Curiosity Productions

This week, on Monday 16th October, Arts Council England opened requests for Access Support for the process of applying for their latest round of the Developing Your Creative Practice fund, or DYCP for short. So if you're new to the sector, or new to your disability, what does this mean?

Any artist who's D/deaf, disabled, neurodivergent or has a long-term health condition can get 2-3 days of assistance with an appropriate support worker, who can help remove the barriers to applying to this fund. This could look like a lot of things!

• Maybe you're dyslexic, and need questions restating into clearer wordings for you, and could have spoken answers transcribed into ACE's online portal.
• Maybe something, like depression, or the communication difficulties that can sometimes accompany autism, has affected your executive function and you need admin support to secure letters of support from your partners.
• Maybe you need project management help, so you can manage your work alongside your ADHD.
• Or maybe you need templates in formats that you can physically access.

Whatever you need, good access support workers should be able to articulate and address the problems with you, even if you yourself are new to your condition or identity.

Crucially, though, this support is available if you self-identify as disabled, D/deaf, neurodivergent, or as having a mental or long-term health condition – meaning this help doesn't just go to those who can get a doctor's note or a full formal diagnosis. This is a huge help to many of us, as it means the often years long, quite intrusive and sometimes unresolved processes of medical diagnoses aren't compulsory to get the support you, as an applicant, need.

At Curiosity, we provide access support to artists applying for both Developing Your Creative Practice, and Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants. We can help you through the whole journey, from approaching ACE to request the access support, right through to submitting the application itself and (hopefully!) accepting the offer.

Whilst at Curiosity we try to find positive ways of removing access barriers, please be aware that the Arts Council ask for specific details about your disability and any medical diagnosis you might have, so we will need to discuss this when supporting you to make an access support request.