are flawed, that have personality. And, you know, disabled stories are just as deserving to be told. One example, I think of recent filmmaking and storytelling is a series by our friend Kyla Harris, who wrote and directed it. It’s really good. “We Might Regret This,” Yeah, but you won’t regret this.
Alison Smith (from audience): They also had three access coordinators.
Clare: Access coordinators, which is also a very good point in terms of how do you make your productions accessible?
We are going to get back to that specific point about how disability can also be used as a way, like a catalyst almost, as a way to advance plot versus actually talking about the lived experience of living with a disability, so making that more authentic. That’s a really great way to involve disabled people in your script writing, if you’re not disabled yourself, that’s a really great way to collaborate.
Clare: But speaking of, how do you make your productions accessible, we had a little shout-out
from the audience: Access Coordinators! Could someone please explain to me what an access coordinator is? Charlie?
Charlie: Yeah, so an access coordinator in film production would be someone whose designated goal is to oversee and make sure that access is very much embedded
for a cast or crew. You know, venue access, workplace culture. So even though access should be on everyone’s mind, it’s really important to work with someone with lived experience, with expertise in making sure that everyone’s needs are met and that the requirements don’t become a barrier later on. So it’s really important to work with an access coordinator before production, not leaving it to the last minute. That’s the nutshell definition.
Clare: That was a good definition. I think the thing about an access coordinator is that it’s a relatively new role, similar to an intimacy coordinator. I think it’s definitely addressing something that actors have experienced in terms of their needs not being met. So how do you address those needs and how do you have somebody on set to be able to advocate for you and your requirements?
Clare: I think what you said is really important in terms of like they all have lived experience. So all the people who have recently been trained up as access coordinators are themselves disabled, so they have, you have that understanding on set. And the BFI has recently piloted access coordinators on there, it’s called Future Takes, they’re high budget shorts.
And it is interesting because it’s not just only for the cast, it’s for the crew as well, and being able to send out a blank email to everybody being like, “You can come talk to us if you have any access requirements, even if you don’t identify as disabled, come have a conversation. Come have a zoom call, let’s have a chat.”
That’s when something like an access passport is really important in terms of how do you document that? How do you share that with people? How do you let people know what your access requirements are? Access coordinators are really wonderful. Do you have anything to add, Tara?
Tara: Yes, I was going to say that in your first job of your budget, you must assign an access line in your budget. Way too often it’s sort of done at the end. It’s like, ‘Oh crap, this person might need something, but we haven’t thought of it, so I’m so sorry we can’t include you.’ We know that’s bullshit. So in your first draft the access line will be there. Otherwise, I don’t know what you expect me to do later on. All you’re going to do later on is compromise, make them feel like a burden. And that’s all cast and crew and everyone involved.
Clare: Yeah, absolutely. The BFI always has access budgets, so there’s like a whole pot of money that exists if you do get BFI funding where if you have access needs, you just ask for it. And not many people have been using it, which is also really interesting in terms of: Are these the films that we’re funding because we know that there are disabled people on set? It’s a whole conversation.
Clare: But we’ve got a whistlestop tour, so I’m going to move us on to post and distribution. Post production is a topic I feel like doesn’t get brought into the conversation very often, especially in terms of accessibility. It isn’t very, like it isn ‘t discussed. How can this phase of production be made more accessible? Or do you think it inherently is already accessible but just not spoken about?
Charlie: So the work I do specializes in distribution and exhibition, so once the films are made. I think the overarching issue is that – and that goes back to what we were just talking about in terms of budget – is that access isn’t necessarily thought of holistically and ideally access and disability inclusion is thought of as early as possible from even the blueprint of your project.
Charlie: The way that you shoot a film might affect the position of descriptive subtitles for example, if you’re shooting a film where there’s dialogue that’s in British Sign Language but it’s actually cut off, then obviously that is not very accessible.
So really thinking about it from the beginning, but in terms of, you know, making the release of the film accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Just thinking before you get to that point that you’re going to want to make sure that if there’s descriptive subtitles you’re going to want to make sure that there’s audio description. The issue I come across, which is also a barrier for disabled critics, for disabled programmers, is that these materials aren’t necessarily made until the film is in the cinema.
