Taking Flight Theatre Company:
Opening Up Theatre for Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent Individuals

Family Arts Campaign’s Marketing and Programmes Manager Sophie Evans and Work Experience Student Willa Callender met up with Elise Davison, Co-founder and Artistic Director of Taking Flight to find out more about the company. We discussed their bold work and how they’ve been realising their mission ‘to smash down barriers to participating in theatre & to constantly push the boundaries of creative access’.

Taking Flight Theatre Company are now one of the UK theatre companies leading the way in inclusive practice, but how did it all begin?

In 2007, Elise Davison and Beth House – two practitioners who’d both been facilitating participatory arts activities for a long time – ran a week-long workshop in West Wales for spinally injured adults, in collaboration with charity Backup Trust. Elise shared how the experience set them on a mission to raise the profile of disabled actors:

‘During that week we were thrown into a world we hadn’t had that much experience of before and met some of the most amazing people. We were made aware of the barriers that wheelchair users can face to accessing theatre, arts training, and all sorts of things and that sort of jolted us into setting up a company, something that we had talked about doing together for a long time.

I’d just been working with a company up in Scotland called Theatre Wild, where we’d been shouting the Tempest off mountains and running into lochs. I was into this outdoor promenade style and was like ‘wow, this would be so cool to do Shakespeare in the Stackpole Estate in Pembrokeshire’ – which is such a beautiful place. I thought it would be great to have an inclusive cast, and perhaps we could raise the profile of disabled actors. So, we wanted to do two things – an outdoor promenade of Shakespeare’s work and have an inclusive cast of disabled and non-disabled performers. So, we applied for a bit of funding and got it, and then went: ‘oh, that means we need to do it now!”

And that is exactly what Elise and Beth did, but not without its challenges – starting with their first venue being shut due to high winds, and then thunderstorms to boot. But they persevered.

Elise looked back fondly: ‘Lots of people came to see it and loved it and wanted to book it for the next year. So there was a tour that happened the following year and that’s how it all started.’

Year after year, the company has grown – bringing in new inclusive practices such as the integration of British Sign Language captions and bilingual audio captions.

As finalists in both the Fantastic for Families Awards 2022 and 2024, it has been brilliant to see the work they have been creating for families over the years, and we admire the companies vision ‘…of a world where the stories told & the voices heard are genuinely reflective of the world we live in; where the theatre we make understands audiences of all backgrounds & invites and welcomes them in; where the field is level & everyone has equal access.’

Taking Flight are on a mission to drive forward equal representation of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in theatre. What can other arts organisations learn from them?

Taking Flight are committed to nurturing the next generation of disabled talent, both on stage & behind the scenes. Elise shared advice for other arts organisations who want to improve representation of Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people in their performances and creative companies.

‘ Unfortunately most training programs are still not as accessible as they could be, which means that people don’t necessarily know what opportunities are out there. Also, if they’ve been let down a lot, then they’re not necessarily going to want to take a big risk and spend a lot of money on training to find a pathway that they think may be inaccessible to them. So, if you’re casting, you need to not just go to the big agents, and even the small agents, you’ve got to find other ways to get the message out there and demonstrate that you have really thought about how you can support and meet the access requirements of anybody that you’re going to be working with.’

Elise summarised some key top tips:

• Cast your net wide
• Make sure you ask for access riders – these detail what someone needs to do their best work. They’re a starting point for a conversation, so even when you can’t provide everything on them, they can initiate a conversation around what else might work to support the individual.
• Make sure provisions are all in place before you try and offer something, people don’t want to be let down.
• Learn from any mistakes. It’s a constant learning curve.
• New talent doesn’t just mean young people, consider people having a career change or maybe haven’t had an opportunity before because they never thought that the arts were for them.
• Don’t underestimate the opportunities and connections you can provide

Elise emphasised: ‘Things that you might think are not massive opportunities like going to press night, taking someone with you and introducing them to somebody is massive. We reside in the worlds and the networks we live in, and we don’t think that they’re a big deal, but if you’re not in them, they’re massive and they feel really unattainable. So it’s opening those doors, giving a seat at the table.’

