EP 4: Anti-ableism activism with Andrew Miller MBE, UK Arts Access Champion

Amongst other things, Andrew Miller is the UK Arts Access Champion and a broadcaster and cultural consultant and commentator with an impressive CV. 

In this episode, Michèle asks Andrew about his career so far, and the ‘accidents and disappointments’ that got him to where he is now. Andrew talks about the moments of change that he’s been a part of, the importance of representation and what’s needed for sustaining change. 

This is a wide-ranging discussion in which Andrew shares his perspective on the cultural sector, informed by his professional and personal experience .

Thank you for listening. For further information and to get in touch with us please visit our website HERE.

Ramps on the Moon Podcast is hosted by Michèle Taylor.

Michèle Taylor, is a disability equality trainer and consultant, and has been Director for Change for Ramps on the Moon since the Consortium was convened. For the 10 years, she has been supporting the partner theatres to embed disability equality and anti-ableism into their organisations and to realise their ambitions around elevating disabled people across the mainstream industry. In 2022 Michèle was honoured with an MBE For Services to Theatre and Disabled People.

This podcast is produced and managed by Podtalk.co.uk

Transcript

Episode 4 - In this episode, Michèle Taylor asks Andrew Miller (the UK Arts Access Champion, broadcaster and cultural consultant) about his career to date, and the ‘accidents and disappointments’ that got him to where he is now. Andrew talks about the moments of change that he’s been a part of, the importance of representation and what’s needed for sustaining change. 

Date Transcribed:            23rd March 2023

Interviewer(s):                 Michèle Taylor

Respondent(s):                 Andrew Miller

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Welcome to the Ramps on the Moon podcast.  I’m Michèle Taylor.  If we don’t know each other yet, I hope we will soon.  I’m the Director for Change for Ramps, a consortium of mainstream theatres putting D/deaf and disabled people into the heart of their work, on and off stage.  Ramps on the Moon is giving the industry the valuable support it needs just to do it.  This includes making our award winning touring productions, that reflect society back on itself, and challenge audiences on what to expect.  How do we do this?  Listen to the podcast.

                Welcome to this episode of the Ramps on the Moon podcast.  I’m Michèle Taylor, and today I’m going to be talking to Andrew Miller.  So I’m in my home studio in Nottingham, I’m a white woman with short grey hair, I’m wearing a red jumper, and a pair of yellow glasses.  And Andrew, would you like to tell us where you are, and give us a little bit of an audio description?

ANDREW MILLER              Hello, Michèle.  I’m in my studio in Northamptonshire, just south of you, and I’m in a room surrounded by ephemera, CDs, an orange blind, and I’m wearing a pair of glasses.  I’m a white middle-aged wheelchair user, and I’m wearing a tartan jumper.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Fantastic.  Thank you.  And I’ve been wondering, for the last couple of years, you know, when do-  I didn’t say it today, but when do I stop saying I’m a middle-aged woman, and start saying I’m an older woman?  There’s an existential crisis for you.  To start us off today, Andrew, I’m so delighted that you could join us on the podcast, because I think you’ve got such interesting views to share on this whole area of work that you and I are both involved in.  So we’ve known each other for a little while, we’ve worked together, and we’ve been aware of each other, as we’ve worked separately in the same kind of world.  Could you give us-  Just to start us off, could you give us a quick overview of what it is that you’re working on now, what your concerns are now, where your energies and your time are being spent right now?

ANDREW MILLER              Well, firstly, thank you for inviting me, Michèle, it’s a delight to be with you.  So I’m a cultural consultant, and commentator, or broadcaster, recently appointed to be the UK’s Arts Access Champion, to support the UK Arts Council’s delivering a national Access Scheme.  I’m also the Creative Director of Trinity College in Oxford, I chair the British Film Institute Disability Advisory Group, and I’m a Trustee of BAFTA, the RSC, and Arts Council England.  And, like many disabled professionals, you included, Michèle, in the creative industries, we wear many hats.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Don’t we just?  Yes, absolutely.  Brilliant.  Thank you, Andrew.  I mean, such credentials, that’s fantastic.  And I know that you have arrived at this point in your professional, and I guess personal life, I mean, like many disabled people working in the cultural industries, the overlap between professional and personal lives can be quite large sometimes, and it can be difficult to untangle, for those moments when we need to untangle those things, but I wonder, what’s been your path?  How did you get here?  Because I’m guessing that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you didn’t decide this is what you wanted to be doing.  How did you get here?