Charlie: They’re not thinking about the festival circuit, they’re not thinking about critics reviews because they’re automatically assuming that there won’t be people that need audio description, that need descriptive subtitles.
There was a film recently, “Kneecap” which I personally really enjoyed. Irish language film. Amazing. But that film had a lot of creative captions which weren’t very accessible and it affected the actual standard descriptive subtitles. So when I went to watch it in the cinema, I couldn’t follow some of the scenes. That’s just because access wasn’t thought about when they actually shot the film and they edited it. Yeah, I think I’m going on a tangent a bit.
Clare: No, that’s a really interesting case study because I think it’s interesting for people to understand what are the real implications of how you shoot and what that means for audiences and how you can access more deaf and disabled audiences.
Tara: When you have accessibility in the blueprint of your budget and think about what those means are, not just looking after the actors and holistically, but also the production side of making sure you have the budget set aside to create the subtitles and the audio description.
So many times I would want to program a film and I contact some distribution company and that’s who you go through and they’d say, ‘Oh, sorry, we don’t have them.’ And that’s just the end of the conversation. That is really frustrating because at the other end the audience is coming to see the film. So you have to really look through between the lines of calendars to actually see if there’s an accessible screening of the film that you want to see.
Tara: So I think it’s important to know that those resources are very much out there. Back in, like, I know that SQIFF – I don’t know if they still do that- they would have volunteers actually creating subtitles and description. We did that with Wotever Film as well. We’d have volunteers actually working really hard, like making subtitles for all the films. You look at the LFF screenings -London Film Festival coming up – I think pretty much all the films that are not English language have subtitles, but other than that it’s a bit of a rodeo, unless maybe it’s a disability film and then they might think about it.
But I think it’s that attitude of being…maybe, just maybe, other films that aren’t “disability films” might be worth having subtitles and audio description as well, because you want to see the film. You want to see as many films as possible and just want you to do that accessibly.
Charlie: I think you are allowed to engage access coordinators, professional subtitlers, audio describers like as early as possible. You don’t have to wait until the film is done. You can get those quotes, You can ask for their advice, you can engage these professionals as early as possible. There’s a wealth of free knowledge and resources out there. I think a lot of us in the industry, in the sector are quite happy to share resources, to share information.
I think what Tara is saying about being a disabled programmer, having no means to access subtitles. It’s just that automatic assumption that disabled programmers aren’t working in this sector, and so we have this vicious cycle. We want to welcome disabled people into the curating sector and they’re making it impossible for them to actually do that.
Tara: Yes, so they’re making the job twice as hard. I’m watching these films without the subtitles and I’m having to focus more, which means I can actually do less work but I don’t think they see it that way. Because they are like “Well, you know, you’re not partially sighted.” Well that’s not just who it’s for.
Clare: And I think that’s also why descriptive subtitles as a name is really important, because I think within the industry there’s lots of like: “is it closed captions? Is it open captions? Is it subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing?”
Clare: Why is descriptive subtitles a term? I know you think about this, Charlie. So I’m looking to you to explain why this is such a gorgeous term.
Charlie: Yeah. For a bit of context, I work with Matchbox Cine and they’re, some of you will know them, they’re Glasgow-based exhibitors but also a team of really fantastic subtitlers and audio descriptors. We really push for the term descriptive subtitles for a few reasons. One big reason is that to give context – descriptive subtitles are dialog and descriptions of the soundtrack. So you can get the sound effects, maybe speech identifiers, so where it says who’s speaking if it’s not clear on screen.
Descriptive subtitles are traditionally for deaf and hard of hearing audiences but there’s a range of people who benefit and use descriptive subtitles. We see it on streaming platforms, we see it on our mobile phones, social media. Hearing and deaf audiences are engaging in these descriptive subtitles. So just think of that as context.
