EP 6: Throwing down the gauntlet on Access with David Bellwood, Head of Access at The National Theatre

Michèle talks to David Bellwood - Head of Access at The National Theatre

Michèle and David discuss rigour around language and what it means for David to be a non-disabled person working in the area of ‘access’. 

David throws down the gauntlet: can he and Michèle find a word that can usefully replace ‘access’ by the end of the episode? 

They explore vulnerability and transparency as important values of his work.

Thank you to David for your time!

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

Interviewer(s):                 Michèle Taylor

Respondent(s):                 David Bellwood

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [Intro/music] Welcome to the Ramps on the Moon podcast. I'm Michele Taylor, Director for Change and this is my opportunity with my guests to open up the conversation about disability equality in the arts and cultural industries, and talk through what needs to happen. 

DAVID BELLWOOD           So lovely to be here Michele. My name is David Bellwood as you said. I am currently the Head of Access at the National Theatre.  I am a 40 year old white man with quite a lot of grey hair, bit of fuzzy, grey hair at the moment and a grey, fuzzy beard and sort of pale blue eyes and I’m also talking from my home in South East London.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Fantastic and I do just have to point out that we’re both wearing some pretty spectacular knitwear actually. There’s a lot of, lot of coloured knitwear going on today which is fantastic.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Well it’s the snowing. The snowing inspires a sort of Scandi knit to come through from the wardrobe no matter how long it’s been hiding, yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Ramps On The Moon Podcast goes Scandi, excellent.  I can get behind that.  David, before we embark on our conversation and already there is so much I want to ask you, I really want to talk about the word access. So we’ll talk about that perhaps a bit later on in the conversation.  Before we do, can you talk to us a little bit about how you do or don’t identify in relation to disability?

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes, certainly.  So I’m a, I’m a non-disabled person.  I’m not sure exactly what the test would be for neurotypical but or, and I think that’s a, you know if we’ve got time that’s a term we could really look at with some scrutiny but yes I think for the cases of identity and identification I would be considered neurotypical as well.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Okay, thank you that’s really helpful.  I wanted to talk to you for a couple of reasons which kind of intersect really but one is because you are a non-disabled person in an access based role.  The other reason that I thought that you would such a great person to talk to and to explore these issues with and you’ve just illustrated it beautifully is that what I know about you is that you are rigorous about language and I think that’s fascinating in this context because I think, I don’t know about you but I think that there are times to be relaxed about language and there are times to be really, really rigorous about language.  I don’t know what you think about that.

DAVID BELLWOOD           I couldn’t agree more.  I, it’s funny you say that because quite recently at work as in last week one of the, sort of someone who I don’t work very closely with came to my office and I can’t even remember what I said to her but she said, you know, “My manager said that you’d be very hot on how a sentence was structured.” [laughs]  I find it really important to think about the words I use and the order I use them in and I think I want to say it was E. M. Forster said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say,” and I guess for me as you, you know as you know and anyone listening will discover, I normally work out what I’m thinking by just talking to myself at great length.  People have to sort of suffer listening to my sentences as they roll on and on until I find, find the right words to meet what I’m thinking.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Sounds just fascinating and to track that thought process is brilliantly interesting.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             I think that that’s a really interesting thing that you just said, that is