ANDREW MILLER              By a series of accidents and disappointments.  [Laughs].

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [Laughs].

ANDREW MILLER              Yes, you’re absolutely right, I don’t think any of us set out necessarily on-  Particularly, I think, if you’re disabled, or live with disability, you don’t necessarily end up where you aimed to be, and certainly my journey has been convoluted and long, with lots of byways and dead ends.  And it’s always been interesting, but I think there’s always a challenge there, and certainly when I set out, you know, I kind of-  You know, I started my career in TV, in the late 1980s, and there was a real sense there was a moment of change going on.  And that moment of change was really the first big moment of equal representation, very small and limited as it was, as a reaction to the 1980s Thatcher government, which actually created a lot of freedoms, in some ways, but it had a reaction, and I was part of that reaction.  And there have been moments of explosions of change and development ever since, and one of the problems with those is that they tend not to sustain change, and you just get moments where you can do something, and you can take advantage of that.  And I guess what my career has been about, if I was to look at it in the round, is I’ve always had an interest in democratising culture, of really pushing open the doors, as much as I possibly can, to ensure that new voices, new people are heard within that.  Whether that goes back to my early days in broadcasting, and then as a producer and direct of programmes, I was always very keen to get new voices, people that wouldn’t normally appear on television, not the usual suspects, and then in my career in the arts.  So I think there’s been this line of wanting to democratise things, and change for the better in that way.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It’s so interesting.  I’d love, if I may, just to go back to your earlier career in broadcasting.  What sorts of things were you doing?  Just give us a flavour of the sorts of work that you were doing at that time.

ANDREW MILLER              When I started, the first thing I did was in the mid-1980s, I was still at university, and I made a film about the monarchy.  There was a series then called Open Space, that ran on BBC Two, and it basically invited members of the public to make TV programmes about issues of their choice, and it very often got very political.  It was the one slot of the week that the BBC sort of, you know, put an explanation in front of saying, “This isn’t neutral BBC programming, we disown this,” and let somebody, you know, rip.  And I’d written a letter, years before, you know, kind of Dear BBC, I didn’t like this, can’t remember what it was, but they’d kept it, and somehow it ended up being filtered through to the Community Programmes Unit, which was the department behind Open Space, and they got in touch with me, while I was at university, saying would I be interested in making a programme?  And this was in the year that-  Oh gosh, I think the Queen turned 60, and Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, and the Duchess of Windsor died, so there was a lot of royal stories, so they wanted to create an antidote, and they wondered whether I would be up for, you know, going on that journey with them.  And I did.  And I made this programme, on film, and it was a very, very exciting process for me as a student to go and do, and come down to London and make this programme, using the old, you know, pre-digital, analog ways of making films.  And so I did this programme about the monarchy, and got a huge reaction, questions were raised in Parliament about the BBC’s impartiality, I got scary death threats through the post, and in red, spidery writing, and [unclear 00:07:50]-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Wow.

ANDREW MILLER              And so I got exposed to the sort of media moment, and I was 18, 19, and it sort of gave me a bit of a taste for it, and when I came out of university, I wanted to pursue a career in television.  And, through that moment of change that I described earlier, I got the opportunity to present, and create, in many ways, Boom!, which was a children’s programme for Channel 4 that was inclusive of children with special needs, as was the description of the time.  But actually, what it was was creating an opportunity for children for children with disabilities to appear on television in the company of their peers, and behave in exactly the same way as children on mainstream children’s television did.  And so we created this opportunity.  And bearing in mind, at the same time, education for disabled children was segregated in this country, and you and I probably will remember those times, that education was a very different matter for disabled children.  And so, along with what Mik Scarlet was doing in a sister programme, called Beat That, on Channel 4, Boom! sort of was one of the first big moments of equality for certainly disabled children on TV.  And it became really successful.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.