Charlie: The term descriptive subtitles, unlike terms like subtitles for deaf and hard of hearing or HOH captions, does not specify or target the audience that is presumed to be using them. I’ve been in a situation where I’ve had hearing people saying to me that there was a screening they really wanted to go to, but it was titled ‘subtitled for deaf and hard of hearing’, and they didn’t think that was for them. They were saying it out of good intention as if they didn’t want to take up space as the hearing person, but they just didn’t understand that’s just an industry term.
Charlie: There’s a few other kinds of issues that come about from using subtitles generated for hard of hearing in terms of industry miscommunication. But I just think that descriptive subtitles is a very distinctive, easily understood term. And again, I like that it doesn’t specify or target or label the audience either. So I think it’s quite easy to distinguish it from, say, dialog subtitles or English language subtitles, which isn’t necessarily acceptable for people who need to hear the fuller soundtrack, whether due to auditory processing issues, some neurodivergent people prefer descriptive subtitles sometimes even people whose first language isn’t necessarily English. But yeah, I can talk about it all day. I’m trying to keep it brief.
Clare: That was lovely, really nice, that was really good. I think that’s the thing, coming into the space like, not assuming that everybody knows everything, so that was really useful. Thank you.
Clare: I also want to do a little plug for another project that you’ve worked on in terms of let’s say – there might be some film programmers in the audience today. Charlie has worked with this organization Matchbox Cine and they created a resource called Sidecard.
Charlie: Sidecard would be great for anyone here who is used to actually creating or commissioning access materials. So by access materials, I mean subtitle files, audio description files, things like that, anything kind of material related to cinema accessibility.
So Sidecard was a jointly funded initiative from MatchBox Cine but also several of the BFI film hubs, including Film Hub Scotland and ICO (Independent Cinema Office), Film Hub Wales. It is BFI funded and it’s essentially a free online database of access materials so you can track and also search for access materials. So if you created a bunch of access materials and you can upload information about it and then someone might want to screen an accessible screening of the film, they can search, they can find who to contact to potentially access those access materials.
So it’s just a really great resource to be able to easily find out if a film has access materials or not. Please check out Sidecard. It’s also just an information resource platform. There’s really useful ‘how to’ guides, there’s glossaries.
Clare: Thank you so much. We’re on this journey, we’re birthing a film, we’ve done the development, we’ve done the production, we’ve done the post-production. Now I’m moving on to like screening, film festivals. I’m here with two curators, two programmers. So they are perfect people to ask questions. I also want to say we were supposed to be joined by Lindsey Dryden, who unfortunately couldn’t join us today as she was having a flare up.
So I just wanted to talk a little bit about FWD-Doc what they’ve done in terms of assessing
film festivals. Thankfully, a huge shoutout to SQIFF, they were recognized as one of the most accessible film festivals. So basically FWD-Doc is an organization that does many different things, but specifically in this realm, they created this access survey that was held at many different film festivals and I’ve actually got some stats in front of me.
So 73% of disabled respondents experience some form of inaccessibility in their film festival experience, which I think is .. Shocking, haha Well, not in this space – Yeah, I feel like that’s very representative of the film festival landscape in terms of especially as an independent filmmaker, you’re trying to make connections and film festivals are so important in terms of that networking aspect. How do you find the people, how do you find your collaborators? And if the festival is inaccessible that just completely ruins your whole experience.
Clare: So that’s the current state of where we’re at, FWD-Doc is doing some really incredible work, SQIFF‘s doing some really incredible work is really gorgeously accessible. Having a lovely time! I want to ask some questions, like, just like from a programming perspective, how do you program intersectionally and how do you program in an anti-ableist way?
Tara: It’s a funny question because kind of like just how I operate. It’s kind of like ‘Oh! People don’t don’t that, of course not.’ For me, I’m basically just looking at the films or who’s involved and who’s been left out and why. If I’m, say, I’m seeing a documentary that’s talking about…that was it, there was a film in Manchester about the vogue scene. The entire cast was white, and the amount of times people said, “Doesn’t matter if you’re blue, purple or yellow.” And I was like, uh-huh? I would never program that film because you’re sort of going into a culture without having any recognition or, you know, acknowledgment of maybe the other people who are missed out. And it might be good to be honest about that or at least talk about why, as opposed to sort of just trying to be straight with it whilst knowing that you are excluding people.
