Radical Listening Week 2025: Towards a Charter for Equity
Event: Opening Up Access Symposium
Date: Monday 16th June 2025
Time: 10am – 4:30pm
Where: Online
About the Symposium
Join us for the Opening Up Access symposium, in partnership with Open Theatre.
The symposium will explore how the cultural sector can better understand and embed access into their organisations and/or working practice, centring the voices of people with lived experience of disability.
This live online broadcast will be a space to present ideas and start conversations, from wherever you are in the West Midlands.
What to expect:
Livestream studio conversations with co-hosts Richard Hayhow (Director of Open Theatre) and Robin Jax (performance artist and facilitator – Attitude is Everything)
Keynote presentation by Selina Thompson – Artistic Director and CEO of Selina Thompson Ltd, on accessible leadership and creative practice, Toni-Dee Paul – Associate Director of Selina Thompson Ltd, and Dr Lucy Lopez will present headline themes from the Charter for Equity research
Sector insights from Madeleine Levy – British theatre actor, writer, and advocate passionate about inclusion in the arts, Rachel Sharp – Head of Creative Placemaking and Public Programmes at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Joanna Grace – an international sensory engagement and inclusion specialist, doctoral researcher, trainer, and author
Reflections and provocations from Culture Central, Selina Thompson Ltd, and the Inclusive Network
Visual note-taking by Millie Yarwood
A sharing and reflections space for the audience after the live broadcast, hosted by Toni-Dee Paul - Associate Director of Selina Thompson Ltd, and Cat McGill - Creative Director of Live To Your Living Room
Chat-based and live interaction so you can take part wherever you are.
Our partners Open Theatre will introduce the ‘Opening Up Access’ Resource pack – a tool to support a wide range of organisations embed access into their operations. A legacy of the Culture Volunteer Programme.
Event schedule:
10:00-10:10: Welcome & Housekeeping - Richard Hayhow & Robin Jax
10:10–10:15: Warm-Up Activity - Richard Hayhow & Robin Jax
10:15–10:30: Radical Listening Context & Charter for Equity - Charlene Carter James & Dr Lucy Lopez
10:30–10:40: Framing the Day - Richard Hayhow
10:40–10:50: 10 Principles of Disability Justice - Toni-Dee Paul
10:50–11:15: Keynote Speech – Provocation: How accessible practice transforms how we lead, create, and organise - Selina Thompson
11:15–11:50: In Conversation: What Would Accessible Leadership Look Like If Co-Created from Scratch? - Selina Thompson, Madeleine Levy, Rachel Sharpe, chaired by Richard Hayhow
11:50–12:00: Comfort Break
12:00–12:20: Provocation 2: Intellectual Prejudice – The Last Remaining Prejudice? (Video) - introduced by Richard Hayhow, presentation from Joanna Grace
12:20–12:25: Reflections - Richard Hayhow & Robin Jax
12:25–12:50: Introduction to the Opening Up Access Resource - Richard Hayhow
12:50–1:00: Morning Close & What’s Next - Richard Hayhow & Robin Jax
END OF LIVE BROADCAST
LUNCH BREAK
AFTERNOON 2:30pm – 4:30pm: Reflections and Share Space, hosted by Selina Thompson Ltd and Live to Your Living Room
Join the team at Culture Central, Open Theatre, Selina Thompson Ltd and Live To Your Living Room to reflect on the morning and share your insights on the presented provocations.
Afternoon Zoom Link: Registration Link
Speakers/Hosts: Toni-Dee Paul, Toni Lewis, Cat McGill
Inclusive Network Facilitators: Dee Manning, Sara Hadi, Katerina Pushkin, Bengy Speer
This event is the first in a series of activities that launches Radical Listening Week 2025. Expect provocation, collaboration, and a shift away from extractive consultations.
What is Radical Listening?
Radical Listening is rooted in the belief that power needs to be rebalanced across the cultural sector. It centres the voices and priorities of people most excluded from influence. Listening is a verb. It is about redefining whose realities shape the future of our work.