DAVID BELLWOOD           I find it quite irritating as a habit.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           I find it irritating because you can get really, you can sound like you’re being quite patronising I think and sometimes I can hear myself when I ask people you know do they understand what I mean by quite a simple term like empathy say and actually that’s not, so in my head not a simple term and it was sort of the reason I’m asking more often than not is because I find it confusing when I say, you know, “This job relies on empathy.”  That’s not, that’s not a skill set, that’s not measurable, that’s not quantifiable.  So what do I actually mean when I say that and sometimes people just have to enjoy listening to me work that out and there are often no real conclusions either which makes it, I must be insufferable.  I must be insufferable but luckily we’ve got emails so people don’t have to listen to it or they can just receive it in principle-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           -over the editor’s emails.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             So you do all of that processing and working out offline and then you write the email.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Then I write it down yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs] But it’s so important isn’t it because, because actually what can happen if you don’t have a shared understanding and it’s not about this is the right definition of the word, this is an incorrect definition of the word, it’s about a shared understanding and if two people are in conversation and they have a completely different interpretation of a word or a phrase then you can both ricochet off into completely different directions and then, then the communication utterly breaks down.  So I’m with you on that one, I think it’s really important and what are the words David do you, I mean this is getting into something that I really hadn’t anticipated getting in, certainly not this early in the conversation but what are the words that you think are, umm now I’m going to wonder about my words, I was going to say problematic?  Maybe problematic, maybe not well understood, maybe don’t have a really robust, shared understanding when it comes to thinking about disability equality, anti-ableism and all of that within an arts context.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Oh that, this is going to be a list, so let me go through the list-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           -just off the top of my head and then I can sort of unpack some of them.  As you put it access, very and I think we both probably would like to find another word maybe by the end of this hour that we can use instead of access.  Disability itself you know is one of the, you know I think people, it’s a nuanced word.  It is a word with a lot of definitions but like you say if you’re, if you’re using one definition and the person you’re speaking to is using another the conversation can derail very quickly.  I do think justice.  So disability justice is something that is misunderstood a lot and I think latterly there’s been a lot of discussion about decolonising access and I think that’s, that’s a lot of learning for me in trying to really understand that and how it sits. Other words that get, that I think they’re not problematic but you just, access worker I think is a really confusing term and I’m not sure that, I’m not sure that anyone’s got a solid description of what that is because I think those jobs change from person to person and from place to place and I think sensory requirements is going to be one of my other terms which I think people really need to be clear about what they mean when they say they are meeting someone’s sensory requirements because I think it is, I think it is a massively bold statement to say that you meet someone’s access requirements and it’s obviously something that a person, you know someone in my sort of work strives for but to say you’ve met them, really?  I think you know that’s a really, I think there’s always, to date I think so much is still but in terms of disability justice so much is still built on compromise and that’s why we do the job because we’re trying to sort of dismantle it.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes and if I may add to that list, I mean a phrase that I think is actually problematic is the phrase fully accessible.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Fully accessible.  What does it mean to you Michele?  Go on what, if you see that on a website I mean I presume your hackles rise but what do you think people are saying when they-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Well one of the things that I always say to any group of people that I’m training is if you tell me an event or a facility or a building is fully accessible it’s clearly meant to reassure me.  What it does is it makes me think umm you don’t know what you’re talking about then do you? [laughs] So what it means to me it’s a red flag actually, that’s what it is absolute red flag because I mean Jess Tom said it very recently but it’s something that a number of us including Jess have been saying for a while which is there is no such thing, literally there’s no such thing.  It’s a great north star, it’s a great, almost a platonic ideal but it is actually impossible to attain.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Mhmm hm.  I think that’s, because that’s true sort of spatially, it’s true sort of temporally is one of my words but it’s true like a, the use of the construction of a building over time and how it’s used over the course of a day its own access barriers.  It’s the social issue, it’s the matter that as soon as you put a second person into a space there are two attitudes at play and that’s when attitudinal barriers start to manifest and that is something that no one has any control over per se but they can, you know you can absolutely you know Jess, speaking of Jess, absolute master of creating a social environment, you know creating social spaces that really remove a huge amount of attitudinal barriers but very little control at the end of the day as to what  barriers you invite into a space.

[00:10:00]

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, interesting.  I mean we can go back to any of those and talk about them but I want to-

DAVID BELLWOOD           Which one is your favourite?  Which, which one do you want to go back to?

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Oh okay.  Now if you’re talking favourites you kind of mean that as its opposite don’t you?

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes I do, sorry.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Absolutely, absolutely.  Sure, which one do you like to dig into most frequently and with most gusto?

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It has to be access.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Has to be access.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It has to be access.  It’s, it’s such an impoverished word.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Mhmm hm.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Why is access aspirational?

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Just letting me in.  I mean again one of the things that I have found myself saying recently is okay I might no longer be on the outside looking in but I’m probably on the inside looking on.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Mhmm hm.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             So you’ve given me access but I’m not in the thick of it.  So yes, what about you?  What was your quote?

