Deaf Awareness Week 2022

Here at Fuel, it’s our mission is to produce art that is bold, ambitious and empowers us to change what needs to be changed. We believe everyone has the right to participate freely in cultural life and in the power of art and creativity to create social change.

These are our key values, and in order for us to realise these values, it’s deeply important that our work is as accessible as possible.

This week is Deaf Awareness Week. In the UK alone, there are over 10 million people living with some form of hearing loss, whether it is mild or profound. This means that approximately one in five people in the UK is deaf or has hearing loss.

The challenges of those within the Deaf community are often overlooked in the arts and cultural sectors, and in society more broadly.

To mark Deaf Awareness Week, we want to reflect on the ways in which our work aims to be accessible for the Deaf community.

We’re not perfect, but we’re always working hard to ensure that our work is as inclusive as possible, and we welcome suggestions and ideas about how we can improve on what we’re already doing in this area.

1. Recruitment

All of our job packs contain BSL versions and we constantly reflecting on how to share our opportunities on as many different networks as possible. We’re also open in terms of applications forms in alternative formats (including video applications)

• Accessible performances, including BSL performances

Where possible, we work closely with venues to ensure all our productions are BSL interpretated and captioned, or have a specific number of of BSL and our captioned performances available during the show’s run. As producers, we ensure this topic of access is brought up at the earliest possible stages of a show’s development.

• Fuel Digital

Fuel Digital is our streaming service offering an ever-changing programme of streams, films, and podcasts.We’re committed to having accessible formats offered across all our material on Fuel Digital. All of our podcasts have captioned Vimeo links available and all of our videos and films are captioned.

We recently launched our first physical merchandise on Fuel Digital – Signal Fires: 6 Notebooks. With every purchase of Signal Fires, audiences can receive Easy Read, Audio and Large Print formats free of charge.

• Fuel Website

Our website is a key touchstone for information about our work. We’ve worked closely with our website designers and hosts to ensure our website is more accessible than it has been in the past and incorporates features for those who need assistance (including captioned videos and trailers) as well as Easy Read and Large Print options for our web pages.

• In house expertise

We’re delighted to have the influence and expertise of the wonderful Jenny Sealey MBE, who is one of Fuel’s Board of Directors. Jenny Sealey  has been Artistic Director of Graeae in 1997 and since then, she has pioneered a new theatrical language and aesthetics of artistic access. You can find out more about Jenny Sealey and Graeae here: https://graeae.org/resource/jenny-sealey/