Resource Category: News

Introducing Oily Cart’s first ever Youth Associate: Lucy Bowen

Youth Associate Lucy at a wooden table in a white studio space, during a creative jamming session for InSideWays. Lucy is a White female teenager with long, mid-brown hair and wears glasses. She is also a wheelchair user. She plays a pink guitar whilst holding the peghead in her mouth.

We’re delighted to announce Oily Cart’s first ever Youth Associate: musician Lucy Bowen.

Youth Associate Lucy and InSideWays composer sit next to each other at a wooden table in a white studio space, during a creative jamming session for the show soundtrack. Lucy is a White female teenager with long, mid-brown hair and wears glasses. She is also a wheelchair user. She plays a pink guitar whilst holding the peg-head in her mouth. BK, an adult with a brown cap and teal t-shirt, looks on, one hand partly holding the guitar. — Lucy Bowen with composer BK Sannerud during the creative development of InSideWays. Credit: Samantha Bowen

As Youth Associate, Lucy has been working as a Creative Collaborator on our new At Home show InSideWays, a first-of-its-kind international collaboration between Oily Cart (UK), sensory producers Scen:se, and regional theatres Folkteatern Gävleborg and Estrad Norr (Sweden).

Lucy explores sound in different ways, combining acoustic sound with physical, tactile touch, and even taste. During a creative development session for InSideWays, Lucy performed on her guitar, playing with her mouth on the peghead. This method – one also used by the legendary Jimi Hendrix! – of “seeking the taste of sound” as Lucy’s parent Sam describes it, opened up the whole theme and imaginary world of the show.

Lucy also collaborated with InSideWays composer BK Sannerud, and plays on the soundtrack:

Audio clip of Lucy playing on ‘A SideWays Massage (Green Drawer) from the InSideWays soundtrack. Composer and Sound Designer: BK Sannerud.

Oily Cart’s Artistic Director, Ellie Griffiths, said:

“Over the last few years, in each project, Oily Cart has been exploring the possibilities of collaborating with young disabled artists, who communicate in many different ways, often without words. This has naturally edged closer and closer to the heart of the company’s work, and we are hugely excited to now be working with Lucy as our first official Youth Associate.

As an artist and director, I went into this first Youth Associate partnership not knowing exactly what would happen. I now know this is a pivotal moment in Oily Cart’s history. We hope we can continue to develop the Youth Associate role as a core part of what we do, making pathways where our audiences can become Oily Cart artists and generators of culture. Lucy has shown us what’s possible.”

The Youth Associate role is supported by The Garrick Charitable Trust.

Find out more about Oily Cart’s Associate Artists programme here.

Introducing Rhiannon Armstrong, Director of When the World Turns

Our current touring production of When the World Turns is directed by award-winning interdisciplinary artist, Rhiannon Armstrong. We’ve been lucky to collaborate with Rhiannon on different projects and in different ways over the past few years, from dramaturg on Jamboree to joining Oily Cart as our first Associate Artist in 2019.

Rhiannon first worked on When the World Turns to create an audio piece for a work in progress sharing as part of Bibu Festival, Sweden. As a live artist working in relational practice, we were excited by the wealth of new skills and ways of thinking they would bring to Oily Cart and When the World Turns as Director.

An extended white arm with fingers outstretched. On the wrist is a bracelet of black and white straws. There is a sense of movement, as though the arm has just twisted, sending the straws to wave outwards in different directions. The diagonal black and white stripes of the straw are mirrored by the white wall in the background, with diagonal stripes of shadow. — The White Noise Factory. Photo: Jemima Yong.

We wanted to share the blog Rhiannon wrote in 2019 at the end of their time as Associate Artist: at the bottom of the page there is also a video introducing their current project, The White Noise Factory:

How did I get here?

I hear a lot of talk about ‘challenging work’: this is usually presumed to mean work that challenges its audience, rather than the audience’s capacity to challenge the assumptions and processes of those that are doing the making.

