Making Creativity Accessible: Integrated Practice Training

Have you ever wondered how inclusive your practice is ? Do you feel you have the skills to work with participants or other artists who may have a variety of diverse needs? Are artists and participants with diverse needs able to take part fully in your workshops, rehearsals, performances, meetings, or events? The Integrated Practice Training is a 1.5-hour online session for support staff, artists, and personal assistants working with participants and artists with diverse needs. The training explores practical approaches to supporting physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing, while sharing real-life experiences and current best practice in accessibility and inclusion.

The session begins with an introduction from Kate, Director of Undercurrent, who will discuss the company's evolving approach to access and integration and explore what makes an inclusive environment feel welcoming and supportive.

Isolde Carmody, an artist living with disabilities, will share insights from her lived experience, highlighting supports that have worked well, challenges encountered, and the importance of flexibility. Together with Emilie Conway, she will provide practical guidance on supporting visually impaired artists, wheelchair users, individuals with sensory sensitivities, and those experiencing chronic fatigue.

Drawing on her work as an artist and access consultant, Emilie Conway will explore current policies and practices, highlighting recent developments, ongoing challenges, and examples from her work with organisations such as the RHA and the National Gallery.

The session will conclude with a summary and downloadable resource, providing participants with practical tools and key considerations for supporting diverse artists and participants in creative settings.

ARTIST BIOS
UNDERCURRENT PERFORMANCE/ KATE WILSON
www.undercurrentdancefilmtheatre.com
Based in County Leitrim Undercurrent uniquely integrates diverse performers celebrating
di:erent experiences of mobility and cultural backgrounds in the creation of visually dynamic
performances for gallery and theatre settings. Undercurrent projects include Winter Ground
(performed double bill with IMDT), Magnetise (shortlisted for LAMA awards), Unearth 2021 &
toured in 2022, Landing Places 2023, From Here A Bridge 2024 & Between Earth & Sky 2026.
Areas of research include Telling, an exploration of relationships between dance, speech & Irish
Sign Language, and Curves of Time, exploring embodied approaches to movement and image
creation within improvised duet and portrait forms. Moving Together, Undercurrent’s inclusive
outreach program is an annual event based at the Dock, Co. Leitrim. Founder and director Kate
Wilson has a background in both visual art and dance. With a trans-disciplinary approach to
company practice, Undercurrent is committed to connection, diversity and inclusivity at the
heart of practice. Projects and research are widely supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.

EMILIE CONWAY
Emilie Conway is an award-winning vocalist, composer, access activist and consultant, and
accredited art psychotherapist based in Dublin, Ireland. Her multifaceted work spans
performing arts, disability rights advocacy, multi-sensory experience design, and therapeutic
practice—united by a deep dedication to creative expression, social justice, and human
connection. As a consultant and advisor, Emilie is engaged by academic and cultural
institutions on equality, diversity, inclusion, and human rights implementation including the
National Gallery of Ireland, the Arts Council, the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Open House
Dublin, and TU Dublin. One of many of her recent interdisciplinary projects is ‘Solid Space
Sound: Multi-Sensory Spatial Experiences’ counter the dominant, ocularcentric (sight-first) bias
of cultural spaces, Emilie created Solid Space Sound—a collaborative, multidisciplinary
research and design methodology. Solid Space Sound centres the richness of blind and visually
impaired (VI) sensory perception, using music, movement, touch, tactile language, and creative
audio description to map physical and artistic environments.

ISOLDE Ó’BROLCHÁIN CARMODY
Isolde ÓBrolcháin Carmody lives in County Leitrim. Her background is in
academia, activism and performance. Her current practice is deeply rooted in disability
arts and collaborative practice, focussing on movement, theatre and creative writing.
She embraces the cultural constructions of disability as a rich seam of meaning and
play. She graduated with a BA in Philosophy and English Literature in 2001, continued to
attain a MPhil in Early Irish Language and Literature in 2005 and then a Post-Graduate
Diploma in Community Drama in 2006. Isolde has spent the last decade working
closely with Undercurrent as a wheelchair dancer, as well as writing and performing in
her one-woman show, Mamó: A Story of Geraldine Plunkett Dillon directed by Donal
O’Kelly, running creative writing workshops for disabled writers across the country and
facilitating numerous drama-based projects and collaborating with other artists
whenever she has the chance. She also has a long track record of community activism
and advocacy, particularly within LGBTI+ groups, women’s groups and disabled
people’s groups, with particular focus on the intersections of these experiences. She is
onto her fourth guide-