Resources

Language: English
Author: Federica Buzzi

While Le Corbusier’s Modulor Man created a normative standard for the human body, it was by itself already the result of modern architecture’s project for human betterment.

Language: English
Author: Andy Field

Article exploring how much work that calls itself site-specific really is. "When this theatre is held up as being site-specific, when Kane or Marlowe are used to tick that box, what room is left for those theatre practitioners who are attempting to forge a more sensitive relationship with their site? I worry that straight theatre is merely reproducing itself, dressing itself in radical trappings and passing itself off as its other; meanwhile those authentically experimenting with site are left struggling in relative silence."

Language: English
Author: Richard St. John

TEDtalk - Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

Language: English
Author: Alain de Botton

TEDtalk by French philosopher Alain de Botton. He examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

Language: English
Author: Caroline Bowditch

A manifesto by Caroline Bowditch written after a research project with Imaginate exploring why there are so few visibly disabled performers in performance work targeted at young audiences. "Children have a chance to see bodies like theirs on stage and screen".

Language: English
Author: François Matarasso

Information about A Restless Art, a book about participatory art with examples from over 15 countries. This page links to a free pdf of the book and to purchase the full paperback version. "Community art is the creation of art as a human right, by professional and non-professional artists, co-operating as equals, for purposes and to standards they set together, and whose processes, products and outcomes cannot be known in advance."

Language: English
Author: Tara Lopez

Article about Vital Spark, a new national initiative in England aiming to create more inclusive and diverse performances for children and young people.

Language: English
Author: Al. Di. Qua

A film on the Disability Arts International website made by Al. Di. Qua, a manifesto 'advocating for the cultural rights of disabled artists and cultural workers, as well as the aim of transforming the way disabled people are framed in the mainstream media and public imagination.'

Language: Flemish
Author: La Villette

Trailer and information about a performance by Kabinet K - https://www.kabinetk.be/en The game. This is what is at the heart of the latest creation by choreographers Joke Laureyns and Kwint Manshoven , alias kabinet k . As long as we are playing will be a show conceived as a playground: a real reservoir of possibilities and interpretations. The game and what it induces lightness and pleasure, what it reveals of inventiveness, ingenuity, confidence, strategy. On the set, seven children and three adults take the rules or ignore them, renew them or hide them. They draw boundaries, cross them, and each decision changes the game, offering spectators new perspectives.

Language: English
Author: Jennifer Stahl

Mikhail Baryshnikov‘s speech at a graduation ceremony for dance students. “As young creative artists, and really as human beings, you have to be open to failure," he said. "Failure is a part of learning.... As a very old dancer, I have had many, many opportunities to fail. It happens. Projects collapse, knees blow out, money dries up. But you as artists, and as young people discovering what you care about, you must be generous to that spark inside yourself that made you love dance in the first place."

Language: English
Author: We Are Epic & Epic Arts

Buffalo Boy is an international co-production between UK artists and dancers from Epic Arts, Cambodia. "The Buffalo Boy project started with Thouen and his determination to dance. After a life of being ignored and being told not to speak by his family & community, Thouen had found himself drawn to dance as a way to express himself and tell his story. In April 2017 Thouen graduated from Epic Arts’ Inclusive Arts Course, after spending two years on the course he didn’t want to go back to life in his rural village, he wanted to dance. He wanted to make a performance piece about his stories, and continue developing his artistic skills."

Language: English
Author: Dr Fiona Morrissey

"The right to participate in work is a core human right under Article 27 of the UN Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities." So, why are so many disabled people still unable to earn as artists without affecting disability payments? This article is about 'Catherine's Law' which has brought this problem to a wider public in Ireland.

Dag kunstenveld, we moeten es praten

Translation: Hello art field, I think we need to talk

Language: Flemish
Author: Mira Bryssinck

Mira Bryssinck is a disabled actress. In this highly intresting and inspiring text she expresses har daily practice as a physically disabled person/actress, in a field (the arts) known to be open minded....

Language: English
Author: Judith Mackrell @judithmackrell

A article looking at the history of the body shape in Ballet and other dance forms.

