Leeds Playhouse’s Beautiful Octopus Club Festival – a four-day celebration of creativity for people with learning disabilities – is back this month offering fun, friendship and a fabulous sensory show.
Running from 29 January to 1 February, the festival includes an Interaction Day, during which people can explore the Playhouse and take part in activities like drumming and yoga; a Club Night, with a live band and a DJ; art and craft sessions; and My Life With the Wave by Interplay Theatre, a sensory show created for people with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities.
As part of the festival, Interplay is also running a Sensory Theatre Symposium for artists, companies and venues exploring sensory performance for learning disabled audiences. The symposium will include discussions led by artists specialising in work for learning disabled people, audience members sharing reflections on their most memorable arts experiences, and panels celebrating best practice.
Among the artists taking part are Jeremy Harrison, artist and researcher at Playground and Rose Bruford College, and JoAnne Haines from Bradford-based Mind the Gap, discussing her recent show, Dancing with Colours. Other panel members include artists from Interplay Theatre, Frozen Light and Leeds Playhouse.
Attendees with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities or complex needs can experience the symposium through all the senses via interactive installations, shows and sensory sessions running throughout the day.
Delegates will also have the opportunity to see My Life With the Wave, a story inspired by the poem of the same name by Mexican Poet Laureate Octavio Paz, using movement, sound, digital technology and physical interaction to create an immersive sensory experience.
The biannual Beautiful Octopus Club Festival is part of Leeds Playhouse’s year-round programme of activities for people with learning disabilities. It offers a term time structured weekly arts course and weekend drop-in workshops for young people with learning disabilities offering movement, drama, visual art, sensory sessions, fun and friendship.
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