ANDREW MILLER              It went out on Sunday mornings, and of course there was a big student audience.  So we got audience figures of, like, 3 or 4 million, or something like that, you know, which Vic Reeves Big Night Out wasn’t achieving, you know, so we were getting quite good viewing figures.  And it set me off in that career, and I did a lot of on-screen work, a lot of presenting work for a few years.  But I reached my first glass ceiling when I had an audition at the BBC, and this was for a very similar programme to Boom!, it was a kids’ programme, and I got the feedback saying, “We just don’t feel that the Blue Peter audience are yet ready for a disabled presenter.”

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Oh.

[00:10:00]

ANDREW MILLER              And this was in the very early 90s, just after Diane-Louise Jordan became the first black presenter of Blue Peter.  And yes, at that moment, I realised I was going to have to duck and dive, and that that career that had started stretching out in front of me, of being a presenter, that was going to have to change, and I would have to, you know, be flexible, to be able to, you know, recognise what was coming, and I changed, and I moved off into production, and became a producer and director.  But actually there were no, you know, support mechanisms, if you were disabled, doing these things, at all.  And also, there was very little recognition of value placed on a disabled person operating in what was an entirely non-disabled environment.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Sure.

ANDREW MILLER              You know?  So those things, you know, are difficult to manage, and they use up all your energy, and, you know, by the early 2000s, I had to change my career again, and moved into the arts.  It was certainly a very interesting journey, but at times also a very frustrating one.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.  Absolutely, absolutely.  And I’m thinking back, Andrew, I think we’re of a similar age, so I’m not suggesting that I, as an eight-year-old, would’ve been watching you in Blue Peter, not at all, but I think back, my ambition was to be a Play School presenter.  That was my ambition, when I was a child.  And I just think the impact of seeing somebody like me presenting Play School, or Blue Peter, or Magpie, whatever it might’ve been, that could’ve been so, so significant.  Wow.

ANDREW MILLER              And-  You know, absolutely.  Because, I mean, for you and I’s generation, Michèle, we had no role models, growing up.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Exactly.

ANDREW MILLER              I mean, no role models whatsoever.  You know?  Disabled people were hidden, we didn’t have any kind of a profile, certainly in the 1960s and 70s, and so that moment-  You know, it wasn’t really until the 80s that, you know, we started having these moments.  And so when I look at what’s happening now, when I see George Webster on CBeebies, you know, I just think, Wow, how far we’ve come.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.  Yes, we have.  We have, absolutely.  But it is 2023, so yes.  Mm.

ANDREW MILLER              It’s taken a long time to catch up with us.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Hasn’t it just?  So I’m really interested to go back to what you were saying about, over the last decades, there have been these explosions in momentum around equality, but they’re not sustainable.  Why don’t they get sustained?  And also, if we have been very recently in one of those moments, because it feels to me like we have, we are, what do we do to make sure that we can protect it and sustain it, and not let it be one of these events, rather than the beginning of something that genuinely changes the way we live?

ANDREW MILLER              We need the right allies.  And I think, traditionally, we haven’t had that.  Certainly in the media landscape that I was operating in, in the 80s and 90s, the BBC created the Disability Programmes Unit, and thought, “Right, that’s where disabled people sit.”  And they did some great work, and they, you know, broke lots of barriers, but it was absolutely pigeonholing us, and it didn’t encourage us to sort of go across the broadcasting spectrum.  And I think there’s been a real-  And that’s been behind why there hasn’t been sustainable careers.  In fact, I was having a conversation this morning with Kim, who was in Balamory, and David Proud, who was in EastEnders, and has now got a career as a writer and director, and we were saying, you know, we came to this industry at different points, but that issue around sustaining careers is really difficult, because it was never built in to these-  Because it’s always a scheme, it’s always a programme, it’s never a sort of built in thing.  And this, I have to say-  And this won’t be universally popular, and I am conflicted, but this is something that the Arts Council has, to its credit, done, I think, over the last decade and a half.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes?  Say a bit more about that.