There is an inclusivity at work at Oily Cart that I wanted to immerse myself in. Like many aspects of my life, my evolving work in sensory performance now lets me sit astride two worlds. Depending on the context:

I am both enabled and disabled
I am both a migrant and a national
I am both a young people’s sensory maker and an experimental performance/live artist

Being in both worlds stops me getting too comfortable in my perspectives and helps me question mine and others’ assumptions. I also get to bring philosophies and practices from each context and let them influence one another. I intend to keep melding, percolating, pollinating worlds.

What did I do as an associate?

I began by working as dramaturg on Ellie’s first two productions as Artistic Director: Jamboree, and All Wrapped Up. I brought experience and skills in ensemble performance-making to the company while also expanding my understanding of Sensory Theatre, and the barriers faced by audiences and collaborators alike.

All Wrapped Up production image. Young audience members, joined by a performer, stick scraps of paper to strings of sellotape hanging overhead. The image is dark with purple tones. — Scene from All Wrapped Up. Photo credit: Suzi Corker.

An associateship can give both company and individuals space to develop successful long-term working relationships. I was collaborating artist on Something Love, and commissioned to create a sound work for When The World Turns, with Oily Cart and Polyglot Theatre (Australia).

My final act as associate was to travel to BIBU for my first taste of the international Sensory Theatre scene. As an independent artist it is rare to be able to attend these symposia and festivals.

Making my own sensory work

Oily Cart also encouraged me to seek funding to begin creating my own sensory work, providing mentoring, in kind studio and production support, and introductions to families and schools. The Covid-19 pandemic derailed a lot of my plans but thanks to support from Oily Cart and my funders (Unlimited, Jerwood Arts, and Paul Hamlyn) I was able to undertake collaborative explorations into sound as a form of touch and intimacy without social interaction, with staff and students at Swiss Cottage School; Sam and Lucy Bowen; and Tim Spooner.

Rhiannon, a white adult with a brown bob and blunt fringe, kneels in front of session musician Lucy, a white teenager with pink glasses, a yellow gilet and using a wheelchair. Lucy and Rhiannon look intently at each other, as Rhiannon holds a tambourine to Lucy's mouth. Lucy's mum Sam sits close by. Sound equipment is in the foreground. — Working with Lucy Bowen (session musician on The White Noise Factory).

The resulting project is now called The White Noise Factory. Its process is particularly attentive to young people’s inherent musicality, and considers possibilities for collaboration across time and distance, without relying on linguistic communication. The work explores what happens when we privilege sensory meaning-making over intellectual meaning-making.

What do I want to say about my time as Associate Artist

The main thing I want to emphasise is how much of a ripple effect my time as Associate has had. I have just finished a spell as artist in residence at Ashmount School in Loughborough with Attenborough Arts Centre. I would never have undertaken this residency before or have even known about it. Tim Spooner and I made a whole new sensory listening device which has already travelled with me to specialist schools and into family homes as part of remote and in person sensory sound collaborations. This was Tim’s first experience of making work for those who face the most barriers to access: our conversations about intended audience and the complex and intense nature of barriers to access have recurred in my work with other companies who don’t have experience in the sensory sector.

Watch a short video about The White Noise Factory (currently seeking development support):

Follow Rhiannon Armstrong @armstrongtactic

New international At Home sensory show InSideWays to tour Sweden and the UK

The windows of a dark purple block of flats. All the lights are off - except one. Wiggly, colourful shapes are visible inside, and some are even bursting out of the window. Underneath, pink, slightly wonky, text reads: InSideWays.

A major new international collaboration, InSideWays (InUtsikter in Swedish), is set to land not in theatres, but in the heart of people’s homes.

This first-of-its-kind collaboration between pioneers of Sensory Theatre Oily Cart, Sweden’s trailblazing sensory producers Scen:se and regional theatres Folkteatern Gävleborg and Estrad Norr marks the first time an At Home show has been programmed as part of their main theatre season. Launching in Sweden in Autumn 2025 and touring the UK from January 2026, InSideWays is an exciting milestone, showing how Sensory Theatre continues to grow and reach new audiences around the world.

