Digital Inclusion Category

Meet the Winners of the Digital Inclusion category! 

About Digital Inclusion

This category recognises the innovative use of digital technology to improve access to creativity and culture for diverse and representative audiences. Entries could include but are not limited to; use of assistive technology, use of creative captioning, projects that provide affordable access to technology, or the creation of inclusive and accessible digital spaces.  

The Shortlist for this category was decided by our external Judge Tom Ryalls, a Cultural Consultant, Strategist, and Writer – with support from the experts from the Digital Culture Network, and Arts Council England. 

The Winners

This year, we are excited to recognise not one, but two incredible organisations who were named Winners by our judges.    

The joint Winners in the category are Extant for their audio drama Unseen, and Zoo Co Creative Ltd for their Perfect Show for Rachel.  

Find out more about the winning projects below. 

Extant – Unseen

Extant is a performing arts company that creates unique and innovative artistic experiences, placing visually impaired people at the heart of all its work. 

Formed in 1997, it aims to redress the invisibility of blind and partially sighted artists and explore new creative territories, producing touring productions and delivering training regionally, nationally and internationally. 

The winning project 

Unseen is an ambitious audio drama, which examines the subtle and insidious effect of domestic abuse on the blind and visually impaired community, using empathy, hope and candour to raise awareness of this important subject. 

It was devised as a creative response to a 2022 report The Unseen by Fight for Sight. The report highlighted the inaccessibility of domestic abuse services to visually impaired people, despite the fact that disabled people are nearly three times more likely to experience domestic abuse than non-disabled people. 

A team of 21 blind and visually impaired artists worked together to write, design & perform the audio drama as a community-driven process. 

When shaping the project, Extant prioritised creating a platform for a wide range of visually impaired creatives and survivors to feed into and shape the work. This helped to ensure that the process was community-led, a broad range of stories were included, and an intersectional portrait of how domestic violence affects visually impaired people was created. Extant partnered with leading domestic violence organisations including SafeLives to create a safe environment for visually impaired survivors to feed into the creative process. 

Behind the scenes of the project, the production’s sound designer Ian Rattray, who is registered blind, pioneered a new way of working with multimedia playback software QLab. Ian worked with Figure 53, the developers of QLab, to improve voiceover access to the software, which at the time was not accessible for screen readers. 

The completed audio drama was made available online via Extant’s website. The audio player was tested to ensure it had full compatibility with screen readers for blind and visually impaired audiences. The script was also made available online for the Deaf or hard of hearing audiences.  

In October 2024 a series of live events were run, where excerpts from the drama were performed by visually impaired actors. The live events were followed by a panel discussion with the creatives and representatives from organisations, which supported the making of the work. 

Zoo Co Creative Ltd – Perfect Show for Rachel

 A multi-award-winning theatre company, Croydon-based Zoo Co Creative Ltd delivers playful and ambitious live performances to audiences in the UK and across the globe. 

Its work is highly visual and ensemble-led, and its creative practice embraces new writing, devising and improvisation. 

The winning project 

The award-winning Perfect Show for Rachel combines physical theatre, slapstick, live music and memories with digital technology. 

It was designed for a theatre-loving learning-disabled artist – Rachel –  allowing her to control not only the performances, but also the production’s entire technical design including sound, lights, video and action, live on stage during every performance. Trials were held on iPads before a custom-built, accessible tech desk was created on stage to achieve this. 

Through a wide-ranging consultation, the creative process was made accessible for other disabled creatives and cast. Breakout spaces were available; all the in-house cast were trained in deaf awareness, and British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters were engaged throughout the process.  

With a diverse audience in mind, Zoo Co blended creative captioning with live captioning of improvised moments to give all theatregoers a full experience in real time. The deaf and hearing cast used integrated BSL, with performer Becky Barry leading the live interpretation of spontaneous spoken content into BSL. 

A bespoke audio-visual design was created by lighting and video specialist Rachel Sampley, which married the production’s creative captioning with its joyful aesthetic. Three audio-described performances were held to ensure visually impaired audiences could also enjoy the show. 

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with an impressive 95% of those who responded to a post-show survey strongly agreeing they had enjoyed the production, 94% that it made them feel welcome and included, and 88% that it was ground-breaking. 

The Shortlist

• London Philharmonic Orchestra – OrchLab
  
• Medising – SingApp:Parkinson’s
  
• Darlington Library – The Transformation of Darlington Library; Aspirational and inclusive
  
• Disability Arts Online – Disability Arts Online’s new website

The Longlist

Our Judges are busy scoring your brilliant entries and the Shortlist will be announced in early February. 

• Contra Productions – Laura Murphy’s A Spectacle of Herself 
• Coventry University – Inclusive Immersive 
• Shakespeare’s Globe – Shakespeare’s Globe: Antony and Cleopatra Campaign  
• Norfolk & Suffolk Music Hub – SENDfest  
• Aakash Odedra Company – Mehek Live 
• London Symphony Orchestra – LSO Discovery Free Relaxed Lunchtime Concerts 
• Face Front Inclusive Theatre – It’s My Choice 

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