ANDREW MILLER              They’ve put support in place for disabled artists and disabled people’s organisations, and they’ve been very consistent about that, and in fact what you’ve seen is a growth of investment, over the years.  And I think, you know, they have been quietly there supporting that group of artists and administrators to develop.  And it’s not perfect, and we know that, but I think it’s an example actually of certainly a public body really putting their money where their mouth is, in terms of the equality duty, and really supporting disabled people.  And I think you could also see that during the pandemic, the Arts Council were the only public body that embraced what you and I were doing, in terms of We Shall Not Be Removed, and, you know, ensuring that there was going to be an inclusive recovery, which we were demanding, and they got behind that message.  So I think there is some evidence, and here I’m sort of contrasting Arts Council with the BBC, and other bodies in the public environment, and I kind of see the Arts Council have been consistent, the others haven’t.  And I think that consistency is the thing that disabled people need really to help them succeed.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.  So allies and consistency.

ANDREW MILLER              Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Just for clarity, Andrew, could you say just a little bit about what We Shall Not Be Removed is/was, in case any of our listeners aren’t familiar with it?

ANDREW MILLER              So We Shall Not Be Removed was the UK Disability Arts Alliance that Michèle and I were involved in creating, along with Jenny Sealey, and Nickie Miles-Wildin, and many others, when the pandemic emerged, because we recognised, very, very quickly that the impact of the pandemic on disabled people, and in particular disabled artists, was very extreme.  At that point in the pandemic when everything went online, disabled people found themselves excluded from the Zoom meetings, from the Teams meetings, because there wasn’t access built in, and, you know, we had to loudly demand that was put in place.  And then We Shall Not Be Removed started looking forward, and thinking about what the recovery was going to be like, and we worked with Ramps, and with Graeae, and with other partners, like What Next?, and the Paraorchestra, and Attitude is Everything, to create the Seven Inclusive Principles, which I think really did make a change, and shifted the sector, in terms of preparing for a recovery that was more inclusive of disabled people.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, absolutely.  Thank you.  And if anybody’s interested, there are links to the Seven Inclusive Principles on the Ramps on the Moon website, so take a look.  Just picking up on what you were talking about earlier, and I’m really interested to explore-  You’ve talked about allies, you’ve talked about consistency, you’ve talked about the importance of not confining the impetus to-  And you used the word ‘schemes’.  The kind of the [unclear 00:17:56], “We’ll do this project for-”  I was going to say, “With disabled people.”  “For disabled people,” is usually more accurate, isn’t it?  Can I push that a bit further, and talk to you about what you see as the importance of disabled people being active, and activists, actually, in the mainstream, around the cultural sectors?  What do you think is important about, as a disabled person, working within the mainstream?

ANDREW MILLER              Prior to the pandemic, I started getting a little bit frustrated and worried that many disabled people were no longer sort of really pushing the boat out, in terms of demanding change.  It had got a bit quiet, and a bit collegiate.  And actually I think what we did with We Shall Not Be Removed, which, you know, the broader sector applauded, and seemed to like what they saw, I think it was actually quite radical, you know, quite sharply radical.  You know?  It was talking about-  You know, I think it brought ableism into the conversation, in a way that I hadn’t seen before.  Certainly outside of disability circles, it sort of started getting that concept more widely discussed.  And I think we were able to use that moment of the pandemic-  And notwithstanding the terrible losses that occurred during the pandemic, and in particular the great suffering to disabled people that took place, but I think we were able to use that moment to actually push forward an agenda that, you know, helped to open some doors for us now.  And I think there is now a greater conversation about ableism, and just the beginnings of an understanding of it, in that wider mainstream sector.

[00:19:54]

ANDREW MILLER              My career has been, by and large, mainly focused in the mainstream sector, in the arts.  That’s where I was at the Arts Council, where I sort of learned the trade, in a way, and then at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, where I was Director of Programming, and, you know, running a building, which was hugely exciting and challenging, and then at Royal & Derngate in Northamptonshire.  So, you know, that’s been my trajectory.  It’s an unusual one.  But I think it’s really important that, you know, as activists-  Because I think it’s almost impossible now, you know, not to be an activist if you’re disabled.  I think-  You know, I think we’re now in an age of people really seeking to change and move things, which I think, in contrast to what was happening before the pandemic, I think is a good thing, because we are seeing more demands, we’re seeing more headlines, we’re seeing disability more regularly in the discourse of culture.  Although, you know, I also am aware that alongside that there are risks.  So when, you know, a very respected cultural commentator like Norman Lebrecht goes on Radio 4 and criticises, you know, the loss of funding to Glyndebourne touring opera, in favour of disabled people, and this is a direct quote, “Albanian boat people, and juvenile delinquents,” in a very sneering way, is-  You know, clearly there’s a culture war at the root of this, as well.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             And didn’t he explicitly contrast the work of those groups of people with what he called ‘quality’?