Imagine a world that is sideways…

A world where you can taste sound and feel colour.
Where straight lines wiggle, and stories don’t stay on the page.
Where creativity flows through the kitchen taps and brushing your teeth is magic…

Created for and with disabled children and young people and their families, InSideWays provokes new ways of playing together, to gently tilt perspectives of our homes, and those nearest and dearest to us. The show will land on each family’s doorstep and, through a series of sensory experiences, will immerse the whole home in sounds, music, smells, light, colour, textures and even taste. Rooms will gradually transform over two weeks, revealing the extraordinary in the everyday.

Oily Cart created their first At Home show for families during the Covid-19 lockdowns. InSideWays builds on what they learnt: that when the same artistic rigour and resource are invested in shows for people’s homes, world-class theatre becomes accessible to everyone, even if they have barriers to accessing public venues. “Sensory Theatre is for everyone,” says Eva von Hofsten, founder and artistic project director of Scen:se. “and through this collaboration we are gaining towards our ambition to reach everyone.”

“InSideWays has led us all into new creative territory,” says Ellie Griffiths, Artistic Director of Oily Cart. “We’ve spent the last year tasting sound, sensing patterns and creating stories that won’t stay on the page.” The creative process involves artists across the UK and Sweden, including the Bowen Family. Young artist Lucy Bowen is a music maker who explores sound in different ways, combining acoustic sound with physical, tactile touch, and even taste. “We are excited that Lucy will be working with artists from the UK and Sweden to develop this immersive experience,” says Sam Bowen, multi award-winning specialist museum consultant, founder of the SEND in Museums Campaign, and proud mum of Lucy. “As a family who has greatly enjoyed Oily Cart’s theatre, both outside and inside of the home, having this opportunity to directly shape a production is a dream come true for us,”

The show will continue to be developed over the next few months, before premiering in Sweden in October. “This show, more than many, tickles my brain,” says Ellie. “I genuinely feel the possibilities are endless. I don’t know where we will end up, but have a giddy exhilaration that it’s going to be VERY fun when we get there!”

Creative Collaborators: Laura Blake, Annika Bromberg, The Bowen Family, Ellie Griffiths, BK Sannerud, Karl Seldahl, Eva von Hofsten
Creative Researcher: Aaron McPeake
Pedagogues: Andreas Dahl, Linnea Lundberg, Maka Marambio de la Fuente

Oily Cart will share how UK families can express their interest in booking InSideWays later this year. Follow us for updates: in the Oily Cart newsletter, and on Facebook and Instagram (@oilycart).

Greta McMillan announced as Oily Cart Associate Artist 2024

In this photo Greta is sitting in her wheelchair in front of one of her paintings hanging on the wall. She is a young white woman with brown hair and she is wearing a patterned beanie hat with a pink jumper and fluffy black jacket. The painting behind her is a mix of yellow, pink and black swirls and lines on a white background.]

We are delighted to announce that Greta McMillan has joined Oily Cart as our Associate Artist for 2024. Greta McMillan is a multi-disciplinary artist, filmmaker and climate activist, who uses eyegaze technology to create and communicate. Greta has been recognised by the Scottish Parliament, and her artwork been exhibited internationally. She is a recipient of the ‘Changes for a Better World’ Into Film Award 2022, and winner of the Scottish Youth Film Foundation ‘Films for our Future’ short film competition 2022.

Oily Cart’s Associate Artist programme champions and supports disabled artists to develop their sensory theatre practice and leadership skills to create a more representative sensory theatre-making sector. Having worked with Greta as a young artist in recent years, including on the development of our show When the World Turns, we are excited to support this next step in her creative career.

As Associate Artist, Greta McMillan will be working as Co-Director, alongside sensory artist Natalya Martin, to adapt When the World Turns into an At Home show.

Oily Cart’s Artistic Director & Joint CEO, Ellie Griffiths, said:

“We are delighted to have Greta as this year’s Associate Artist. We have long admired Greta’s work across different disciplines and her approaches to art-making. Her perspective and feedback on our sensory performance work has always been insightful and illuminating. I am excited to see what she comes up with, given more creative freedom and room to lead. I know this will push our work in different directions and ask rich questions of us a company and sensory work as a whole. This is the exact aim of the Associate Artist programme at Oily Cart: to nurture new talent in the field of sensory theatre that can break up its patterns and put it all back together again led by a more representative community of artists and makers.”