De vi ikke snakker om når vi snakker om mangfold

Translation: Those we do not talk about when we talk about diversity

Language: Norwegian
Author: Mariken Lauvstad

For the past two years, diversity, inclusion and representativeness have been a recurring theme in the performing arts debate. But there are still some groups that are almost consistently overlooked.

Language: English
Author: Denzel Washington

FALL FORWARD - Denzel Washington

Language: English
Author:

Ruth Maleczech (January 8, 1939 – September 30, 2013) was an American avant-garde stage actress.[1] She won three Obie Awards for Best Actress in her career, for Hajj (1983), Through the Leaves, (1984) and Lear (1990) and an Obie Award for Design, shared with Julie Archer, for Vanishing Pictures (1980), which she also directed. The video shows her in 2012, one year before she died, reflecting on, Beckett's line FAIL BETTER.

Language: English
Author: Gabija Gataveckaite

An article in the Irish Independent about DADA (Disabled Artists and Disabled Academics) started by Different Bodies artist Emilie Conway, calling for the government to ensure that any disabled artists taking part in the new basic income pilot scheme in Ireland won't lose vital benefits.

Drijft het talent van je kind naar boven of moet je het stimuleren?

Translation: Are your child's talent apparent or need they be stimulated?

Language: Flemish
Author: Nico Schoofs en Dominique Soenens

Both parents and children are allowed to fail as that is very OK!

Language: English
Author: Tendai Malvine Makurumbandi

A short video of a dance performance made by Tendai Malvine Makurumbandi (Different Bodies Lab artist) as part of his Master studies at Oslo National Academy of the Arts called Emancipation, "exploring- 'shadows as metaphor', an alternative approach for discussing the complicated issue of identity."

Language: English
Author: Sarah Marsh

An article exploring the impact of exam stress on teenagers' mental health.

Language: English
Author: FailSpace Project

"FailSpace — also known as Cultural Participation: Stories of Success, Histories of Failure — is an AHRC-funded research project exploring how the cultural sector can better recognise, acknowledge and learn from failure, particularly when undertaking work intended to diversify and grow the people who are taking part in subsidised cultural activities."

Language: English
Author: www.culturalparticipation.com

A link to fill in the FailSpace ‘Honesty Box’, an online survey that forms part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, ‘Cultural Participation: Stories of Success, Histories of Failure’.  We believe that it is important to create a safe space to discuss and ultimately learn from failure. As such, the ‘Honesty Box’ survey is fully anonymous - and invites sharing of any thoughts, experiences or observations about failure in a cultural participation project/s that you might not feel able to reveal publicly. If you would like to find out more about this project or survey, contact Lucy at l.wright1@leeds.ac.uk

Language: English
Author:

Famous failures!

Language: English
Author: Creative Europe Desk UK

Creative Europe Desk UK feature on the PUSH+ Failure Lab held in September 2019 in Hasselt, Belgium.

Falen is het nieuwe slagen

Translation: To fail is the new to succeed

Author: Michiel Hulshof

Provocative but interesting Dutch text pleading to instal an 'institute of fail-ology', as any form of success is based on a much larger form of failure.

Language: English
Author: Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Will Self and Lionel Shriver.

Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Will Self and Lionel Shriver reflect on their own disappointments in life, love and work. “Failure is just another name for much of real life: much of what we set out to accomplish ends in failure, at least in our own eyes. Who set the bar so high that most of our attempts to sail gracefully over it on the viewless wings of Poesy end in an undignified scramble or a nasty fall into the mud? Who told us we had to succeed at any cost?”

Language: English
Author: Brad Aronson

Funny and hilarious but interesting overview of some brilliant failures.

Flere med funksjonsnedsettelser skal få arbeidspraksis i kulturlivet

Translation: More people with disabilities will get work experience in cultural sector

Language: Norwegian
Author: Kulturrådet

The Arts Council Norway is now launching a pilot project where cultural institutions can receive grants to employ candidates with disabilities. The project is part of their long-term commitment to diversity in the arts sector.