ANDREW MILLER              Yes.  Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Which is really problematic, isn’t it?

ANDREW MILLER              Really problematic.  Because he was definitely suggesting-  I mean, he was clearly, you know, working out exactly how far he could go, when he used those words, and I think they were quite carefully chosen, but he was definitely, you know, drawing the point that none of those groups that he cited could achieve the quality of somewhere like Glyndebourne.  Which, as you and I know, Michèle, is absolute nonsense.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             We do indeed.  [Laughs].  Yes, it is.  It is.  Picking up on some of that stuff we’ve been talking about, Andrew, I’m really interested to hear your views on how it’s been for you, and how important you think it is for us, as disabled people, to be out there working in the mainstream, in roles that are not even related to disability.  We’re just getting on and doing the jobs that we trained for, or the jobs we’re passionate about, that don’t necessarily have anything to do with disability.  And I guess I’m thinking partly about this idea that living in a disabled body, being a disabled person, is of itself an activist endeavour, it is being an activist.  And yes, just I wonder how that’s been for you, and what your thoughts are on it.

ANDREW MILLER              I mean, I think for the beginning part of my career, certainly in my time in television, on screen and off, I became very aware of that power, that actually simply by showing up, by being public, by doing a role that kind of people didn’t expect to find you in-  And, you know, even up until, you know, I’d say 2015, I was aware of people’s reactions to me in my role, in my different roles, and you could see a visible surprise sometimes when, you know, they came across this person in a wheelchair, and they weren’t expecting it, in relation to the role, and I always found that very interesting.  I think it’s really important to engage in the mainstream, because we can have conversations amongst ourselves that never really break out, and fundamentally don’t change anything.  We can do that.  And create environments that we feel more comfortable in.  And sometimes, actually, I want to be in those environments.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, yes.

ANDREW MILLER              You know?  But also, I realise I’ve got to engage with, you know, the external world.  And I think it’s really important that we do, and that we force the external world to accommodate us.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, indeed.  Yes.

ANDREW MILLER              You know?  And make the changes that are needed.  And in our world, in the cultural world, with a, you know, portfolio of venues that are still sort of largely 19th century estate, you know, we’ve got to make so many changes to them, to be able to accommodate.  And of course access is a continuum.  It’s not a full stop.  You know?  I saw somewhere recently Jess Thom, Touretteshero, saying there is no such thing as fully accessible.  Yes, Jess.  Of course, you’re right.  You know?  And many venues kind of think that they are.  And so we’ve got to help them get to the point where, you know, they can at least be partially, and, you know, accommodating a good number of disabled people, and a wide variety of impairments.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It’s so interesting what you say.  I mean, I know that for me, like you say, I sometimes want to be in those, let’s call them, protected environments, but I really don’t want to be in those environments if they’re the only environments that are open to me.  If I haven’t got the option of being in the other environments, then I resent it.  And yes, fully accessible, it’s such an interesting phrase, isn’t it?  I often say to people, “If I read your publicity, and it tells me that your event is fully accessible, that doesn’t reassure me.  It does the opposite.  Because what I actually then think is, Oh, okay, you don’t really know what you’re talking about then, do you?”  [Laughs].

