Oily Cart is a London-based national and international touring theatre company that specialises in Sensory Theatre shows and experiences for babies and early years audiences, and disabled children and young people. Over its 40+ years, Oily Cart has pioneered the new art form of Sensory Theatre, pushing the boundaries of the performing arts sector in terms of production, sustainability, accessibility and diversity.
We interviewed Maka Marambio, Access and Wellbeing Officer at Oily Cart, and Zoë Lally, Executive Director and joint CEO, to learn more about the organisation’s EDI approach and how this manifests in its Associate Artists Programme. The Arts Council-funded programme seeks to address the underrepresentation of disabled people by supporting the development of their practice and leadership skills. It slots into Oily Cart’s broader efforts to champion and support disabled artists and break down access barriers in the Creative Industries.
What are your motivations for addressing diversity and inclusion within your organisation?
Maka: The overarching mission of Oily Cart is equal access to the arts for everyone. Our focus within that is on children and young people, particularly disabled young people who experience the most barriers to accessing theatre. With each show, we fight for a world where theatre works for everyone.
In our experience, many young disabled people don't necessarily connect a lot with language, but they do tend to connect a lot with sensory experiences. Sensory Theatre pushes the boundaries of theatre beyond the use of words, using not just 5 but all 33 senses, to create immersive worlds that connect through a sensory language. So, our shows can happen in a hydrotherapy pool, or they can happen in a local theatre, or they can happen in a school hall on a trampoline.
We're exploring the boundaries of theatre, while also looking for different ways of connecting with disabled children, and finding where the magic happens between those two things. Naturally, that has led us to collaborate with disabled and non-disabled artists of all ages, to remove barriers and make theatre experiences more accessible and welcoming. It also extends to the core Oily Cart staff team involved in making a theatre experience; and addressing diversity and inclusion within our organisation.
How are your EDI motivations embedded within Oily Cart's wider company strategy?
Maka: It’s a core value: our EDI mission has always been at the heart of what Oily Cart is. Our strategy is guided by the social model of disability and we try to be really clear about that, not only on our website but also when we induct new staff. We want to be clear about the fact that we fight to remove barriers within our industry; it’s something everyone in the company is committed to.
We have five creative core objectives around creating high-quality experiences for and with D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent babies, children and young people. So, it's about pushing boundaries, widening diversity and perspectives, but also advocating for and with disabled individuals. That can be both for the audiences but also the artists engaging with us.
What do you believe are the risks of not addressing EDI within your organisation or the wider performing arts sector?
Maka: Oily Cart is dedicated to making high-quality experiences that celebrate each child for being who they are and what they bring to the world. We can only meaningfully do this by following ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: people with the lived experience of the audience must be part of creating and sharing the shows. Not addressing EDI would mean the work not being relevant within the different sectors we are part of: the Sensory Theatre pocket, the disability theatre pocket, the theatre for young audiences pocket, or the general arts and culture industry and whatever other mini pockets you might see.
There's a reputational risk, because Oily Cart does have a 40+ year history of a positive access trajectory. And there’s also a risk to our support, for sure. Relationships with stakeholders like funders can deteriorate if the EDI commitments we’ve made and values we’ve shared aren’t addressed or met in the way they expect or we’ve agreed on.
But as a wellbeing officer, the biggest risk is to the wellbeing of our community, because we just won't be reaching them.
What are some of Oily Cart's main EDI goals?
Zoe: Because EDI is so essential to our mission and it ripples down through all of our company objectives, I think one of the big things is being mindful of representation: who's delivering the work? who's making the decisions about the work? and how that can be more representative? We really do value that diversity of perspectives and being proactive on diversifying the workforce at all stages and at all levels. Everyone has a role to play, whether it's a member of our expert families or right up to board level. Hearing from a diverse range of voices really does enrich what we do.
So, some of our goals are around how we bring people into the company and thereby also into the sector and making sure we've got entry-level roles without those barriers related to experience or qualifications. Then there's a tier around nurturing the people we're already working with - making sure people are well-trained on unconscious bias, gender awareness and all sorts of other things. Our goal is to make sure everybody is supported.
Maka's role is critical to making sure we have that access and wellbeing at the core of the organisation to support people at all levels and then think about routes to leadership and decision-making. We are currently working directly with our board and an external consultant to look at this in more depth with a view to having more specific goals around that area. This includes disabled people coming into the organisation and having opportunities to work up and develop leadership pathways.