Language: English
Author: Zoe Proctor and Violeta DraseikaitÄ—

Zebedee is a modeling and talent agency representing people with disabilities and visible differences, working for fair media and fashion representation to change perceptions for the better. This International Women’s Day, some of Zebedee’s stunning talent gathered for a special shoot. The shoot aims to showcase real and unique beauty, creating true inclusivity. When it comes to gender equality, especially in media and the fashion industry, women with disabilities and visible differences often find themselves left out of the narrative.

Language: English
Author: Rachel Bowditch, Daniel Bird Tobin, Chelsea Pace, and Marc Devine

"Within the context of ATHE 2017’s focus on the examination of spectacle, the authors held a panel titled “Placing Spectacle: Examining Site-Specific Performance,” sharing their experiences in creating site-specific performance. Afterward, the authors ventured out onto the Las Vegas strip to perform Vessel Project’s Transfix, an “atmospheric” performance examining the art of presence (figs. 1–3). Using this experience and pulling from their creative projects in public parks, subways, vast desert landscapes, storefronts, industrial warehouses, and art museums, the authors here distill some principles for creating site-specific performance."

Language: English
Author: Gender Family Project website

The Gender & Family Project (GFP) empowers youth, families and communities by providing gender affirmative services, training and research. GFP promotes gender inclusivity as a form of social justice in all the systems involved in the life of the family. Working directly with transgender and gender expansive young people, their families and their communities, GFP offers a variety of programs and services aimed to build community, decrease isolation, and foster hope and resiliency. Through community and clinical services, research, training and education, GFP provides comprehensive and customized advocacy, regardless of a family’s financial situation or ability to pay. Jean Malpas, LMHC, LMFT, is the Founder & Executive Director of GFP. He is an internationally recognized expert provider for transgender and gender expansive young people and has trained and published extensively on issues of gender and sexuality.

Language: English
Author: GDS Secretariat

The International Disability Alliance (IDA), the Government of Norway, and the Government of Ghana will host the second Global Disability Summit on 16 and 17 February 2022 (GDS22). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to ensure inclusive participation at the Summit, the event will be held on a digital platform.

Hoe handicap het kunstenveld kan oprekken

Translation: How disabilities can open up the art field

Language: Flemish
Author: Leni Van Goidsenhoven

Rekto:verso is a cultural reflective magazine in Flanders and they focused in one of the magazines on 'crip' (disabled people in the art field). In this interview it becomes clear it is not only an artistic matter (physically, for the artist), but also a matter of social inclusion in general and, more in particular, in the art field also of having disabled people in boards of organisations.

Language: English
Author: Kayle Crosson

Article in the Irish Times about the connection between failure and clowning. “One night, before class, I sit with Toto and ask him a few questions about the art of clowning. For a good part of our conversation, I try to unpack why failure is so integral to it. “Because if you don’t accept your failure, you close the door of play,” he says.”

Language: English
Author: Donna Ferguson

Guardian article exploring rejection and failure - "Usually, the connection between rejection and success is kept private. But a public outpouring recently on social media – not only by celebrities but by others using the #ShareYourRejections hashtag – questions why this is so. What is there to fear from rejection? And why do some people seem to cope with it better than others?"

Language: English
Author: Elizabeth Day

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is a podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right. Every week, a new interviewee explores what their failures taught them about how to succeed better.

Language: English
Author: Isolde

A blog from an artist in Ireland explaining how the rules around pay for disabled artists when they are in receipt of any state benefits is discriminatory and creates a massive barrier to professional work. "I didn’t get to tour the play in 2016 as I had planned. This was largely down to funding: if I had received sufficient funding to tour the play, it would have counted as income according to Social Welfare. It would have counted as “means”, and my basic weekly Blind Pension payment (currently €203 per week), on which I depend to survive, would have been immediately slashed. So even if the tour had been funded, I couldn’t have afforded to pay for anything, let alone a tour. A gal gotta eat!"