Tara: Also, I would think about the venue. Venues are so important, venues are so inaccessible so much of the time. I think about whom I am working with, I want to have health staff, security staff, are they trained, you know, and I think people forget about that a lot.
Tara: I always put a lot of the effort into getting to know the actual staff of the venue so they can sort of understand where I’m coming from and why it’s important. So maybe I’ll want to change
the labels on the toilets. Maybe I need to give extra signage where they’ve not done that before. It would be a start to have images of the cinema or the entrance to it on access materials, so there’s more idea about how I’m going to get there, what it’s going to look like, something inviting – as well as many, many other things.
Tara: You’re thinking about the entire journey from communicating the film to the audience getting there, watching the film, and what happens afterwards. And I guess the way I end up doing it is trying to put myself not necessarily in my own shoes, but maybe my grandma’s shoes, or maybe people I know, or also cause if you’re experienced enough, you can see what goes well and what doesn’t go well. You can chat to me afterwards, I have a very mottled brain – ADHD, so it’s very easy for me to forget that maybe something’s important. But yes, making those notes.
Tara: I know I go to intersectional films most of the time. I’m trying to make people make some for me, and I basically I’ve spent the last ten years just going up to people and being like,
“You should make a film, let me help you.” Putting it together, maybe making things like The Lonely Arts Board. So many queer, DIY, intersectional films were made because they got to meet each other, find each other, and then actually put a project together.
Tara: Yes, so when I’m looking at submissions, I’m looking for all that stuff – looking for queer stuff, I’m looking for disabled stuff, can they combine it together? Actually, what kind of story are you telling? There are also so many films with a disabled theme like: “I have this disability but I’m really trying hard for this goal, I will fight for this goal. And I succeeded.” Or trans people, you know, “I am trans and I’m now going to have this thing done, and now I’m complete.” And I spend a lot of time just weeding those out. I’m not afraid to weed those out. I don’t care who’s made it, I just want a good film. I feel like I’m rambling!
Charlie: I guess one thing I like to think about when I’m programming…I had the wonderful opportunity of programming with Clare last year at BFI’s Busting The Bias. This was a disability-centric festival and it was amazing having programming at the BFI Southbank and so many disabled people were there and on screen. I had quite a few people come up to me afterwards to tell me ‘I’ve never seen my stories up on the big screen before, thank you so much.’ And I think that really drove me to keep finding these stories that resonate with people because they’ve just never seen themselves before. And it’s not that these stories aren’t out there, they’re just not necessarily being promoted on a platform that big.
Charlie: I think in terms of intersectionality and anti-ableism I just very much like looking past the colonial gaze and gender binary and, and really just thinking about the disability justice model, a little segway there, I’ll let you talk about We Crip Film.
Clare: So the concept of disability justice was created by Sins Invalid. They’re an incredible intersectional community from San Francisco. The ten principles… they’re not all coming to mind, but one of them is intersectionality, cross disability solidarity…
Tara: Having the most marginalized people lead things and having the more privileged people supporting this sort of thing. What I really like is that you are thinking about everybody with minoritized groups to the front. But I also think we don’t realize that they went from prison. Actually there are some changes that can be made that you might not see as “disabled” but maybe actually you are struggling with the thing to the extent that it’s actually interfering with your life, those are valid things.
Tara: And Charlie, you were talking about programing research, like the films aren’t always going to come to you. Sometimes you have to reach out and get that network, like you’ll basically message each other and be like, “I just found this really cool film!” and we’ll tell each other. I think it’s really important not to have your ego get in the way.
Charlie: No gatekeeping.
Tara: No gatekeeping, yeah! And that’s filmmakers, that’s programmers, that’s venues – we all work together. We haven’t got any funds, we’re probably exhausted. It’s actually better to work together and make something good.
Clare: That was beautiful. I don’t think we’ve touched on this but like fringe festivals and smaller scale, more indie, seem to be able to do access better. Do you think there’s a reason for that? Do you think it’s because, here’s the thing – they have less funds and yet they seem to be more accessible? Why?
