Esther and Bernard photgraph by Suzi Grala
Autumn is really here and winter is on its way. However, there are lots of things to look forward to over the coming months. Accentuate partners are showing their resilience and skills navigating the current landscape of financial uncertainty, with a determination to continue to deliver quality projects. We appreciate their support in finding innovative solutions in these difficult times. We have delayed this edition of Accentuate News in order to be able to update you about some of the changes to the Accentuate Programme. Since our last newsletter, we have received a funding cut from SEEDA, but we are delighted that we were able to negotiate better terms than were originally suggested. This does however mean there will be an impact on the programme so we have looked very carefully and strategically at what we are achieving currently and what we hope to achieve in the future.
The clear steer from our board was to do “less, better”. Accentuate has always prided itself on quality of participation, quality of work and quality of delivery, so the Accentuate team very much agreed with this approach. Consequently, we have in some cases, reduced the numbers of people we will be working with, to ensure those we are engaging with receive a real depth of experience.
We will also be merging our project Collaborations! with Celebrate and Commission. These were all commissioning projects and we believe that by pooling the expertise of those leading these projects we will be able to ensure there will be fewer, but higher quality, profile raising commissions.
Over the last couple of months some highlights for us have been: the second year of the Disabled British Open Golf, which took place at the prestigious East Sussex National on 20th and 21st September. This event was, as promised, even bigger and better than last year. There were more international players and there had been significantly more interest from higher level golfers. Overall those who took part were extremely happy to be part of such a professionally run event and we were delighted the competition was shown again on Sky Sports. We are hoping it will be going out on the Community Channel in December, for any of you who may have missed it.
We have also /supported the 2010 World Cup Shooting, which happened at the beginning of October. It was the first time the event had been held in Great Britain and Stoke Mandeville, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games, provided a fitting venue for this exciting event. Holding this event in Britain not only gave the athletes the valuable opportunity to compete on home soil and in front of a home crowd but also helped broaden the knowledge of disability target shooting amongst the nation. You can read an excellent blog about this event by Jon Adams, an Our View Core Group member, on the Accentuate website in the Our View section.
The last moments of summer were beautifully summed up by another Core Group member Kristina Veasey in her wonderful blog about the Creative Landscapes project. This project seeks to increase opportunities for engagement with heritage and the historic environment by Deaf and disabled people through creative exploration. Creative Landscapes is based in Hastings and Gosport and culminated in a series of events and artists residencies as part of the national Heritage Open Day scheme.
Esther has met with Channel4 and was delighted to be able to show them the groundbreaking new website uScreen. We are having ongoing discussions as to what possibilities there might be for working together. Of course we are very excited by this as Channel4 are the official broadcasters for the Paralympic Games.
On a more personal note, it has also been a significant time for Esther as she got married on a sunny but cold day in September. So do not be alarmed if you see her new name in your inbox! Her new email address is: esther.fox@accentuate-se.org although emails are currently being re-directed from her previous address.
Although times are challenging and look set to continue in that vein, we are confident that Accentuate has an exciting offer. We continue to deliver innovative projects which not only promote the talent of deaf and disabled people but also ensure disabled people are informing the processes. We are gathering specialist knowledge and skills and we will soon be investigating how we can go about sharing this expertise to ensure that Accentuate will leave a lasting legacy.
Esther and Emma
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