Language: Norwegian
Author: NRK Studio 2

In the real world, no two bodies are alike. But how does it affect us as an audience that there is apparently no room for different bodies in the performing arts? Ute i den virkelige verden er ingen kropp lik. Men hvordan påvirker det oss som publikum at det tilsynelatende ikke er plass til ulike kropper i scenekunsten?

Language: English
Author: Claire Cunningham

An audio interview with Claire Cunningham, a disabled artist based in Scotland talking about why she defines herself as a disabled artist, what it was like to make the transition from music to theatre and why she thinks we are missing out by overlooking the creativity of disabled artists. “My work wouldn’t be the work it is if I wasn’t disabled. It’s inherently who I am and it does inform the work I make. To say that you don’t see it is trying to eradicate something that’s quite essential”

Language: English
Author: Lindsay Baker

Failure has become a hot topic in Literature but if it brings eventual success, can it still be failure?

Lanserer podcast om kunst og funksjonsmangfold

Translation: Launches podcast on art and functional diversity

Language: Norwegian
Author: UiT Norway's Arctic University

The podcast will contribute to a more diverse and representative field of art, and be a platform for reflection and discussion, exchange of knowledge and experience related to functional diversity in art. The podcast is a collaboration between UiT Norway's Arctic University, the Festival in Northern Norway and NUK (New Young Art).

Language: English
Author: MOX

The Museum of Failure in Los Angeles is a collection of over 100 failed products and services from some of the world’s best-known companies. Visitors will get a insightful and entertaining glimpse into the risky business of innovation. For every mega-success like the Apple iPhone, VCR and Ford Mustang, there’s a couple of Newtons, Betamaxes and Edsels that crashed and burned before them. This collection is carefully curated by licensed psychologist and innovation researcher Dr. Samuel West, and it hopes to convey that the acceptance of failure is necessary in order for innovation and progress to truly succeed.

Language: English
Author: Sasha Saben Callaghan and Harry Josephine Giles

Not Going Back to Normal is a disabled artists' manifesto curated by Sasha Saben Callaghan and Harry Josephine Giles. Funded by Creative Scotland and Engage. Image of Three Braille Works by Clarke Reynolds. "Not Going Back to Normal is a provocation about how things are and an idea for how things could be. This gallery manifesto gathers disabled artists in their diversity, rage, and imagination to call out the institutional ableism in the Scottish arts and picture a future in which disabled artists are central."

Nytt kunnskapsprosjekt om kunstnere med funksjonsnedsettelser

Translation: New project about artists with disabilities

Language: Norwegian
Author: Kulturrådet

The cultural sector needs more knowledge about what promotes and what prevents people with disabilities from working as professional artists. The Norwegian Arts Council is now announcing a knowledge project on the topic.

PÃ¥ jagt efter underet

Translation: Hunting the wonder

Language: Danish
Author: Catherine Poher

Theatre director Catherine Poher argues for the necessity of creating 'timeless' art. Meeting art not aimed at specific ages but aimed to speak to the part in us, which is neither child or adult, but simply living human being. She discusses the subject both form an artistic and a culture political point of view.

Language: English
Author: Nan Spowart

An article in The National about the Failure Lab and the three artists taking part from Scotland.

Language: English
Author: Laura Bradshaw

A blog by Laura Bradshaw about a 2-week caregivers residency she took part in with her family - "As a family we spend a lot of time engaged in learning about movement- how to move across distance, how to lift objects, how to lift each other, how to throw, how to eat, how to push, how to roll, how to go alone, how to go together. We experience interdependence with each other’s bodies, a walking frame, an all-terrain buggy, a wheelchair, a non-slip placemat, a supportive chair, a baby carrier, a yellow therapy bench, breasts and their milk, cups with a lid and 2 handles."

Language: English
Author: David Wohl

An article about site specific theatre and its place in the world of theatre. Models of site specific theatre and the challenges around it. Article written 2014.

Language: English
Author: Caroline Bowditch

A production for children aged 0 – 12 months and their adult created by Caroline Bowditch, performance artist and choreographer with years of experience in working to improve accessibility and inclusivity within the arts.