DAVID BELLWOOD           I find that access is a weird one and it often starts you know if you introduce yourself as the Head of Access to someone who has little to no understanding of disability they immediately presume you work in IT and that’s, you have skills well beyond, well beyond my skill set.  So that can land you in deep water but I think you’re right, I think that, that idea that someone is there and I think this is the case, I think you know my job is identifying and removing barriers or encouraging people to establish work that doesn’t have barriers in the first place but that should really be the foundations of any piece of work.  It’s sort of nonsense that, not nonsense, I’m not going to talk myself out of you know out of the title just yet but it’s kind of interesting that we, that there is someone who’s accountable to barriers because, because of the order in which things have been built.  You know I work inside a building that was built many decades ago and now those barriers that you know whatever barriers exist or persist physically in that building need accountability.  It’s a strange, it’s a strange starting place.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             That, yes it is strange when you put it like that isn’t it?  It’s really, really strange and yet what’s also strange and frustrating and I don’t know about you but feels compromising to me sometimes is that we have to use this terminology because it’s kind of and this almost contradicts what we were talking about earlier but it’s kind of understood, it’s a useful shorthand.

DAVID BELLWOOD           It is understood.  I think there is a danger of it being a euphemism.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, yes, yes.

DAVID BELLWOOD           That’s a real, that’s a real because a part of the, part of you know those older, the charitable models and sort of pity work is the using euphemism to disguise the barriers that society creates.  So I need to, you know I need to make sure that people I’m speaking to can use the word disability with confidence even when I don’t agree with their definition.  You know even when they’re using a really medical model version of that word at least people can say disabled person to me and not to euphemise it and sort of look around it and sort of look at access and what’s interesting there is that access is such a broader conversation but can never ever, should never ever be disentangled from disability and that’s where I start to get a little bit concerned when people are very interested in the access side but not wanting to talk about, it’s like I say you know don’t talk to me about your integrated sign until you’re willing to talk to me about the loos because we just, because we need you know it’s all tied in, it’s all part of this new conversation.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, yes absolutely, absolutely.

DAVID BELLWOOD           That’s, the term access can sometimes be used to obfuscate that discomfort.  You know the discomfort I’m talking about, the discomfort-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Oh yes.

DAVID BELLWOOD           -that the population have in talking about disability and I mean right back to that notion of justice, we won’t get anywhere near disability equity or justice if we let that discomfort perpetuate itself.  If we don’t go round actually talking about disability directly.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, absolutely.  I mean I suppose the function that the word access does fulfil is it does at its best, at its best it is a social model word-

DAVID BELLWOOD           Mhmm hm.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             -in the sense that the focus is not on the individual, the focus is on what the organisation, the company, the building, the programme, the piece of work is or isn’t doing in terms of putting up obstacles in people’s way.  So I suppose from that perspective it’s quite useful.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             So as someone who is Head of Access you have that problematic word in your title.

DAVID BELLWOOD           I do, right you-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             How does that work then?

DAVID BELLWOOD           -you promised me you weren’t going to define it as problematic and then straight in there with, “you have that problematic word in your title.”

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes, you’re right.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Needed that.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs}

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes and it’s sort of, it’s sort of the opposite of what my, you know my job is about the barriers.  That’s my job.  So it’s but you can’t have, I mean head of barriers sounds incredibly negative and depressing but it’s sort of that term because also I guess head of disability wouldn’t be right on so many levels and that’s due to as I say the breadth of access in many ways but also that is a different, that is a different thing and that needs to be considerably further, that would need to be considerably further thinking.  That would need to be about, about social justice.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Absolutely.  So talk to me a bit David about your thoughts about being a non-disabled person in an access related, we’re going to carry on using the word access just for now.

DAVID BELLWOOD           We’re going to, trust me we’ve got 25 minutes left, I think we can find a new-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           -I think we can find a new word.  That’s interesting so if I, you know.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes non-disabled person in an access related role.

DAVID BELLWOOD           It is something I, I would say I reflect upon almost daily, if not daily to be honest because you do, you do have to think about what oxygen you’re using in the room, what platforms you’re using which actually are not yours and where it is appropriation or, appropriation might not be the right word there but where I am not the voice of disability in the National Theatre and that’s an incredibly important and distinct, an important definition distinction to make and to make clear to people and sometimes you do have to have the conversation where you have to say it.  You know I can have an opinion on something but absolutely the people that you need to speak to or platform are disabled people and sometimes that’s about very specific disabilities, sometimes it’s about deafness, sometimes it’s about certain neuro diversities like autism.  So there is a lot of what I like to think of and what I aspire to is decentralisation.  So sort of removing myself from the conversation as frequently as possible and what I found really interesting in that as a practise, as an access practitioner is that the structures, organisational and societal structures abhor, like really do not work if people decentralise because there’s an immediate assumption that someone else has to be central and that’s really, really interesting and the most present people often in any sort of structure at the moment in the UK that I can think of the most present people who have the immediacy and the spoons as it were to be that new centre are not going to be disabled people nine times out of ten and so it’s quite interesting what sort of space you leave.  If you take yourself out of the conversation ensuring that the person that you want to be centralised or the voices that you feel that should be collaborating on the project are supported is sometimes the trickiest part of the job.  I’m not sure anything I just said made sense.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Oh it absolutely made sense.  Before I respond though if I may, can you just explain, you referred to spoons, can you just explain what you were referring to?