ANDREW MILLER              Absolutely.  And I always remember that time, at the beginning of the pandemic, when we all shut the door and stayed at home, and this weight, this odd weight was lifted from me.  And suddenly I had more energy, I had more time, because I wasn’t having to engage with a disabling world, and all the effort that that took, in terms of every arrangement, every bit of travel, and all the rest of it.  And actually, that was the thing that gave me the energy, you know, to even approach We Shall Not Be Removed, and getting that up and running.  But, of course, as the pandemic wore on, you know, we need other stimulus, as well, and so, you know, that engagement, you know, with the outside world had to start again.  But I remember also, when I started going back out again, it was very cautiously, and, you know, there was some real fear, actually, Has it started to go backwards whilst we’ve been away?  And I don’t have the answer to that yet.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             No, it’s too soon to tell, isn’t it, really?  Yes, yes.  I so relate to that.  That, “Oh, why am I not feeling as stressed as I was?  Oh, because I’m not constantly thinking about, Can I park?  Will it be too far to travel from the car?  Will I be able to get on that train?”  It’s just the lack of those stressors.  And I’m interested too, talking about the mainstream and the impact, and is there not some important connection there with what you were saying earlier about allyship, and having allies?  How can we-  I mean, we can have allies in the mainstream, if we’re never setting foot or wheel into the mainstream, but it’s going to be harder, isn’t it?

ANDREW MILLER       Absolutely.  And, you know, they are there.  You know?  I’ve really been impressed by how many organisations and individuals I’ve come across over the last few years who are really up to the challenge of, you know, working with us to, you know, make the environment better.  And that, I think, is really exciting and invigorating, too.  And you will have found, with working in Ramps, with your partnerships, you know, I think there are a lot of people that recognise, “Yes, we’ve got to learn, we’ve got to do things better.”

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Absolutely.  Absolutely.  Can you talk a little bit for us about ableism, and what you understand ableism to be?  Because as you said, it really has become a more common part of the discourse.  I mean, I don’t know if you agree with me, but I would say in the last three years, I would say since the pandemic hit us, in March 2020, I think the word ableism has got more common in our vocabulary.  So if you could talk to us a bit about what you understand ableism to be, and how you see it operating in the cultural industries.

ANDREW MILLER              I think outside of the disability community, up until the pandemic, ableism was still a very largely unfamiliar term, but assuredly as racism, and sexism, and ageism, and homophobia, ableism just wrecks opportunities for disabled people.  And, for me, it’s the behaviour which unintentionally excludes or actively discriminates against disabled people, and it applies to wide ranges of situations, from limited physical access, to a limited understanding of the support that D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse people need to succeed.  And I think also ableism is a conditioning agent that sets boundaries for us, as disabled people, and I think we all suffer from it, to a degree.  I certainly know, when I was much younger, you know, with a-  You know, I think, particularly in the 60s and 70s, there was a real strong need to conform, and recognising ableism wasn’t sort of, you know, on many people’s agenda at that point.

[00:30:12]

ANDREW MILLER              So I think disabled people also need to recognise their own ableism, and I certainly hope that I have in mine.  You know?  And you get it in a certain dialogue, particularly around perhaps sport sometimes, and you recognise, “Oh, you haven’t quite recognised, you know, that’s a really ableist construct.”  You know?  But that’s not fair, I wouldn’t just, you know, target sport with that.  I think there is a wider recognition that it exists, that it needs to be tackled, and it’s clearly gone up the levels of priority recently, as a consequence of the murder of George Floyd, I think, and the emergence of Black Lives Matter, which really required us all to re-examine how we understand racism.  And so I think, alongside that, this understanding of ableism has emerged, and it has to be tackled.  And I’ve found, in my experience, it’s been pretty insidious.  It’s been insidiously there for an awfully long time.  And I certainly recognise it when, you know, I got shortlisted to be interviewed to be the Chief Executive of a regional playhouse, and when I got to the interview, even though I’d, you know, conveyed my access requirements, the space that they were doing the interviews was inaccessible, completely inaccessible to me, and the whole interview had to be moved to a hotel next door, which still wasn’t very accessible.  And I ended up having to withdraw from the process, because it turned out that, in this particular venue, I’d have had to have run the building from the bar, because there wasn’t a single accessible space in which I could’ve done it.  And that was just ableism all over it.  The assumptions that, if you’re presenting for a Chief Executive interview, you’re not going to be in a wheelchair.  And this is less than a decade ago.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Wow.

