We’re excited to introduce EPIC Individuals – a four-year career development programme designed to support young Disabled artists, made possible with funding from Youth Music’s Shift The Scene Fund.

This project provides a framework for young Disabled performing artists to build personalised pathways towards sustainable careers. Through collaboration labs, training opportunities, mentoring, and specialist guidance, participants will develop their skills, make contacts, and bring their creative projects to life.

The Background

Existing creative career pathways are largely based on ableist and outdated systems – ones that prioritise conformity, often at the expense of access and even creativity. Even for non-disabled artists, these pathways frequently fail to provide routes into meaningful and sustainable work.

We Are Epic believes it’s not the artists who need to change, it’s the systems. Furthermore, we believe the best people to make decisions about creating new pathways are disabled artists themselves. 

A dancer in a wheelchair poses under the logo of We Are Epic and Shift The Scene
@dancephotographeruk/Dani Bower Photography

EPIC Individuals will rethink how creative careers are built by supporting disabled performing artists – including dancers, musicians, poets, theatremakers and more – to design and own their pathways into sustainable creative work.

Rather than fitting artists into outdated structures, EPIC Individuals will provide artists with a support framework within which to experience different aspects of creative careers, before designing, testing and owning their ongoing career journeys. This framework will balance structured learning, mentorship, peer-support and artist-led development. 

Each participant’s journey will combine creative experimentation, cross-artform collaboration, digital exploration, and entrepreneurial training – leading to a clear, self-determined career plan … not one dictated by the programme leaders or based on what used to work in the past.

The Project Aims To:

  • Create model examples of new professional pathways - designed by our artists and shared as inspiration to other Disabled young creatives.
  • Increase employability - through building artist CVs with training and experience, and measured through paid opportunities following participation.
  • Boost artist’s creative agency - empowering them to create their own work and access funding, measured by the launch of independent projects.
  • Build sector capacity - by providing access consultancy to partner organisations that enable them to better support disabled talent, and gain experience to demystify the process for working with disabled talent in the future.
  • Strengthen inclusive networks - by connecting artists with existing inclusive organisations and fostering collaborations.
  • Publish and share best practice and toolkits - containing details for artists about self-driven career pathways.

We are currently in the planning stages of EPIC Individuals and further details will be announced shortly. We wish to thank all of our collaborators for their assistance in creating the foundations for this project and Youth Music for funding EPIC Individuals through the Shift The Scene Fund.

For more details on Youth Music and the other members of the Shift The Scene Community please visit:https://www.youthmusic.org.uk/news/meet-shift-scene-recipients

Do you want to be involved? 

We have now opened our Expression of Interest form for EPIC Individuals. Please click here to find out more. 

@dancephotographeruk/Dani Bower Photography

From the Blog..

EPIC Individuals is a We Are Epic CiC project
supported by Youth Music’s Shift The Scene Fund.