DAVID BELLWOOD           So the term was invented by Christine Erandina.  I might need to check my pronunciation on that.  So spoons, spoon theory is the idea that each of us has a container, probably a jar or a mug full of spoons which represent the energy that we have for the day and over the course of the day an activity will take a unit of energy, a spoon and the theory goes that disabled people will be using more spoons for certain activities.  So depending on their disability if they, you know if they have chronic pain or chronic fatigue getting out of bed, getting dressed, brushing their teeth will exhaust more spoons than a non-disabled person will use and also there’s a non-disabled attitude and expectation that a good rest, a full night’s sleep and you get all your spoons back. That’s it, you’re recharged, you’re ready to go and that’s also not the case necessarily for disabled people and I think again part of my job is sometimes just to be that extra resource of energy more than anything else you know spend the time to write the email on behalf of or you know ensure that someone doesn’t need to be thinking about how a room gets cleared after a workshop and just being a tiny little reservoir of spare energy or spare spoons in working with disabled colleagues I feel there’s a balance to be struck but I think it’s an important one.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             I love that. Thank you, thanks for clarifying that and one of the reasons I love spoon theory actually just as a by the by, I love that it makes visible something that for many, many non‑disabled people is utterly invisible. The expenditure of energy on tiny everyday tasks is often invisible to non-disabled people.  So yes I love that kind of exposing job that it does.

[00:20:05]

DAVID BELLWOOD           And visibility is so important.  It’s so, so important because back to empathy and how sort of that works in itself can mean different things. It can be hard for people to try and put themselves in the position of a totally alien, a totally unique physicality or my body and so in access you know the first thing that a lot of people do when talking about the social model is they look at the staircases.  We built the staircases, that’s the barrier we decided on and you can point at them.  Being able to point to staircases is such an immediate way of showing and then you can get into the more complicated parts and then you can start talking about you know the non‑physical, those non-physical barriers that exist but the immediacy of a staircase is really sort of the beginnings of it and that is, there’s a laziness to it, don’t get me wrong because the laziness is also the assumption that a disabled person is a wheelchair user but you know that is you know accessible parking bays, accessible loos that is the icon, that’s the iconography that our society has gone with.  There’s a lot that is in the subconscious I think around disability that, that again totally perpetuated but difficult to unpick, difficult to dismantle.  Even that loo icon like I say don’t talk to me if you don’t want to talk about toilets you know [unclear 00:21:18]

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           But that in itself is reinforcing a problem but something that can be useful when trying to talk about disability justice.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Yes exactly and so to come back to what you were saying before we went down that little cul-de-sac about spoons, you were, what I heard you talking about is nature abhors a vacuum, as do systems. Systems abhor a vacuum. So if you decentre yourself then the danger is that that vacuum will get filled by someone with fewer scruples than you have who is not the voice that you were hoping to elevate.

DAVID BELLWOOD           I’ve made myself sound a lot more manipulative than I hope to be.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             No those are my words.  Those are my words to be fair.

DAVID BELLWOOD           No it’s sort of I guess there is a judgement call on who, who I feel should have platforms and I think there is such a responsibility in the non-disabled community to give time and space and give a correct working pace for disabled people to be able to be, you know we the non‑disabled society you know keep on creating barriers through thoughtlessness and through not listening and sometimes out of meanness.  You know there are just bad people in this world but that then to me translates as a responsibility, give the opportunity for disabled people to voice to what they need in this world.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             And so you’ve given us a really practical example of supporting, ah there’s another word, supporting.  Working alongside disabled colleagues by being I think you used the phrase “tiny reservoir of energy” that can be useful to them.  What are some of the other practical things that you do to make sure that you do decentre yourself to make sure that it is disabled people that are platformed whose voices take the oxygen in the room?  What are some of the practical things that you do?