In what ways do Taking Flight make their performances accessible for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences?  

Taking Flight are both passionate about levelling the stage for performers and providing an accessible experience for audience members, so people can feel represented on the stage as well as welcomed into the whole experience. 
 
Taking Flight are committed to inclusive casts and accessible performances, and they also know the importance of supporting Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences to feel welcome far in advance of each show. Their marketing and show information always includes English, Welsh, English audio, Welsh audio, British Sign Language, a Video Flyer and an easy read version too – all released at the same time. They then release further supporting materials like character introductions and ‘What to expect’ information to help everyone feel welcome. Because Taking Flight consistently provide integrated BSL, audio description and creative captions they find that people can rely on them – knowing that a Taking Flight workshop will be accessible for them without even having to check the access information. 
 
In addition to marketing information, Taking Flight provides other ways for audience members to feel welcome and prepared ahead of their shows – such as accessible tactile materials in the foyer of venues and most recently, by using Virtual Reality to support people to feel comfortable and familiar with a space ahead of the performance. 
 
Elise shared about one of their projects: ‘The most recent tour was called “You’ve Got Dragons”. We toured the English language version of an adaptation of Kathryn Cave’s book in, I think 2017 or 2018. Then post-pandemic we did a lot of research and development with Manon Stefan Ross, who’s an author and playwright. She wrote a beautiful new adaptation of the book in Welsh and then translated it back into English so that we had an English version as well. It was bilingual Welsh BSL, and then we had a version that was English BSL. It had a cast of deaf and hearing performers. It had these huge creative captions projected across the back made by Ben Glover, and it had a lot of songs and stunning music that Dan Lawrence wrote. 
 
We toured that to four or five venues, because when we started we wanted to be resident in theatres for a week at a time (rather than just one day) because we feel like this gives us more of a presence within the communities we work with and means we can make a deeper connection. 
 
We did loads of outreach work with schools and young audiences, including music and art-based workshops. And then we also ran alongside the production, our workshops called “Dragon taming workshops” that looked at wellbeing and connecting with nature. 
 
I think one of the really important things that we do is we have tactile access materials in the foyer. So for this tour, we had our tactile model box, and tactile book which had all the costumes illustrated in it and the different fabrics used so they could be felt. And alongside those, the audio descriptions of the characters on the set.  
 
This time, we also developed a VR experience of the set. Anybody who was slightly anxious about going into the show could acclimatize themselves with the VR headset. Alternatively, they were always welcome to come in and see the actual set. Although the VR was a bit dependent on what the wifi was like in the theatres, in general it was really well received and something we want to explore more. 
 
We’re always building a kind of offer ahead of the performance – just to make sure that everybody feels like they can experience it in their own way.’ 

What is Taking Flight’s advice for organisations who would like to improve their offer and accessibility to these audience members?  

Taking Flight as a company are always open to new ideas and objectives and are prepared to have different opinions. Elise encourages this openness for any organisations looking to improve their accessibility.

Elise advised: ‘Think about your timeline and think about your budgets and be realistic about what you want to do and achieve. Take your time, talk to people with lived experience, find out what people actually want rather than what you think they want or need and be prepared to take feedback and act on it, it’s not a criticism.

It’s really important to be open when you are trying to make things more inclusive and accessible as you’re not going to get it right first time. You’re probably not going to get it right second time or third time. And not everything fits for everybody, so somebody may love what you’re doing and somebody might not – particularly if you’re starting to use creative access. Just to be open and receive that feedback and work on it.

Also if you’re going to put these provisions in place, think about how you’re going to let people know, because if you have never done it before and you’re suddenly going to have a BSL interpretive performance, how are people going to know that’s happening?’

Taking Flight’s performances don’t just happen on the stage, so where are some of the more unusual places they have performed and what are the benefits?