Greta McMillan said:

“As an Associate Artist with Oily Cart, I am enjoying working as part of a creative team. I am excited to have more independence as an artist, working with a team outside of my parents and family. My process is always changing with every new person I work with, I am learning new ways of working.

Over the course of this project I will have the space and time to push myself as an artist and develop my artmaking skills using my technology. It has been nice to have time to explore different art forms – film, photography, painting and music. Accessible sensory art is important and I would like to see more being created.”

Instagram @gretaseyegazeart
Youtube @gretarafimcmillan8530

Oily Cart’s Associate Artist programme champions and supports disabled artists to develop their sensory theatre practice and develop leadership skills to create a more representative sensory theatre making sector.

Our statement on Arts Council England’s 2023-26 Investment Programme decision

Teacher wears an orange top hat with big orange feathers and holds a purple parrot puppet. She interacts with a smiling student in a wheelchair. They are surrounded by other staff and students.

We are grateful to remain as one of Arts Council England’s regularly funded organisations, and thank them for their continued support. This means we can now get on with all the exciting things we’ve got lined up, including When the World Turns, a new, sustainably-created sensory show featuring 11,000 plants; The Cart, an accessible, interactive storytelling show which will tour to festivals, parks, libraries and community settings across the UK; Sensory Play workshops with our local community, and all our digital and in-person sharing events to celebrate 40 years of Oily Cart and sensory theatre with our community. We are also delighted that sensory companies Second Hand Dance and Frozen Light Theatre have joined the portfolio, and to see a 20% increase in organisations delivering work for children and young people.

A parent and child lie holding hands on a soft white rug in a tent with shimmery blue and green gauze walls

Arts Council England’s support allows us to do what we do best: pushing into unexplored artistic areas, and delivering ambitious and extraordinary sensory theatre projects for ALL young people and their families. Over the next few years, we’ll be taking our shows into homes, onto film, and out in public spaces, hospices, schools and theatre venues, making the biggest impact possible. We are raising our game in access; making shows accessible for those who can’t attend traditional theatre spaces, and transforming the ways we work, so our core and creative teams more closely represent who we make work for. Most importantly, this continued support means we can continue to create bold, mesmerising and joyful accessible shows for and with disabled artists, children and their families. That’s what we’re here for.

Waiting for this news and having it delayed has been unsettling and we would like to send solidarity out to all our theatre peers, including the incredible community of freelancers that these decisions also impact, who have waited alongside us during this uncertain period. We’re genuinely gutted for the incredible organisations who didn’t get the decision they wanted. Working in the arts is truly a rollercoaster, and we don’t underestimate the impact these decisions can have on people’s livelihoods and families. We are committed to working in partnership and sharing resources with the wider sector. Theatre is enriched by its diversity of voices and work, and we want to send our solidarity and love to all of those affected.

Associate Artist, Jo-anne Cox

Jo-ann is seated on stage with her cello against a black backdrop. Photo: Oliver Cross

Introducing Oily Cart’s 2022 Associate Artist

Jo-anne Cox is a cellist who creates mesmerising sensory and digital compositions and soundscapes to connect with her audiences. We are beyond delighted to welcome Jo-anne as our 2022 Oily Cart Associate Artist. She brings to sensory theatre a fierce creativity and radical care which seeps into all her thinking and ideas. We are particularly excited to be focusing on music and sound this year with Joanne, who has been experimenting with making her compositions interactive and co-created with young people who experience the most barriers to access. We are intrigued to see where her creative explorations take her and us!

Jo-anne, seated, plays her sparkly purple electric cello. — Jo-anne performing on her electric cello. Photograph: Oliver Cross

“I am looking forward to exchanging skills and knowledge around inclusive working practices and artistic process. My residency will be an opportunity for deep exploration of sensory engagement and immersive storytelling. I am passionate about interacting creatively with children who face multiple barriers to accessing high quality artistic experiences. As Associate Artist I will be leading a residency with students and teachers in John F. Kennedy specialist school in Stratford, east London.”

More about Jo-anne’s work

Jo-anne discovered a love of sensory engagement during her role as an Early Years music teacher at Music House for Children, where she was mentored in musical storytelling by founder and managing director Emma Hutchinson who has been influential in her artistic development.