Charlie: We could go on about this for a while. I don’t think it’s necessarily easier. It’s definitely not easier, I think if anything, it’s probably harder because less people, less capacity, less funds, etc just like you were saying. But I think there’s also less red tape and less bureaucracy and less departments and groups of people to navigate. I think if there’s a smaller team of people who are full of passion and genuine interest, I think it is perhaps in that aspect easier to deliver on access. But the biggest shame is that there’s so many of these institutions and corporations that absolutely have the means to be more accessible, more inclusive, and it’s just a lack of want, not necessarily a lack of funds.
And then you find that these smaller festivals or even volunteer led groups, they’re somehow holding up everything and carrying so much of the weight. So, you know, we have so many distributors and filmmakers that will have very well funded films that don’t think about access materials, but if a small festival wants to put on accessible screenings, they will out of pocket go and create those files, you know, which is just not okay, to put it lightly – keep it PG! (laughter).
Tara: I also wonder if there’s fear from the institutions. I’ve worked for the BFI in and out for the last ten years and I’ve also worked in councils. They’re actually very similar in the sense of who you’re having to respond to and the fear that creates of what to say. There’s this big fear that they don’t want one random person to be really angry at them, so then they say ”Oh no, no, no, no, we’ll step back,” that sort of thing. It’s very much a status quo atmosphere “Why would we change it?” sort of thing. Like I kind of feel like it can be very stuck when we want to be dynamic and also maybe, we have less funding or different funding streams.
Tara: Maybe they’re not feeling as accountable to people who make you feel like, “Oh, oh no.” I don’t know. I find it very strange because like I’ve been suggesting things all the time. I get weird blank looks. I’m talking about institutions, big institutions here. And I always find it quite interesting that there’s this lack of dynamism, like a “let’s go” attitude. The way I’ve learned is to just go and do it. For example Theresa started the Wotever DIY Film Festival and then I joined next year. Basically we just wanted our mates to come. That was kind of like the guiding principle. We were two disabled queer femmes who wanted our queer disabled friends to go. We wanted to make sure that everyone, as many people could go if they wanted to. And that’s what drove us and just simply made sense. I’d say that was a core principle of ours.
I’ll never forget – I think it was the last Wotever DIY Film Fest in 2016, and I remember, there was a lesbian couple from Birmingham, and they came all the way down from Birmingham, with their guide dog because they knew and – oh yeah, advertising! And they felt welcomed from online because we’d specifically stated that these are the resources we have and they were visually impaired as well, partially sighted. And that always will stay with you. I feel like once you have that reward like I can’t I really can’t conceive of not wanting to welcome people. And what I’ve noticed is as I’ve so to speak gone up in my career is that that movement, that thing kind of shifts and there’s like different departments, as you were saying, you’re trying to speak to. There’s also definitely a fear of criticism and maybe not really sure how to respond to that, because you’re going into a space where you will find people who might complain about having subtitles in that film.
Tara: You might have people who might complain about having audio description and then suddenly they’re aggrieved and you’ve got to respond to that. I don’t care. I’m very happy to speak up and stuff, but I realize I’m in the minority again in that sort of situation. Not again! (laughter)
Tara: So yeah, I think it’s an attitude shift. I’ve been harassing BFI about it for years like even just the lift in the front of the Southbank. They didn’t give a shit. I’ve been angry about that for five years. Sorry, Clare.
Clare: It’s okay, it’s fine!
Tara: You know I did an event called “We Were Always Here” and I had to be outside guiding people with wheelchairs to the other entrance because the lift wasn’t working and the volunteers didn’t realize there was another lift.
Clare: And I feel like that’s a good amalgamation of like…
Tara: I mean, there’s like a massive complaint. I can think that recently there’s this massive capital resources project, like everything’s changed up and that lift’s still the same and obviously it’s not about you, Clare, it’s about the …Well, no, because I think sometimes people asking as well. I think when people, when institutions get criticized, they take it personally and it’s actually being like, like, why haven’t you done this? Like really actually interrogating that? And I feel like a lot of big institutions, maybe because of the funding stream, maybe because of their structure they get really scared of interrogating their bias, what that really means. And you actually haven’t done this. “Oh, shit, we’re sorry.’ Just say sorry. Do it.