DAVID BELLWOOD           I think a lot of it is signposting.  So a lot of it is leading a conversation from where someone, not that they’re more willing to get their vocabulary wrong for example but people will come, come and go I would not know how to phrase X question let’s say.  So well this is not a question for me but let me help you in being reassured that you can, we do know the experts in you know deaf theatre for example and that yes we as an organisation have a lot to learn about deaf culture, deaf theatre making which has an incredibly rich history both in the UK and internationally.  So yes let’s be honest in what we don’t know here and let’s be transparent in that but it’s I think having someone who’s willing to say I don’t know, we need to ask the experts and just sort of lead in that conversation of discovery I guess which is beautifully, beautifully humbling.  Every time, every time I start new projects it’s just the classic example of what do the people in the room need, really need to thrive?  What of those things can we meet?  What of those things must we, should we be trying to meet?  What of those things do we have to be really transparent and say we can’t do, we can’t be these people, we can’t do these things right now but hopefully give us time when we can find a way in the future.  There’s a lot in that because you know the expectation on disabled people to always be the experts on their disability. They should be able to come into a room and just have certain things just laid out for them and to not have to be the pioneer for that disability in that space.  That should be removed from them and so on and so forth.  So there’s a lot to unpick.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Where do you draw the line?  Where is the distinction between on the one hand expecting the disabled people to do the emotional labour and on the other hand platforming the voice and signposting to disabled people?  So let me give you an example.  I was in a meeting, this was some, some years ago, I’m not going to say where or with whom but I was with a meeting and we were talking about sign language in theatre productions and there were no deaf people in the room and the person who had convened the meeting said that there were no deaf people in the room because they felt it was important not to ask the deaf people to do the emotional labour all the time and I’ve got to be honest it felt to me like an excuse.  It did raise for me and it does raise for me that potential tension, I’m not saying it’s there all the time but potential tension between emotional labour and being enfranchised, being given a voice, being listened to, taking the oxygen in the room.

DAVID BELLWOOD           That, I mean that’s a really, that’s a really interesting example because that’s not one, I think I’d be very tense in that situation.  I think, I think you know the premise of nothing about us without us-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Exactly.

DAVID BELLWOOD           -is, it has to be core, it has to be central and there are, there are, you know I have been guilty of being you know on a talk panel and not checking if there were any disabled people on the panel and I will not make that mistake twice because there’s suddenly you know not a great disbalance in what’s actually being said in the panel but a real historic disbalance thriving in that.  So where is the line? This is a really good question because it’s again this, my gut reaction is we go and ask. [laughs]  So again sort of I, is it my place to decide where the line is and I think there’s two things.  I think the first is about vulnerability and delicacy and part of that emotional labour is always especially if it’s sort of organisation and individual let’s say. So disabled individual speaking to faceless organisation or an organisation. That is immediately requesting of the disabled person, the disabled let’s freelancer, to be vulnerable and vulnerability is not a position that you see many organisations in. So where is the opportunity for an organisation to also say we also have our vulnerabilities and we can be transparent with those because we accept that the position we’re putting you in is a delicate one?  Because it is delicate, it’s always delicate when we talk about access riders, when we talk about access requirements.  You know riders are way more prevalent now in theatre which is fantastic.  That is a vulnerable position to put yourself in and you know I’m not sure that there is yet, you know yet that one it’s where someone turns up and goes, “Here’s my rider,” and everyone in that organisation knows whether or not they need to see that rider or understand how they read that rider. Now the Ramp On The Moon, your consortium absolutely I think the foundations are there for that deep, deep understanding but we also need to understand the delicacy that we’ve put, the delicate situation we’ve put that individual in and again that they’ve handed that over.  So that leads on to the second point which is transparency and the other part here is being transparent about limitations and what can’t be done as much as because as soon as you’re transparent about your limitations it means that you are also making it clear where things can change and what you can do, what barriers can be removed, what requirements can be met. Again I’m going to say that very nervously but it’s sort of the transparency in dialogue just it can really filter away and you see it in international disability conferences where there’s always the law. So there’s always discrimination law, there’s always sort of something softly in the back of people’s heads and so they use this kind of sensitive speaking around access requirements and sort of nuanced and again it often contains euphemisms just that they definitely don’t land on something legal, limits are something they can avoid definitely, definitely not being discriminatory and that’s, it has to be done you know organisations and individuals all have to be aware of that and be secure in that they aren’t being discriminatory or you know doing anything that is offensive really, I mean we’re talking about offense but at the same point does that, does that hamper the opportunities for transparency that we all need if we believe that this, that access is possible?  That north star you talked about we all need to be really transparent with each other if we want to get near that.

