OGMIUS will make a significant contribution to the legitimization and continuing professionalization of theatre made by LD artists, through allowing the partnership to test transnational training approaches in a workplace-based context. All participating partner companies will exchange and validate their knowledge, practices, and competencies, engaging into an inter-cultural dialogue at the European level. They will develop common training frameworks of reference, which they all need as it is these companies who are driving employability in the sector. OGMIUS addresses the training needs of learning disabled (LD) theatre makers and the non-learning disabled practitioners who work with them in France, Sweden and the UK. This is in response to a dire need, across Europe, for effective alternative vocational professional training, towards enhanced employability for LD people who are consistently excluded from mainstream training provision. OGMIUS is a partnership between 3 theatre companies - Mind the Gap, Moomsteatern and la Compagnie de l’Oiseau-Mouche - who have each being making professional, internationally touring theatre with LD theatre makers for over 30 years. This makes them global leaders in their field. The specific training needs have been identified through close consultation with both LD performers and non-LD staff working alongside. OGMIUS Objectives are: 1. share existing approaches to training and LD artists support, 2. design a common and transferable tool for LD artists to evaluate and self-evaluate professional practice and skills, 3. compile the evidence and learning from this project to work towards a European certification; 4. reduce the gap between mainstream VET for non-LD artists and LD artists; 5. create a transnational work force of suitably skilled support workers (educateurs); 6. raise the profile of professional training for LD artists among the wider arts sector. The target group is 60 LD artists, 12 supporting staff. There is a second group of companies working in similar fashion across Europe, with whom we are already networked thereby expanding the impact and reach of OGMIUS to 200 people. Nine trainings in Dance, Music, multi-lingual text, Educateurs practice, evaluation and self-evaluation and closely shared observation of rehearsal will all contribute to the Partners’ long-term aim of defining key competences to further strengthen OGMIUS partners’ creative working methods with LD artists. The project will create 1. an Open Educational Resource for learning disabled theatre makers and Educateurs: both for OGMIUS participants and the second group, as well as a third group of identified academics working in the LD performance field in Higher Education (Disabilty Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research - IFTR). The OER will contain all useful training materials, participants' self-reflections, input from the industry specialists and external recommendations from Professor Matthew Reason. 2. The Digital Platform will provide online access to all the training materials. The platform will build on the existing digital platform already shared by the partnership. 3. Each partner will be responsible for filming their own trainings. These will then be edited in collaboration with the Project Dramaturg, Jonathan Meth of Goldsmiths (London) and Reading Universities who will maintain a narrative overview and be made accessible to viewers in the 3 partner languages through subtitling. 4. Professor Matthew Reason of York St John’s University will design an approach to evaluation. A narrative (or journey travelled) approach will be deployed. The evaluation framework will therefore evolve alongside the project. Translation support provided by in-house staff will support the evaluation process. OGMIUS will test this methodological approach, taking a standard Higher Education approach to IPR on the basis of making materials freely available. OGMIUS will mount 3 participatory multiplier events (one in each country) to widen access to our learning: featuring conferencing, round tables, Q & As, networking with space and time for our LD performers to contribute and benefit from wider sector engagement. Two of these will be as part of independent sectoral events, maximising impact and reach. MTG Engage with 7 UK industry partners in 2019 and Scenkonstbiennalen, Sweden’s largest theatre festival in 2020. The final event will be wholly OGMIUS with the culmination of the project in Roubaix in 2021.
The OGMIUS project is the result of the collaboration between three theatre companies working with learning-disabled (LD) professional artists. These three producing and touring companies, which have been operating for more than 30 years, also offer professionnal training for LD people, with little to none equivalent in mainstream training programmes. After the success of their first European project, Crossing the Lin (2014-2017), the three partners have decided to join forces and focus on improving training opportunities for LD actors by: 1. sharing existing approaches to training and LD artists support, 2. designing a common and transferable tool for LD artists to evaluate and self-evaluate professional practice and skills, 3. compiling the evidence and learning from this project to work towards a European certification; 4. reducing the gap between mainstream VET for non-LD artists and LD artists; 5. creating a transnational work force of suitably skilled support workers (educateurs); 6. raising the profile of professional training for LD artists among the wider arts sector. OGMIUS has gathered more than 60 LD artist, 12 support workers or "éducateurs", 3 technicians, 6 guest artists and facilitators, 14 staff members and managers. Over 100 people have taken part, directly or indirectly, to the project activities. 10 training (3 virtual), 4 transnational project meetings and 2 multiplier events activities were realised. The partners have conceived three intellectual outputs: - one open educational ressources collection from data gathered during training activities; - 9 filmed documents; - 1 good practice guide including two evaluation and selfevaluation tools created and tested during the project, the "doodle book" and the "photo-elicitation" method. The project has enabled the partners to share their experience and expertise in terms of creating and operating training for LD artists and to improve their respective processes. The "éducateurs" or support workers from the three countries benefited from the experience and said it has had long-lasting impact on their practice. The partners have connected with mainstream organisations: University of York St John, the Université d'Artois, the City of Malmö... Nearly 350 people attended multiplier events. The "doodle book" was distributed in the UK during the lockdown (3,500 copies). Partners have shared the project with more than 120 organisations from the so-called "art and disability" sector. OGMIUS has enabled the partners to start long-term projects which will last beyond the project: the certification project led by Mind the Gap and the University of York St John and the creation of a performing art school by Moomsteatern with the City of Malmö. Despite the complex circumstances caused by the Covid crisis, the partners have moved collectively to reach the project objectives and improve the training opportunities for LD people.