For her Arts Council England (ACE) funded Research and Development project Defiant Journey, Jo-anne explored the use of the cello and vibrotactile technology (sound you can feel) in partnership with disabled artists at Together!2012. Later, supported by Help Musicians UK Jo-anne went on to work with David Bobier of VibraFusionLab to prepare vibrotactile technology for touring.

Jo-anne works in cross continental collaboration with creative technologist Charles Matthews of Blurring the Boundaries. Having previously explored cello and audience responsive lighting they have just completed an ACE-funded Research and Development project, Define Your Journey, which features an audience interactive digital instrument that has been designed with access in mind.

To try out theDesign Your Journey digital instrument and cello please visit https://blurringtheboundaries.org/dyj

If you would like to find out more about Jo-anne Cox’s work please visit https://cello.joannesonia.live/

Oily Cart receives £80k from The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Black and white photo of two performers on stage addressing the audience. They both have surprised expressions on their faces. The man on the right is wearing a bobble hat and playing a guitar. Next to him stands a man wearing a striped t shirt and a paint-spattered apron. He is holding a paintbrush

We are excited to announce that we have been awarded £80k by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to tell the story of our radical and pioneering approach to creating theatre for and with disabled children.

Thanks to National Lottery players we can now create an accessible digital archive that records and preserves 40 years of our ground-breaking work. We will use this award to develop a series of projects that mark 40 years of making innovative sensory theatre for and with disabled children and young people across the UK and internationally.

Funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund is made possible by money raised by National Lottery players. This grant will fund the creation of a unique digital archive of videos, photos and music from over 80 Oily Cart shows. Oily Cart will restore and recondition sensory props, costumes and puppets to build a fun, accessible resource for theatre practitioners, teachers and families.

Our new touring project The Cart is an interactive, physical embodiment of the archive and inspired by the best of Oily’s Cart’s sensory theatre shows. It is touring specialist schools from January 2022. Teachers, parents and carers will also have the opportunity to attend a Sensory Symposium to explore the archive and the sensory techniques developed by Oily Cart.

Cllr Sutters, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Arts and Culture, Wandsworth Borough Council said: “We are delighted that Oily Cart has received this funding award so that their amazing work can be preserved for future generations. For the last 40 years, Wandsworth Council has enjoyed and nurtured a strong and collaborative working relationship with Oily Cart and we have been incredibly proud to support them on their journey. The work they do with Wandsworth’s specialist schools and the support they give to families with disabled children is both awe-inspiring and leads to tangible benefits in improving young people’s wellbeing and happiness as well as broadening their aspirations for their future.”

Oily Cart was established in Wandsworth in 1981 by Claire de Loon, Max Reinhardt and Tim Webb MBE to challenge the assumption held by most theatre practitioners that under-fives were thought to be an ‘impossible’ audience. Invited to give a performance to students at a specialist school the founders were inspired to apply their radical and pioneering approach to creating theatre for disabled children and young people.

Max Reinhardt, a Founder of Oily Cart said: “It’s just so good to receive an award that will help us celebrate and spread the word to more teachers and staff at specialist schools and to theatre practitioners across the UK about Oily Cart’s unique pioneering and ever-developing contribution to Sensory Theatre. The creation of an evolving archive that lives and breathes is a wonderful opportunity to put our audiences and our seriously inclusive vision of sensory theatre onto the national cultural map.”

Championing the Social model of disability, Oily Cart’s work is made for and with children and young people, regardless of their age or barriers to access. The company promotes equal access to creativity and culture for all and creates ambitious and high quality sensory theatre that everyone can enjoy.

Zoe Lally, Executive Director, Oily Cart comments: “We are thrilled to have received this support thanks to National Lottery players and are confident the project will allow us to share Oily Cart’s valuable heritage in an accessible way. We look forward to celebrating the progress made over the past 40 years in increasing access to theatre with our community of D/deaf,disabled and/or N/neurodiveregent children of all ages and their families, and artists and educators across the UK and internationally.”

The award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund will help Oily Cart to raise the public and cultural profile of young disabled audiences and promote the importance of cultural provision for all.

