CULTIVATE

PCS has worked on a number of collaborative projects, including our Cultivate Series with Paragon Music. This aims to help our cohort develop their skills in facilitation, delivering workshops, and creating inclusivity in the arts. So far we have participated in Cultivate Resonate (2021), a series of musical workshops that took place online, and Cultivate Inclusion (2022), a run of in-person training weekends to learn more about how to make our artistic practice more inclusive and accessible.

You can read more about our Cultivate projects are below!

In 2021, several PCS members attended weekly workshop planning and facilitation sessions led by Paragon musicians and practitioners who specialise in supporting people with access requirements.

We combined our project CULTIVATE with the Paragon RESONATE programme. CULTIVATE was established to develop skills and improve employability across the arts sector for PCS members. This includes practical workshop leader training, programme planning, and collaborating across diverse practices. RESONATE is an exciting art and music project for disabled and non disabled young people (15–25 yrs). This is an opportunity for participants to enjoy creating and discovering music, dance and visual art whilst contributing to regular performances.

Over the course of 6 sessions, PCS members took part in warm up exercises, listened and contributed to all planning discussions, and participated in the final online performance: ‘Lets Go!’

For our Cultivate Inclusion project, we teamed up with Paragon to run three residential training weekends to grow our knowledge of inclusive practices. This took place over three weekends in November 2022, across Stranraer, Kirkcudbright, and Glasgow.

We explored ableism, autism, mental health, diversity, disability, and community, to assess how we create new work integrating these accessible practices.  The training examined inclusivity within creative areas such as music, theatre, dance, and movement.