[00:30:05]

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             I think that’s so beautifully put David and I’m, I’m left with the two words vulnerability and transparency which I’m going to take actually because I think one of the things to be transparent and a little bit vulnerable, one of the things that we juggle with, struggle with, manage at Ramps On The Moon, is that Ramps On The Moon is about the mainstream taking its responsibility seriously.  Ramps On The Moon is about the mainstream talking to itself to get its house in order and it’s quite difficult to message that actually.  It’s completely understandable that there’s been some, some lack of understanding of that.  It’s completely understandable that there’s frustration about that amongst disabled people and I think what you’ve just said is really, really helpful in terms of something that our consortium partners and partners moving forward need to take really seriously which is that willingness to exercise vulnerability and to be transparent in what this all means for them as they remove barriers and seek to embed disability justice and disability equality.  Yes thank you that’s really-

DAVID BELLWOOD           I’m nodding away here quite a lot because it’s about you know that holding a mirror up to the industry is incredibly important but it comes with such emotional, such historic emotional importance as well and right down to sort of you know you look at the West End, not just the West End theatres, many historic theatres the physical structures and you see the historic inequalities in their architecture and again using that as a very lazy example but then you extrapolate that out and you know the people you work with, the actors, the freelancers, the writers, directors that you work with, many of them are trying to unpack decades upon decades of structural exclusion.  So how do you say to an industry which has so many kind people, so much kindness so often in the theatre industry and so much sort of it arcs towards generosity more often than not I find but how do you, how do you say to people but look everything that you, all of the structures that you’re working within still endorse a sense of I’m going to use the word because it’s normalcy and that one, that’s the lethal, I mean this is lethal and this is why also neurotypicality I think can sometimes you know I sometimes wobble on that one but you know those really underpinned notions means that freelancers, disabled freelancers, say actors aren’t just, just, tiny word, terrible word but aren’t merely delivering a play which takes, which is exhausting and which they will put their hearts and souls into, they are also trying to deliver accessibility training, they are all, because it is nuanced subtle accessibility training and they are also fighting for equity and justice, and back to spoons you know it’s one thing to be an actor in a room given that you’re all in a play, it’s quite another thing to be an actor who’s delivering a play and be self-managing quite a lot of your own access requirements, fighting for your civil rights and trying to transform the industry.  So it’s like, that’s quite, that’s quite a burden right.  That’s quite a lot of energy that we don’t, we don’t put into rehearsal times.  We don’t say oh we should probably rehearse for eight weeks because several members of this company are actually trying to just be treated as equals but that’s something that the industry could change and I look forward to a time when we think about that a little bit more.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Week five we’re changing the world.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Week five we change the world.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs]

DAVID BELLWOOD           Week six we dress rehearse. [laughs]

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [laughs] And then we go into tech.  Yes absolutely. What are the innovative ways of reaching those people who perhaps don’t necessarily think that a big old theatre like The National is for them?

DAVID BELLWOOD           I mean I think there are several and one of you know we are very fortunate to have NT At Home platform for example.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Which is your streaming platform.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Which is our streaming platform, video platform which it gives a huge library of plays and you can view them in your home or you can you know as part of a watching club.  So there’s sort of 60 odd titles all of which are captioned, about 40 plus are audio transcribed.  We have a few sign language interpreted plays and of course Ramps On The Moon’s very own “Oliver Twist” was the first purchase, it was the first non-NT production to make it on to the NT At Home platform.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Which is really exciting. That’s Leeds Playhouse’s production.  Fantastic, that’s brilliant.  How did you get into this work?

