In The Balance - a film about community & climate

Aim: We need your support to make a dance film about the importance of community & connection during climate crisis.

Arty Party are an arts organisation and charity based in Telford and Shropshire which supports and empowers learning disabled adults to explore, express and celebrate their creativity.

Learning disabled artists are supported to express their experience of being in the world through a working partnership with skilled person-centred facilitators who navigate the art-making journey.

The learning disabled artists harness this process by creating their own art and running their own events.

Arty Party listens to the voice of its members, and uses this voice to help shape the direction of the company. Together we listen, learn, facilitate, create, develop, share and celebrate.

Arty Party have been creating successful powerful award winning short films for the last ten years, creating imaginative stories from the experiences of our members and making them into short films. The writers and actors with disabilities have been presenting their films to audiences around the globe.

Recently we made a BAFTA award qualifying film The Secret Life of Tom Lightfoot, a film about anxiety portrayed by a character who had birds in his heart. The film toured to over 15 countries worldwide, was shown in the House of Parliament  and won many awards.

We are aiming to create a short fiction film about living in a fragile world threatened by climate change and how as a group of people with disabilities our connection , commitment and human kindness is vital  to our own and our communities, mental health.

The five minute film will be screened to local communities and the general public  it will highlight both the vulnerability and strength of people with disabilities in this ever changing world. We believe that it is vital that disabled people have a loud voice in protecting our fragile world and environment. 

Arty Party members and a group of ten performers have worked together to create the work, There will be a cast of 6 performers with learning disabilities working alongside a cast of four other diverse performers.

Here is a summary of the story the Arty Party members have created 

'A group of climate refugees, most of whom have disabilities, have made a home of an abandoned house. They live, cook, laugh, cry, eat, dance and work the land together, feeling like a family  while feeling vulnerable to the hostile outside climate. A wild storm arrives and one of the group has to leave. Meanwhile their daily life must carry on'

The film has already received  funding through a commission by The Space, a UK digital commissioning organisation. We need extra funding to support our performers with disabilities to create work to a high standard through accessible location hire, high quality costume and design and extra support needed such as personal assistant and accessible transport .