Radical Listening Week 2025: Towards a Charter for Equity
Radical Listening Week brings together cultural workers, freelancers, organisations, and communities across the West Midlands to explore what equity looks like in practice.
Through conversation, reflection, and shared provocation, we’ll explore key themes from the Charter for Equity research by Dr. Lucy Lopez. Together, we’re building towards a framework that centres lived experience, challenges structural inequality, and supports long-term change. This is a space to listen with intention and act collectively towards a more equitable cultural sector in the West Midlands.
Radical Listening Week is part of Culture Central’s Inclusive Network, a co-created programme that highlights the voices, insights, and needs of creatives from traditionally excluded backgrounds.
Access
This is an accessible event, and an access pack will be sent to all delegates after registration.
We have 10x £25 bursaries available to support freelance artists to attend the online interactive Zoom Session that will be taking place after the broadcast. These are prioritised for those with lived experience of disability who face financial barriers to attending an online session and will be available on a trust-based, first come first served basis. Please email charlenecarterjames@culturecentral.co.uk if you would like to access this facility.
If you have specific access needs for this event, email, charleymarshall@culturecentral.co.uk
Richard Hayhow (he/him) has been Director of Open Theatre for over 30 years. Open Theatre aims to place the creativity of young people with learning disabilities at the centre of the cultural life of Birmingham and Coventry. As part of this aim, Richard set up The Shysters, a company of actors with learning disabilities, in partnership with the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry in 1997. Through the development of a unique nonverbal physical theatre practice, the company gained a national reputation for the ground-breaking quality of its performance work ‘on the borderlines of theatre, dance and mime’.
In addition to leading the performance work of the company, Richard has forged long-term creative collaborations with special schools in the West Midlands region, to examine and maximise the impact the nonverbal physical theatre practice can have on children’s learning and development and on young people’s transition into adult life. Open Theatre currently has a team of 15 practitioners working all year round in 20 special schools. Through appropriate training provision and landmark production work, and through partnership work with other cultural organisations the aim is to place the creativity of young people with learning disabilities at the centre of the cultural life of Birmingham and Coventry.
Robin Jax (he/him) is a performing artist based in Birmingham. Whilst predominantly skilled as a musician, Robin has contributed in multiple aspects of co-creation in projects by Spectra Arts Company and Room Art. Robin performs music solo under the alias RobinPlaysChords, is a guitarist for the London-based band The Shining Tongues, and one-half of the transatlantic autistic duo The Companions. He also works as an accessibility coordinator for The Tin Music and Arts, a charitable grassroots music venue and community space based in Coventry.
Keynote Speakers
Dr Lucy Lopez is an interdependent curator, writer and researcher. Currently she is Curator of Radar, a programme of commissions connected to research at Loughborough University, where she is working with artists Nat Raha, Helene Kazan and Dani Admiss & Luiza Prado as part of the programme Rehearsals (for a world we could live in). She is also a custodian of Birmingham Resistance Library, and is conducting research to inform a Charter for Equity for the West Midlands Culture Sector, lead by Culture Central. Her PhD, titled Instituting with Care: how might art institutions care well? examines what it would mean to put practices of care at the forefront of institutional and infrastructural thinking. She was previously Guest Curator at Ormston House, Limerick, with the exhibition Get Well Soon (prologue). Together with Alba Colomo, she is co-founder of la Sala, a small ecofeminist art organisation. Her work draws on feminisms, practices of care, instituting, and the politics of work. She has curated exhibitions at organisations including Grand Union, Eastside Projects, and BALTIC, and she was previously Curator of Exhibitions and Research at BAK – basis voor actuele kunst. In 2014 she co-founded the London-based art organisation Jupiter Woods. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a PhD from Birmingham School of Art. She has lectured, taught, and published internationally.
