Highlights of this year's event included...

Film, Video & Animation:
Rebecca Birch, Joanna Salter, Florencia Guillen, Sophie Lascelles, Marc Reisbig (Passion Pictures)

Dance works:
Jonathan Watkins (Royal Ballet), Kate Church

Musical performances:
Guynamite (as aired by Radio 1's Gilles Peterson) feat. Laila, Selina and Jo Jr
Jono McCleery (as aired on Radio 3's Late Junction)
Ana Silvera/ Jon Cottle
Clark Berger




BACKGROUND

Duplikate - in association with Sarah Clarke - devised Communicators project, with its first event Communicators I in September 2006, followed by Communicators II in September 2007. The events featured crossovers between music, video and new choreography, with a special appearance by acclaimed UK soul singer Omar in 2006 and artists from the Royal Ballet in 2007.

Hosted by Shoreditch Church, the events raised significant funds for emerging charity Communication Options. The charity supports young people with neurological disorders (such as epilepsy and autism) with an emphasis on facilitating independent communication.


ABOUT THE CHARITY

'Communication Options (reg. charity 1037475) is a small charity run entirely by volunteers, with neither premises nor employees. Our resources, such as they are, are dedicated totally to specific projects which promote independent communication for those that don’t have it.

'Take a moment to think about what independent communication might mean. For most of us, the ability to communicate our thoughts, feelings and needs in whatever circumstances we find ourselves is something we all take for granted. Imagine for one moment,though, that you had no speech - or no reliable speech - and that your motor co-ordination was such that you could not write, make signs, type at a keyboard or even point to words, pictures or symbols that others can understand. What barriers would you find to forming relationships, having friends, interacting with people, even negotiating a path through home, school and work life? Most of those who work with Communication Options are parents of disabled children with no effective means of communicating by themselves. This predicament represents their whole life experience.

'Social Inclusion is, quite rightly, the watch-word of our times. You cannot turn without coming across hugely well-intentioned - and successful - public and independent bodies, programmes or schemes with the objective of reducing the multifarious forms of social exclusion. Our experience is that there is no greater form of exclusion than the inability to communicate.

'There are things that can be done: computer and speech technology have made huge advances in recent years. The challenge is to help our children to take advantage of these devices – to build their skills to the point that they can use them independently. This is where the work of Communication Options comes in.

'We use a technique called Facilitated Communication. We need an army of people able to use this technique to help our children express themselves, supporting them both at home and in school. These children have different disabilities and problems, but have one thing in common: through Facilitated Communication they have found a way of communicating what they think about the world. Communication Options’ objective is to help train people in Facilitated Communication. We organise seminars every 6 months for parents, carers, teachers and teaching assistants. We work with Dr Anne Emerson, an academic who has worked in this field for many years, and who got us all started. We also work with an extremely successful Physiotherapist from Germany who has developed a proven approach to putting people on a path to independent typing.

'The other part of our work is to do with helping overcome physical barriers. We invite specialists and therapists with proven techniques to come and talk about their work, to assess our children and to propose individualised rehabilitation programmes.

'Many of the problems our children have are to do with vision. The problems are neurological; their eyes are OK but the brain distorts the visual reality. This gives them enormous problems, not just in coordinating hand movements, but also in standing and moving around. So earlier in the year we organised for a specialist in ‘Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation’ to come from the USA to assess our children and to prescribe special prism lenses. These help correct the visual impairments our children have and allow them to co-ordinate their movements – essential if you are independently to take advantage of the new computer and speech technology that is available these days. The results with our children have been hugely encouraging.'
Hugh Gibbs, parent and co-founder