ANDREW MILLER              You know?  So that moment that I had with Blue Peter in the 90s was kind of repeated and echoed in this experience in the arts.  And, of course, it has those impacts on you, and you kind of think, “All right, sod it,” you know, “If that’s the way it’s got to be, then I’m going to change you.  If you’re not going to let me in, at the level that I think is okay, and, you know, is the conversation I want to have, then I’m going to find another way in and, you know, create change and, you know, change the wider environment, that you’re going to have to change.”

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.  Yes, absolutely.  I know that, at Ramps on the Moon, one of the things that we focus on is disabled, D/deaf, neurodivergent people’s presence and visibility, obviously working professionally in theatre, that’s our main thrust, and one of those areas is disabled people on stage.  And to me it’s an engine of ableism if, as a disabled person, I go to the theatre and I never see myself represented on stage, or I do-  Worse, I do, and it’s a distortion of what my life actually is, it’s a lazy trope.  And that, for me, is a key engine of ableism.  I mean, I think it’s important, isn’t it, thinking about representations like Liz Carr in Silent Witness, and Ruth Madeley in Years and Years, for example, characters that weren’t necessarily ever written to be disabled, and it’s that same-  You talked about people working in the arts and not necessarily expecting to come across someone who uses a wheelchair doing the job that you’ve been doing.  And it’s that same thing, on a much, much bigger, numerically bigger scale, of people sitting at home and watching a show like Years and Years, or Silent Witness, and, “Oh, the pathologist uses a wheelchair,” or, “Oh, that particular character uses a wheelchair, or is learning disabled,” or, or, or.  And it’s just gradually chipping away, chipping away at the expectations.  And I think that’s one of the reasons why we have used the word ‘normalisation’.  And it’s not uncontroversial, I get that, but it feels like quite an important mechanism, to me.  And I guess, for me, that’s why-  I was going to say that’s why I work in the arts and cultural industries.  It isn’t.  I work in the arts and cultural industries because I love the arts, and I love culture, and theatre.  But it’s one of the reasons that I think working in the arts and the cultural industries can be so powerful for us as disability activists.  And that’s why, when I was thinking about this conversation, the words that I kept thinking about, when I think about you, Andrew, were arts, ableism, and activism, and there’s something very exciting about when those three-  There’s something very depressing about the need for it, but there’s something very exciting about when those three areas of passion and endeavour come together.  Does that ring true for you, at all?

ANDREW MILLER              Yes, I think it sort of-  It creates that explosion.  You know?  It creates those explosions.  And, you know, I’m hesitant about identifying, you know, where I’ve made change.  I’m not the best placed person to recognise that.  But I do know that there are certain moments, you know, when you, you know, put certain things together, that it does bring about change.  And certainly we’ve seen that change on screen, in terms of authentic representation, on stage and screen, and, you know, we’re brought into-  You know, through the work that I’ve done with the BFI, really addressing the issue of ‘cripping up’, you know, and how ‘cripping up’ was just such an easy win for actors who, you know, didn’t really want to think about the impact of what they were doing.  And, you know, I often talk about the example of the Academy Awards, that in I think it’s 94 years of the Academy Awards, 62 actors received Oscar nominations for portraying D/deaf and disabled characters, and of those 62, 28 won the Oscar, and only three were actually played by D/deaf or disabled actors.  And, you know, just a handful of years ago, that statistic would’ve been met with barely a shrug, but now it stands as an embarrassing indictment of practically the entire entertainment industry.  And it makes the compelling case for authentic representation in film, in that example, but it also tells us just how central disability is, in all its abundant forms, to human storytelling itself.  Disability sells.  For all the negativity that we’ve been sold, and brought up with, and, you know, perceptions of negativity, actually it’s a central, you know, trait in humanity that we are all drawn to and interested by.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.  Isn’t that interesting?  That’s a fascinating perspective.  Yes, absolutely.  Andrew, in your career, has there been personal cost of doing this work?