Clare: Sorry. I’m sorry. Yeah, I think you’ve got that well, like, in terms of like, the bureaucracy of it all. But before I go to audience questions and – the sorry, the little lesbian couple with the guide dog has got my heart fully singing.
Tara: Yeah, I’ll never forget that.
Clare: And like, that’s precisely the energy of this whole event, having queer disabled people come together in this space is incredible. It’s so good. Yeah. So I want to open up to questions and/or shouts. Oh, I see one at the front. Do you want to shout, and then I’ll repeat it. Tara’s making a move…
Tara: Told you I’m proactive!
Clare: Just do it.
Theresa Heath (audience member): You knew I’d be jumping in there like a kid in school going “Me! Me! Me!”
Theresa: Thank you so much. That was so amazing. And I learned stuff and I’ve made notes and I just think you are all insanely brilliant, what you are doing, so thank you for that. I just have two questions. One is very, very quick, the other one’s more difficult. I just want to also say briefly Charlie – the whole thing about descriptive captions just spoke to me. I have ADHD, so I watch everything with captions. We have to sort of change this culture of thinking that access is only for a narrow audience. It doesn’t have to be good for everyone, but actually it can be, right? You know, so the first question, which is very small, I just wanted to ask Clare, you were talking about an access budget for films. Is it only for films or can festivals access that too?
Clare: That’s a great question. So again, you know, the bureaucracy of it all, the funding streams and how BFI is funded, it’s specifically just for films. If there’s a need for a festival access budget, maybe that’s a good conversation that we can have in the networking section.
Theresa: Right. Would you mind a very quick second question. It’s a very painful question because it’s about money and it’s about how disabled people are so devalued in our, you know, shitty capitalist society. A couple years ago I did a research project, we looked at accessible festivals and we realized, as you say, the smaller festivals are doing the most work, queer and queer adjacent. That’s where they’re doing so much work. But festival organizers are exhausted. They are burning out. You know, they are doing so much work for so little pay and remuneration and I don’t think it’s sustainable. So my question is, it’s a really difficult question and I’m sorry, I don’t expect you to have all the answers, but how can smaller festivals and amateur filmmakers make accessible events and films when access can be so expensive in the society we live in? It’s a painful question because, you know, there shouldn’t be a price on access.
Theresa: You know, the two people who came down to access our films, that was everything. But on a funding summary, it’s like, ‘Oh, you had two people access your audio description, woo.” But actually you can’t monetize these things. I’m digressing. My question is, how can we, as smaller film festival producers, how can we make things accessible when it is so difficult, when you guys are burning out, when it’s not fair and when there isn’t any, there’s no access fund, there’s no money. What do you do? Sorry, I know it’s a really shitty hard question.
Tara: It just brings up memories. Because that last festival we did, we had really good funding to make from Heritage Lottery, but we weren’t allowed to make money from ticket sales or pay ourselves. Or anything. So we’d done the most successful accessible festival for everybody else. Yes. We were burnt out and broke and there wasn’t another Wotever Film Festival.
Tara: I guess the thing is that the focus is on funding, maybe the BFI and other big funders aren’t seeing the big picture. But there’s also the thing about targets as well because they’re constantly, “Oh not enough people will come, we won’t fund you.”
Charlie: I was just going to say that I think in terms of monetization I hate to monetize disabled people and access, but the reality is that as you know, it’s a fourth of the population that are disabled, and you know we have ‘the purple pound.’ For anyone that doesn’t know, that’s a theory around the spending power of disabled people and their families, which is in the billions. Because services aren’t accessible, companies aren’t receiving that profit. So I think for disabled people to turn up and be loyal customers in any form of life, I think access has to be reliable and the default, and that’s what a lot of funders don’t understand.
Charlie: So what you were saying about, ‘Oh, well, only two people use the AD,’ but if you have it be reliable year after year, you’re going to see the audience develop just like any other form of audience development for any other demographic.
