UNANIMA SECURES FUNDING TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO THE ARTS AND CREATIVE EDUCATION FOR LEARNING DISABLED AND AUTISTIC YOUNG PEOPLE IN MANSFIELD

●      The Youth Music Shift the Scene Fund has launched following new research shows that Disabled young people face disproportionate barriers when accessing the arts, creative education and employment.

●      Unanima is one of 13 organisations nationwide selected, from 150 submissions.

Tuesday 21st April, London, UK – Youth Music, the UK’s leading young people’s music charity, has today announced the recipients of a £2.25 million fund – Shift the Scene – designed to improve access to the arts and creative education for Disabled children and young people.

As a result of this, Unanima has been awarded a grant of £200,000 to provide creative opportunities for learning disabled and autistic young people over 4 years, helping to ‘shift the scene’ by creating spaces where Disabled voices lead. 

Last year Youth Music published a report, Excluded by Design, which exposes the systemic barriers Disabled young people face when accessing the arts. 

The report found that Disabled young people:

●      Participate less in the arts than their non-Disabled peers.

●      Have shorter term engagement.

●      Are less likely to be involved in community-based activity outside of the home, and are more likely to think there are not enough clubs and activities in their local area.

●      Are far less likely to be employed in the arts.

Disabled young people frequently encounter limited access to arts education, fear of judgement, and low expectations. Despite their rights being enshrined in law, in practice they’re often not met. The report finds that:

●      The UK is an international leader in creative access and inclusion, yet good practice is driven by specialist organisations rather than being ‘the norm’.

●      There’s a need for greater understanding of access and inclusion practices, more consistency in approach, and greater use of the social model of disability to remove barriers to engagement.

The Youth Music report also offers practical solutions to increase accessibility to the creative arts for Disabled young people, read the full Excluded by Design report here.

Unanima is utilising Shift the Scene funding to dismantle the upstream lack of opportunity for learning disabled and autistic young people, replacing systemic barriers with a high-specification training pipeline. By intervening early, we equip learning  disabled and autistic young people with the ambition and the tangible possibility of more, seamlessly transitioning them into existing Unanima provision to cultivate their creative identities, addressing the post-education ‘cliff edge’ that many learning disabled and autistic young people face.

Tracy Radford Artistic, Director & CEO, said ‘At Unanima, we are confronting the hard truth that learning disabled and autistic artists remain profoundly underrepresented on our stages, not because of a lack of talent, but because the system has never been built with them in mind.
That exclusion begins within education itself, where a lack of meaningful arts provision limits creative development, and is felt most sharply at the ‘cliff edge’ beyond it, where too many creative futures are never given the chance to exist.
This programme is a decisive step toward changing that narrative.
Representation is not a token gesture, it is about power, authorship and belonging.
We are not just creating opportunity, we are claiming space, shifting culture and ensuring learning disabled and autistic artists are seen, heard, and leading from the front; redefining who theatre is for.’

Carol Reid, Youth Music Interim Co-CEO, said: “Unfortunately the arts sector is still failing Disabled young people. Although our Excluded by Design report charts some good practice, there is still lots of work to do. We’re tackling this head-on through this £2.25million fund, made possible thanks to National Lottery funding via Arts Council England. Crucially, Shift the Scene will provide long-term investment to equalise access and help create lasting change.”

For additional information on the Youth Music Shift the Scene Fund, please visit: https://www.youthmusic.org.uk/funding/funding/i-need-funding/shift-scene-fund

To see the full list of Shift the Scene Fund recipients, please visit: https://www.youthmusic.org.uk/news/meet-shift-scene-recipients