Selina Thompson is an artist and writer from, and based in, Birmingham, whose work is presented nationally and internationally. She is Artistic Director and CEO of Selina Thompson Ltd, and has led company since its inception in 2016. STL’s work seeks to centre those historically excluded by the arts, without compromising on rigour or experimentation.
Her practice is chiefly concerned with grief, love, and the world to come, and she seeks to make work that is visually striking and lyrical, even while grounded in politics.
Toni-Dee is an independent artist working across form; a writer (In Other Words, Field Notes), workshop leader, facilitator, collaborator and ‘thinker-in-the room’.
In the Midlands, Toni is Associate Director at Selina Thompson Ltd, working on the Art, and how we care for one another. In the North West she makes intricate, intimate, and entertaining events for children and families as Associate Artist of One Tenth Human; exploring rest as resistance through chronic illness-centered projects; and facilitating the International part-mutual-care-part-art-part-activism project Balmy Army.
Contributors
Richard Hayhow, Director of Open Theatre (see above)
Selina Thompson, Artistic Director and CEO of Selina Thompson Ltd (see above)
Joanna Grace (Pre-recorded Video)
Here's the link to the provocation: https://youtu.be/h6MGxoRHdIQ
Joanna’s work link: thesensoryprojects.co.uk
Madeleine Levy is a British theatre actor, writer, and advocate passionate about inclusion in the arts. She is the founder and Artistic Director of Alternative Voices Theatre Company, which supports neurodiverse and disabled artists.
Madeleine began acting at age seven and earned a BA in Drama and English Literature from Queen Mary University of London, followed by a master’s in Playwriting and Philosophy from the University of Birmingham. In 2014, she founded Alternative Voices to address the lack of opportunities for autistic adults in theatre. The company became professional in 2018 with Arts Council funding.
She is the author of When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Cat, a memoir about growing up with Asperger’s (2021), Cavalcade Books. Featuring interviews with other autistic individuals. An audiobook version was released in 2024.
Madeleine is a keen supporter of the work of Open Theatre Company Coventry and Birmingham, championing their practice as a member of their board. She is also a public speaker and accessibility advocate and is a qualified Occupational Therapist.
Rachel Sharpe
Rachel Sharpe is an award-winning arts and participation leader, with a wealth of experience using creativity to explore contemporary themes and cultural spaces. She has a proven track record of leading multi-stakeholder creative projects of scale and complex partnerships, in urban/rural settings and cultural heritage sites, with seldom served, new and existing audiences.
As a neuro-divergent creative professional, who is mum to a young man with profound autism, she has seen first-hand the positive impact a creative life can have on everyone, especially those with a learning or health need. Rachel is passionate about inclusion and generating opportunities for all, driven by developing teams, systems and cultures that create positive change.
Rachel is a Chartered Manager and has an MBA (Senior Leaders in Arts and Culture), PG Dip in Theatre and the Representation of Gender, and a BA Hons in Drama. Rachel currently works as Head of Co-Curation for the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Company Champion for Anjali Dance.
Millie Yarwood graduated from Nottingham Trent University after studying illustration and has since found herself working in a distinct style consisting of long-limbed funky characters. They exist in a universe of bright colours and bold shapes. Her work is inspired by people, disco music, and colour combinations from new environments. Community and connection are themes that are often explored throughout her illustrations. Frequently you will see her work in the form of murals, advertising, live-Illustration, and engagement workshops.
Live Illustration and scribing is always a joy for Millie when she sees an impressed audience. It’s a way to make sure they remember the conference and feel like they are part of something special.
Collaborator
Live to your Living Room is an online platform, hosting a regular and diverse programme of world-class, hight-quality live music and arts events. We’re driven by a steadfast commitment to proactively improve equity of access to the arts. Through our curated programme of shared live events we help a global community of fans - who may have previously felt excluded from cultural venues due to access barriers - feel a true sense of connection and belonging.
Facilitators
Cat McGill - Creative Director, Live To Your Living Room
Dee Manning
Sara Hadi
Katerina Pushkin
Bengy Speer