Fantastic for Families Award

Still from Youtube video. White text against a purple background that reads: In 2021, we created our first show sent directly into audiences' homes, so we could reach disabled young people and their families who are shielding. Around the text are pictures of young people experiencing Space to Be at home.

We are thrilled to have received the Fantastic for Families Award for Impact and Innovation. We would like to dedicate our award to all the fantastic children, young people and families we have engaged with over the past 18 months through our Uncancellable Programme. To the many amazing artists and donors made this work possible, thank you all.

Determined to reach shielding families during the pandemic we experimented with making sensory shows in new formats, the result was the Uncancellable Programme.

Read our Uncancellable Programme Report to discover what we learnt during the pandemic. We hope it will inspire conversations around sensory theatre and accessible theatre practices.

Bryony Kimmings is Oily Cart’s New Ambassador

Bryony Kimmings is standing in front of a backdrop of green trees. She is wearing a yellow jacket and her left hand is lifted to her chin.

We are thrilled to announce that Bryony Kimmings, artist, writer, director, film and theatre maker and an associate artist of Soho Theatre is Oily Cart’s new Ambassador. She joins us at an exciting moment in our history as we celebrate 40 years of making accessible sensory shows for and with babies, children and young people. Bryony cares about “making theatre more democratic, political and experimental with form,” and understands exactly what Oily Cart’s work means for our artists and audiences and the impact that it can make. We have huge respect for her as an artist, parent and activist.

Breaking down barriers

Bryony will be working with us to raise awareness of our accessible sensory shows and inspiring people to support the company in a multitude of ways. We have long admired her audacity and integrity in making space to platform individuals who are often not listened to. Together, we are looking forward to breaking down some ableist attitudes that remain all too prevalent in the arts and beyond.

Oily Cart advocates alongside disabled and Autistic children and young people who experience multiple barriers to access. Bryony’s input will amplify and strengthen our work, helping us to take it to places we have not yet reached.

Bryony thrives on tackling challenging subjects. Her work ‘The Joy Cycle’ delves deep into the evolution of human emotions. Inspired by her and her son’s neurodiversity, this personal experience also gives her insight into how sensory theatre can make a positive impact on disabled young people and their families.

Inclusion is everyone’s responsibility

We’ve demonstrated that sensory theatre can open up a universal theatre-making language. Inclusion is no longer niche or specialist. We are excited to be working with Bryony to blast away notions that ignoring these issues and this audience is an option. Neurodiverse and disabled children and young people have the right to participate, the right to enjoy world class theatre and the right to be heard. We are really looking forward to making some noise together!

One Year On

A boy sits with his head rested on a staff member's lap in a school playground. He is looking up at a colourful macaw puppet flying overhead. Photo from Doorstep Jamboree,credit Suzi Corker

Audio version of the One Year On statement

March the 23rd marks a year since the first national lockdown. Whilst there is hugely positive news of the vaccine roll out, we also know that many families with a disabled child still have no clear end in sight, as the vaccine isn’t licensed for children yet. The pandemic has heightened inequalities: as has been stated many times throughout, ‘We are all in the same storm, but not in the same boat’. With this continued state of limbo for many, it feels important to mark the passage of a year. To remember those we lost, and to celebrate simply just getting through.

March 23rd marks a year of no touch. Not only is touch the centre-point of Oily Cart’s work, but for many who face multiple barriers to access, it is the main channel of communication. Touch is the only sense that humans can’t live without. So we celebrate a year of finding new ways to connect and hold each other. For Oily Cart that has meant performing personalised songs on doorsteps and online, creating packages for individual family members with craft and care, and working with new sound technologies to create intimacy from a distance.

Production shot from Doorstep Jamboree - festival version — Doorstep Jamboree, which was performed in playgrounds, on doorsteps and through Zoom. Photo credit: Suzi Corker.

It marks a year of ripping up the rulebook of theatre. A year ago Oily Cart created an Uncancellable Programme, so that we’d be sure our work could still reach families. This took colossal efforts from producers and creatives behind the scenes, with mind-boggling risk assessments, and shifting plans. Thank you for your patience with us as we figured it out. In the most limiting of situations, there are always possibilities. Imagination and creativity is more valuable and necessary than ever.