ANDREW MILLER              Yes, there has.  And it’s not something I often talk about, or even particularly feel comfortable talking about, but yes, there has.  I mean, you know, ten years ago, I was applying for jobs to be Chief Executives of large organisations, and I’m only in my mid-50s now, but I know now I couldn’t possibly do that.  You know?  That’s beyond me, in terms of my energy, and where I am.  I could’ve done it ten years ago, but the moment was lost.  But actually, now I have to manage my health much more carefully.  I think many of us have come out the other side of the pandemic, as a consequence of the things we talked about earlier about, you know, suddenly having a weight lifted, you know, and not having to deal with the disabling outside world.  We temper our engagement more, and set more boundaries about what we will and won’t do, and in what circumstances.  And I think that’s right, because it’s about self-preservation.  And so I’ve very much focused my energy on creating an environment for myself to operate within, which I don’t think has been necessarily pioneered elsewhere, where I have a portfolio career, you know, being an artistic director in one space, but I can do an awful lot of that from home.  Being an advocate and an activist.  And yes, of course, you’ve got to go out to meetings, and meet people, but a lot of it you can do from home.  Running a building, managing people, you can’t.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It’s a different proposition, isn’t it?

ANDREW MILLER              It is.  And I’ve had to just withdraw from that, and, you know, banish all thought of that.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Sure.

ANDREW MILLER              And the disappointment that goes with it.  So yes, there’s a cost, because disability is unpredictable.  Fundamentally, it’s unpredictable.  I remember being told by doctors, when I was a child, “Your condition is pretty much stable and won’t change.”  But it has changed.  It does change.

[00:40:04]

ANDREW MILLER              And that has a physical impact, and inevitably you can’t keep going and carrying on like a 30-year-old.  And I think that’s at least ten years younger-  Sorry, ten years before that impact would start happening to most non-disabled people.  So yes, there is a toll in this.  And yes, maybe I was burning the candle at both ends when I was young, or maybe I was just trying to live my life, and get the most out of it, because there is no guarantees when you’re disabled.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             No, absolutely true.  And I know that you have a wealth of wonderful stories from your life, and you’re such a great raconteur of those stories that maybe we’ll do another episode where you just tell us the stories of the amazing people you’ve been with.  So just to end with, I don’t want to end with the personal cost [laughs], what have been the joys?

ANDREW MILLER              The joys have mainly been unexpected.  And I guess there’s been some joy in, you know, achieving some firsts.  You know?  “The first disabled that-”  “The first wheelchair user that-”  In a way, that also describes just how far society has to go, to achieve full accessibility and inclusion.  But yes, I think the real joy is being able to see the change now.  The fact that the younger generation of disabled people, D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people, are not having to go through the same barriers, or face the same barriers that you and I did, from 40 years ago.  There are still barriers, and there are new barriers emerging all the time, but we are seeing off some of the ones that have been hanging around for a while.  And yes, that brings some satisfaction.  And of course, you know, working in the arts, and seeing work, and seeing amazing things that I never expected to see, like, you know, Arthur Hughes, the first disabled Richard III at Stratford-upon-Avon, Francesca Martinez, All of Us, at the National Theatre, blazing away.  You know?  Two disabled people leading national companies, at our two national companies, last summer.  I mean, that felt to me like a great moment that, you know-  It’s the first I can remember that.  Work happening around the reaches, the work that you are doing with Ramps.  Yes, all of this feels like progress, and yes, that’s great.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Thank you.  Thank you for reminding us of that.  It can sometimes feel easy to get bogged down in what’s not happening, and the lack of sustainability.  And I think it’s great to be reminded of those moments, and of the general trajectory that is about positive change, so thank you for that reminder.  Andrew, thank you for your time.  It’s just been brilliant to have an excuse to chat to you, frankly.  And yes, thank you very much, and maybe we’ll get you back to tell us some more stories.

ANDREW MILLER              Thank you very much, Michèle.  It’s been a joy talking to you.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Thank you for listening.  You can contact me through the link in the show notes, or through our website, rampsonthemoon.co.uk.  Ramps on the Moon is funded by Arts Council England, and is made up of six mainstream theatres, Birmingham Rep, Leeds Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse, the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre Royal Stratford East, and our associates, Wiltshire Creative, and the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme.  This podcast is the copyright of Ramps on the Moon.  Ramps on the Moon cannot be held responsible for any mistakes or omissions.  This podcast is made for entertainment purposes.  And finally, we’d like to thank our friends at podtalk.co.uk for producing this podcast.

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