Obviously we’re in a really struggling climate at the moment for the arts. Everyone is really feeling it. People are having to look at other methods such as sponsorship, partnerships. Again, this kind of furthering capitalism.
Charlie: I think there’s not one blanket answer. I think it’s going to be a multitude of information and resource sharing, but also understanding that you’re not going to get it 100% right the first time you do it and don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Charlie: Access is constantly developing and evolving and we’re not expecting you to have every single access provision under the sun if you don’t have the money for it. Concentrate on one provision and deliver it really well and just build upon that. Obviously, it’s difficult because you only have so much money that you can receive from funders, but I think it’s also just about reframing your expectations as well so that it doesn’t feel so hopeless, to be honest.
It’s an ongoing conversation. I can’t say everything that I want to say given the time we have. But yeah, that’s the thing.
Clare: Speaking as the funder, I would just quickly speak as ‘The Funder.” Well, I am not really the funder, or speaking as the funding institution, so the BFI has a new strategy. It’s called ScreenCulture 2033. What that actually means is that one of the ambitions is to diversify audiences. So they’ve acknowledged that they are not hitting targets in terms of disabled audiences, they’re well aware that’s not happening. I think one of the things that we can talk about from a BFI perspective is we have a relaxed screening program. There was a lot of pushback internally to make that happen because they were framing it within the traditional terms of success as in; What are the numbers? How many people are coming to this? Oh, there’s only five people in the audience. Why are we doing this? What do you mean the tickets are pay-what-you-can? That makes no sense! Capitalist, capitalist, capitalist…”
Clare: So how do we reframe what success looks like? How do we introduce these ideas and concepts from disability justice? Concepts like crip time? What is crip time? Introducing people into what crip time is and familiarizing that. I think fundamentally, if we want to get to the point where funders realize that they do need to start giving film festivals an access budget, then you need to start incorporating that into their funding streams. I think it is a conversation around understanding and education and creating that awareness. From the work that We Crip Film does and what I’m doing I feel like it is coming. It definitely is coming, but it is a process and it’s also, as you said, ensuring that we don’t get burned out, it’s ensuring that it’s sustainable for us as well as for everybody else. So I feel like the change I’m here for is a disability revolution, that’s what I’m feeling, guys. So I think it’s coming, but in the crip time fashion. I see another question here.
Alison Smith (audience member): Hi, it’s Alison (Smith). It’s not so much a question, but to just let you know that TripleC’s got funding from Screen Scotland. There’s a steering group which has got the year-round project Driving Change for Deaf, Disabled. and Neurodivergent Creatives in Scotland. I’m on the steering group for that and they just got funds recently. There’s a whole lot of webinars going to be taking place and in-person events. We’re developing a talent database on the TripleC website. So just want to give you a shout out for that. There are five access coordinators in Scotland now, I was one of the first, and I think there are 25 of us UK-wide now. They have just announced training for the next round and the deadline is like one minute to midnight on the 31st of October or something like that. So I just wanted to give a shout-out for that.
Clare: Amazing project! Would you like to speak? You just speak it and I’ll repeat it.
(audience member) So a little like what the last person said, it’s something related in terms of movements and something which kind of works with a previous question. I’ll try to speak up. So I am part of a movement called the Universal Recognition Movement. It’s led by deaf, neurodivergent and disabled people. We are trying to make the future more accessible for everybody. We’ve just last year started a partnership with a thing called Doughnut Economics Action Lab, which isn’t anything to do with doughnuts unfortunately. It’s to do with making the economy, say, how we produce and provide for one another fairer for people. We have an event coming up that we’ve just confirmed that’s online on the 6th of November. So if you look them up and us up we’ll be sharing information about that. One of them is a workshop around value and different types of values. There will be, including talking about things like crip time, and even things like how many screenings you have and just getting people to think a bit about value systems.
And then there’s going to be a talk about marginalized leadership where I’m going to be talking about funding marginalized leadership in these kind of social change things. I know it’s a bit further than film, but I just think people are asking this kind of question.