It marks a whole year of cancelled work – tours, shows and contracts, which highlighted the resilience and resourcefulness of freelancers working in theatre. None of our work would happen without these incredibly talented, resourceful individuals.

A year of discovering how to give yourself pink eyebrows on Zoom calls, of simultaneously missing people, and not having enough space. A year of grit and shared vulnerability. A year for many in Oily Cart’s extended community of having to shout out to not be forgotten.

Oily Cart sends this message to our community – children and young people, families and freelance artists – we salute you. Your resilience, your creativity and your courage.

Our promise is to not move forwards without you right there with us. We won’t be in venues until disabled children, young people and artists can be there too. We will continue to prioritise people with the most barriers to access, by extending our Uncancellable Programme over the next year. We won’t go quiet and we won’t play it safe.

So here’s to the next chapter of this strange adventure. We are proud, we are grateful, we are shaken but we are hopeful. Most of all, we send our love and solidarity to families. We are not in the same boat. We are proudly alongside you.

You can get in touch by email / Families Facebook group / Newsletter

#EndAbleism

#WeShallNotBeRemoved

One Year On Statement – Easy Read Download

Being Alongside…

Oily Cart exists to serve our audiences and artists, especially those who relate to the world in a sensory way. We are aware of what a distressing time this is for many of the families we work with and have huge respect for. The reality is, they will be in lockdown much longer than most. We are sending out our love and solidarity.

Since its inception, Oily Cart has been on a mission to reimagine theatre, taking it to ‘impossible’ places. Tight restrictions make us dig deeper and get more creative. Our job now is to make sure no one is left out of the picture. Instead of waiting for a vaccine, or venues to reopen, we are creating an ‘un-cancellable programme’ to deliver over the next 18 months.

As well as explorations into online sensory film work, we will take our inclusive theatre onto streets and into homes. We will make as much noise as possible to ensure the young people we work with are being heard now and as things transition to the ‘new normal.’ We will use our resources to respond to what families tell us they need. Shielding should not affect anyone’s right to creativity, their right to connection and their right to play.

“We’re not vulnerable people. We are exciting, dynamic, creative, resilient people… And the more and more you push that rhetoric of vulnerability on us, the more our resilience will become stronger and stronger. And it will come through our art, it will come through my music.”
Musician and Activist John Kelly

Oily Cart Easy Read Covid19 Statement Download

Rhiannon Armstrong announced as Oily Cart Associate Artist

We are delighted to announce that Rhiannon Armstrong will be working with Oily Cart as part of our artist development scheme. Rhiannon is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, recipient of the Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance 2019. You can find out more about Rhiannon’s work here.

As Associate Artist, Rhiannon will be working as a dramaturg on two of our shows, and Oily Cart will be offering mentoring, administrative and practical support for the development of a new work by Rhiannon exploring tactile sound.

Oily Cart Artistic Director Ellie Griffiths said:

“We are really happy to be working with Rhiannon as an Associate Artist and are hugely excited about her potential contribution to the field of sensory performance work. Each project Rhiannon creates as an independent artist has an underlying precision and integrity around her audience’s experience. Care and inclusion are core values of her work, which is why we feel she has a very translatable creative practice in terms of working with our diverse audiences. As a live artist who freely plays with form, we are particularly happy to be partnering on Rhiannon’s upcoming project supported by Unlimited and Jerwood, and look forward to feeding into an exploratory process where we each have space to challenge, provoke and learn from each other.”

Rhiannon Armstrong said:

“I can’t wait to get stuck in at Oily Cart. I hear a lot of talk about ‘challenging work’: this is usually presumed to mean work that challenges its audience, and seldom about those that are doing the making opening ourselves up to an audience’s capacity to challenge our processes and assumptions. There is a radical inclusivity at work at Oily Cart that I want to immerse myself in. I look forward to doing the scary thing and cracking my process up over the coming year, challenging my understanding of practical and creative inclusivity. I am also excited to engage in an associateship with a two-way process of influence: where I am both supporting the work that the organisation is making and being supported to develop a new work of my own.”