Language: English
Author: Josh Pyke/Urth boy

A song about children in foster care and being constantly moved from home to home. Written in conjunction with children in care.

Language: English
Author: Heart of Leadership website

Statistics on the impact of the lack of confidence in women and girls around their bodies, pressure to please and perception of leadership ability. “ 7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with family and friends.”

Language: English
Author: Jarlath O’Brien

“With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation.” 

Language: English
Author: Jemele Hill

Jemele Hill in TED-talk on success and failure

Language: English
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

TEDTalk - Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple -- though hard -- way to carry on, regardless of outcomes.

Language: English
Author: By Jessica Grose, NY Times article

An article about children and parents dealing with Failure. "“Everyone is actually a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets, and that mixture continually evolves with experience" Kyla Haimovitz. No matter what you say or don’t say to your kids, you’re not going to get them to achieve perfect equanimity about every loss — it’s more about getting them more comfortable with failures big and small."

Language: English
Author: Tate Galleries

A Tate podcast series exploring the topic of failure. "What does it mean to fail, and how can it lead to success? We hear the human stories behind art and failure."

Language: English
Author: Jenny Sealey, Artistic Director & CEO, Graeae

The Living Declaration aims to raise awareness about the challenges facing disabled people under Covid-19 and beyond.

Language: English
Author:

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives—to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives. Judith Halberstam proposes “low theory” as a mode of thinking and writing that operates at many different levels at once. Low theory is derived from eccentric archives. It runs the risk of not being taken seriously. It entails a willingness to fail and to lose one’s way, to pursue difficult questions about complicity, and to find counterintuitive forms of resistance. Tacking back and forth between high theory and low theory, high culture and low culture, Halberstam looks for the unexpected and subversive in popular culture, avant-garde performance, and queer art. She pays particular attention to animated children’s films, revealing narratives filled with unexpected encounters between the childish, the transformative, and the queer. Failure sometimes offers more creative, cooperative, and surprising ways of being in the world, even as it forces us to face the dark side of life, love, and libido.

Language: English
Author: Olivia Kestin and Gabrielle Deonath

“ Syrian refugee children shared the stories behind their most treasured keepsakes — the only connection they have to their homes — in a new UNICEF photo campaign, highlighting the hardships they’ve been forced to endure at a very young age.“

Language: English
Author: Trans Lab website

A NYC-BASED FELLOWSHIP FOR TRANS & GENDER NONCONFORMING THEATER ARTISTS. Plays by trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) writers are a rarity in American theater. As transgender stories are co-opted, commercialized, and misrepresented by cisgender writers, Trans Lab fellowship supports the creation of a critical mass of TGNC plays by TGNC writers. In 2018, four teams of trans and gender nonconforming playwrights came together in NYC to create four new plays through the Trans Lab Fellowship, which is supported by WP Theater and the Public Theater.

Language: English
Author: Ola Majekodunmi

What is 'Irishness'? And what do you think it looks like? Many have a stereotypical view of this when it comes to mind. However, there is no one way to look Irish, especially in 2018. A raw short video-documentary based on personal stories from 15 different people who are Irish but are often questioned about their identity. It challenges people's prejudice and opens a discussion on how we think about identity.

Language: English
Author: Pico Iyer, Taiye Selasi, Lemn Sissay, Teitur, Rich Benjamin, Raul Midon

What defines “home?” Is it people, a specific place or the memories made during a certain period of time? These talks offer a thoughtful look at what it means to belong.

Language: English
Author: Success

The sweetest victory is the one that’s most difficult. The one that requires you to reach down deep inside, to fight with everything you’ve got, to be willing to leave everything out there on the battlefield—without knowing, until that do-or-die moment, if your heroic effort will be enough. Society doesn’t reward defeat, and you won’t find many failures documented in history books.

Language: English
Author: Will Smith

Will Smith Instagram on Failure and Success - Inspiration

Language: English
Author: Samuel Beckett

A video of Samuel Beckett's work of which FAIL BETTER is part of.