DAVID BELLWOOD           I mean people often ask me this question.  I don’t think there was, there was a couple of clear routes.  I was a dancer historically and I had taught deaf and disabled children dancing then which was really interesting.  I mean there was one deaf student I had.  So she was brought to dancing class by her mother in order to do two things, improve her posture and give her more confidence and it was really interesting because you learn new teaching techniques and so on and then I went abroad.  I taught internationally dancing and I came back to London and I had no skills so [laughs] I, absolutely skill-less, so I started working at the stage door at Shakespeare’s Globe which was delightful and my colleague who also worked on the stage door and I, we sort of noticed things weren’t always great for disabled people so we sort of undertook a little survey of different, weirdly, I mean not weirdly, the Globe has a museum as well as an exhibition centre, it’s two theatres.  We looked first of all at what other museums were doing in terms of disabled access and we wrote a little report and I was very proud, I was very, very proud of it and I think if I saw it today I would, I would not be very proud of it because I am sure it is full of ill-considered and also you know it almost certainly came from a place of centralising myself but certainly going I think I can make a change here which I sort of you know for colleagues starting off today you know came with the report I’d be like but were you the right person to write this report in the first instance?  Anyway, that’s by the by.  That’s a moment of self-reflection, and then I got another job at the Globe and my manager, a great one, actually great and she went you know, “You should try taking on the Access work,” and the Access work as it was at that point the Globe ran plays April to October and the Access work was the programming and the delivery of and I’m pretty sure it was two caption performances and two audio described performances over

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             Across the whole season?

DAVID BELLWOOD           Mhmm hm, which I loved, I just loved and I’ve never, I’ve never looked back but as soon as you sort of you know it’s sort of my temperament as soon as you give me a little task you’re like well that’s not enough is it and then you sort of start building and then you do hear and this is the great thing about Access work in theatres is that there is a constant, constant dialogue with your patrons, with the freelancers because I mean it’s just so important to sit and listen and give time to that dialogue.  So at the end I want to be able to describe the performance directly sitting down with a visually impaired patron or a couple if they wanted to chat and find out what they really thought but that’s an incredible part of the job because if you think about theatre now you know looking at the NT and the thousands of people who come in and out of the NT over the course of a week, to have those sort of meaningful conversations, to be in meaningful dialogue with even a handful of them is great.  I’m always worried about the people we’re not in dialogue with.  All of the people who maybe stopped coming to the National Theatre historically or didn’t have the spoons choice or didn’t see that talking to us could incite change, positive change.  So there’s always, you also have to go and ask around as well as just sitting passively and waiting for the voices to come to you, the voices to come to you?  The people to come to you to speak.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             I know what you mean and it’s interesting isn’t it because that’s a challenge that I think every single theatre in the land faces is reaching those people who either have stopped coming, never came because they thought it wasn’t for them or don’t really think their opinion will count for anything.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Yes.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It’s an interesting challenge.

DAVID BELLWOOD           It is interesting.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             We’re sadly, I feel like we’re just getting started but we’re pretty much out of time.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Oh no, oh really?

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             I know, I know.  I haven’t asked you any of the questions but that’s, any of the questions I’ve noted down before but that’s absolutely brilliant.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Was this, was this interesting?  I mean it’s always like I say-

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             It’s so interesting, so interesting David and I definitely want you to come back at a later date and do-

DAVID BELLWOOD           I will.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             -I was going to say a re-run, not a re-run but do a part two but I just, I do, it feels really important to finish off this conversation just by saying so that everybody who’s listening knows that you are so well respected and so highly thought of in the area of work that you deliver and by disabled and deaf and neurodivergent people and it’s, it’s rare.  Yes I’m going to say it, it’s rare and to have this conversation with someone who identifies as non-disabled and to be able to talk about vulnerability and transparency and decentring yourself is just so refreshing and so important and your insights are fabulous.  So David thank you very, very much.

[00:40:05]

DAVID BELLWOOD           That’s such a kind, that’s so kind.  That’s so kind of you to say.  I, you know thank you so much.  As always I love these chats, I love the deep dive and I just I think I’m very, very lucky that I have a job that lets me sit down and think from time to time about you know what am I doing?  What are we doing?

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             And that’s so important.  Thank you David.

DAVID BELLWOOD           Thank you.  Thank you so much.  It’s been brilliant.  I’ve really, really enjoyed it.

MICHÈLE TAYLOR             [music] Thank you for listening.  You can contact me through the link in the show notes or through our website rampsonthemoon.co.uk. 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.

[Audio ends: 00:41:26]