So this is why we’re trying to get these kinds of thoughts in front of a wider global audience, especially when it comes to economics, I think we think that’s really big and scary and not something that we can get involved with and impact. It’s really quite unfortunate to think that. And we’ve been thinking about different value systems for ages and you know, disability justice when it comes to crip time and things like that. There’s also going to be an in-person event, hopefully on the 8th of November in Glasgow, and that people are welcome to attend with social advantaged I think in many things.
Something that we’re going to be speaking about at the event is that often funders want to fund things that are for the public good. That means that money often gets dispersed, whereas if you have marginalized leadership, it is for the public good to fund that particular person or particular groups specifically and allow them to make profit so that they work a bit like a social enterprise. We’ll be discussing those kinds of things. But also when budgets are set in terms of what funding to allocate, we often find that we are receiving the same funding amount as other organizations, whereas we are trying to increase access within that, which obviously means that we don’t have the same amount of budget because we’ll have to use that for live interpretation and things like that. And so when you’re thinking about equity rather than equality, actually looking at weighting the budget funding so that you get more funding for people who are trying to consider access. So if there’s an extra access budget it brings that kind of equity of plans into it.
So my specific question that there might not be an answer is, do you know of any funders who specifically fund access or in terms of networking. Anyone in the room can answer this – Does anyone know of any funding specifically to fund access in addition to your budget which from just be for any of the practical parts for project funding
Clare: Gorgeous. I’m going to paraphrase that quickly for everybody. Sorry, what was your name?
Rebecca, Becky. So Becky just said that she has this movement, called the Universal Recognition Movement. That’s three events coming up, ones online, on 6 of November, that’s about values. The second is a talk about marginalized leadership within social change. And then there’s also an in-person social which is in Glasgow on the 8th of November. Amazing!
And then your question specifically around are there any organizations that are specifically funding access, depending on the project, which is I can answer that question immediately. As I mentioned, the BFI filmmaking funds, they have like this catch-all pot. So we currently just funded a film called “Retreat” which is the first BSL directed BSL-dialogue feature film. That’s a huge access budget. We’re talking about many, many interpreters working each day. I don’t have the exact figures in front of me, but like in terms of equity that was a huge deaf cast /crew. So therefore the access costs for that project were very large. But obviously in comparison to another project where there aren’t as many deaf people, that is going to be smaller. So in filmmaking funds yes, but in terms of other funding, it’s not the same. I think that’s also a conversation around cohesion, around how the BFI funds. That’s another thing we can talk about later.
Clare: Does anybody know of any other organizations that they want to shout out? No? And that’s the state of the arts. Sorry about that.
But that’s precisely why being in this room is so important so that we can have these conversations, so that we can connect, so that we can come together to rally and lobby these organizations to change the way that they fund.
I am aware that we have reached 6 o’clock. So what I’m going to suggest is that we maybe shift more into the networking side of things. If you have any specific questions for myself, Charlie and Tara, please come on up to us.
But what I’d really love is for you guys to talk to each other. Start making your notes on the Lonely Arts Board. It’s going to be a legacy thing so that like people can reach out to you. You can put your social media, email, whatever works best for you. Up in the corner, there holding up gorgeous multi-colored felt-tipped pens. We’ve got postcards, we’ve got Polaroids, we’ve got drawing.
I just wanted to say thank you so much to all of you guys for being here.
This is one of the best well-attended disabled-focused initiative events I’ve seen at a film festival for a long time. So I think that’s a real testament to each and every one of you for being here. I also want to thank Charlie, Tara, Lucy, Louise, Louisa and Andrew for all the gorgeous access. And also a huge thank you to SQIFF for bringing We Crip Film into this partnership, because it’s so great to be here and to meet all of you afterwards, outside. So we’re going to be networking in more of the neighboring space because I think it’s really hot in here. So I think that would be nice to be out there.
Do you have anything else? Thank you so much everyone. This has been really gorgeous.
Warehouse
“A war profiteer with a gun takes a young working class woman cross country then chickens out when he (whoops I mean she) realizes that actions have consequences. What could go wrong????” Whose version of CAROL is aging better? This one. Lucky attendees of 