It's also about young people and how they are impacting our decision-making. We're doing quite a lot of work in that area with our board as well, thinking about how the voice of young people is impacting at all levels of the company. So, these are the kinds of areas where we've got very specific goals. Also, just that broader sense of making our work more accessible to our audiences. Those ongoing goals are something we're talking about daily, so goals around improving and delivering best practice, but also to keep learning, keep developing and keep the conversation going.
What does your Associate Artists Programme aim to offer?
Maka: So, we work with one Associate Artist per year. We prioritise disabled independent artists to reflect the lived experience within our community. What Oily Cart provides are resources and opportunities for the Associate Artist to explore their own creative ideas. The idea is that we support them in building confidence in decision-making and feeding into strategy and policies with the view of developing leadership skills. The Associate Artist also gets mentoring time with the Artistic Director and mentoring from the wider team.
Zoe: Our aim is to introduce the Associate Artists to all the different parts of a leadership role within an organisation like Oily Cart, from company accounts to board meetings. It demystifies it a bit for them so they can see how they could fit into those structures, especially for freelance artists. It's also about trying to gauge where they're at and what would be most beneficial to support them. We're making sure they feel part of the wider company and that they get invited to things so they meet other people in the company. If there's a big conversation about a particular topic or a particular project, we'll make sure they're invited.
The support is really bespoke, which is why we only have one a year. We could have a cohort of several people, but I don't think we would be able to provide the same depth of personalised support and development. We could divide our budget up and share it out amongst four or five people but that's when it does start to get a little bit more tokenistic or light touch. We want to make as much impact and meaningful change as possible within our limited resources.
How do you know that this activity works for improving diversity and inclusion?
Maka: We check in with the artists throughout the project, but we also keep in touch afterwards, too. This looks different for each artist: it might be that we engage them to work with us on a project, or it might be keeping in touch about the project they started during their time with us and how it’s developing. It's an ongoing relationship because it's such a bespoke connection.
We use the same guiding questions and principles at the beginning of each project, and then have methods to assess impacts and outcomes, including a project initiation and a project debrief. It's important to us that our evaluation process is accessible. A nonverbal person, for example, who uses an eyegaze system to communicate, will need compatible software. We also understand that a key part of accessibility is being flexible and accommodating.
We learn from these check ins and debriefs what works and what doesn’t, which helps us keep improving our working practices to be more inclusive, both for this specific programme and across all our work.
Have you experienced any limitations, challenges or barriers in delivering this particular EDI initiative?
Maka: A big challenge has been Access to Work - it took a year to secure support for one of our Associate Artists. An unexpected challenge was when the pandemic hit; it meant that two of our Associate Artists had to completely shift the schedule and delivery of their projects.
Organisational capacity can be another challenge because the Associate Artists programme is a creative exploratory space, but of course, we have a schedule for the delivery of our shows. Those two things can overlap at times and it can be a bit tricky.
Also, proximity to the artist can be challenging at times. The artist might not be where we're based and that might make them feel disconnected from the organisation. So, we constantly need to think about how we make remote working as bespoke and connected as possible.
Zoe: Remote working because access is a challenge for us, not only with the Associate Artist programme but also within the broader organisation. We need to respect those access requirements but we also need to make sure they still feel connected. We're always being mindful of that and trying to find ways to make sure people don't miss out on important conversations and connections.
What advice or key learning would you share with other organisations considering delivering similar initiatives?
Maka: In addition to any access budget, have a healthy contingency line in case you need it. Also, add plenty of time into your structure so you can be adaptable to the process. Try not to get too stressed if things aren’t going as planned. If you're overly stressed, you can't face those changes in the best way possible.
Zoe: With regards to the contingency, I'd also add that if you're working with support workers and plans change, you will probably still need to pay that support worker because otherwise, they don't have any work that day. Perhaps you need to reschedule a session quite last minute because of a health concern, for example. You'll still want to support the artist in the rescheduled session too, which is where the contingency is really important. That's something we learned very early on. Also, think about your contractual clauses from the beginning. If you haven't thought about it at the start of the project when you're contracting people, that could end up being quite tricky.
Finally, I’d say always keep listening and learning. Be open to the fact that you will make mistakes, and receptive to different ways of doing things: our approach should and will continue to evolve, always in the direction of equal access. By sharing best practice and working together within the sector, we can change the industry for the better.
Learn more about Oily Cart and stay up to date with its programme of ‘beautifully unexpected sensory shows’ at oilycart.org.uk.
Explore other case studies today at diversity.wearecreative.uk/case-studies.