While the company performs in traditional theatres, they also take theatre into unexpected spaces—pushing boundaries and making it more accessible for all. This offers diverse ways for people to engage with their work and opens the door for diverse audiences to access theatre in a setting more comfortable to them.

‘When we started, we were in Castles and the National Botanical Gardens. We’ve performed at various festivals in city centres, along the river, on beaches. The only thing is wherever we perform now needs to be accessible for wheelchair users, so that does limit some places.’

Elise shared how outdoor theatre is particularly successful at removing barriers: ‘You just stumble upon theatre sometimes when it’s outdoors. Sometimes it can feel difficult to go inside a theatre building if you’re not used to it, it can feel a little bit intimidating. Some of them are quite intimidating to look at and when you just stumble upon it in the outdoor, there’s no expectation to behave in a particular way. That feels more relaxed, more inviting and more immersive.’

How are Taking Flight working in collaborative ways through their partnership project ‘Breaking the Box’?

At Family Arts Campaign we’re big advocates for the power of partnerships and working together to create bigger impact, and we were excited to hear about “Breaking the Box”, a pan-Wales partnership funded by Arts Council Wales Connect and Flourish Project.

The partners working on this project includes Taking Flight Theatre Company, Hynt, Disability Arts Cymru, Carmarthenshire Theatres, Pontio and RCT Theatres. The project is focused on both increasing accessibility to audiences and for Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent individuals to be a part of the industry.

Elise shared how all the organisations involved have improved their access: ‘So part of it is organisations being ready to welcome their deaf, disabled and neurodivergent audiences. So they’ve had deaf awareness training, blind awareness training, disability equality training, and access rider training. They’ve had their buildings audio described – so before you come, you can hear what the foyer is like so that you can be orientated before you arrive. We’ve done that in English and Welsh for all of the venues and they’ve got BSL introductions on their websites.  We’ve done access audits on the venues and provided recommendations, so they’ve changed various things or are applying the funding to change various things.

The other part is ‘career creatives’, which is the nurturing of new talent. In the first tranche we had people who were interested in design or costume or caption creation or facilitation, and they were given a series of master classes and then a series of placements. So work-based learning with us and any companies that were coming to the venues. They’d start to build a network themselves, have a place at the table, and also build their CVs a little bit. They’d make connections, gain skills, and work out what they wanted to do. There was no ‘you have to come and learn design and then you’re going to be a designer’. It’s really exciting because you never know who you’re going to meet and what they’re going to bring into those organisations’

Taking Flight do such brilliant work of providing accessible experiences and working with inclusive casts. How can Taking Flight support you?

With over a decade of experience, Taking Flight are in a fantastic position to support, advise and really inspire other organisations who want to be more accessible and inclusive. The company offers consultation and training for others working in the sector.

Elise told us more: ‘Steph Bailey-Scott is our access inclusion and participation manager, and she offers a lot of consultancy around the integration of BSL. She’s a trainee sign language translator and is a BSL user herself. She offers deaf awareness training and consultancy about how you might integrate BSL or captions.

We run training programs and they’re actually CPD accredited now, which is really exciting. Deaf awareness training, blind awareness training, introduction to working inclusively. We run sessions on access riders, how to make those work, and Steph tends to spearhead a lot of those.

Tafsila Khan, our new access coordinator, will work alongside organisations to help them coordinate their access. It’s quite difficult when you’re wanting to bring in a BSL interpreter, you want to do audio describing, you want to work with captions, you want to do foyer activities – it can seem like there’s so much, it can be quite overwhelming. So, Tafsila Khan’s role is to oversee that and help organisations put their timelines in place. With Tafsila’s lived experience of being blind as well, she offers consultancy on the integration of audio description and blind consultancy. She does that as a freelancer and she works for us as an access coordinator.’

To find out more about Taking Flight Theatre Company’s upcoming productions, training and opportunities, visit www.takingflighttheatre.org.uk