Learning Disability and Firebird Theatre
Firebird is a Learning Disabled-company. All our members are Learning Disabled.
What does this mean?
Everyone who has a learning disability is different, we all have different individual needs but we share lots of things in common. Mencap has a good explanation of what these are. We are planning to share more about our experiences with our partners and new members as well as in our plays.
Firebird is all about using our voices to communicate our experiences. We want people to know that we can achieve goals and we are proud of our achievements.
Learning disabilities and neurodivergence
Some Learning Disabled people are also Neurodivergent and some Neurodivergent people have learning disabilities too but they’re not the same thing.
We get asked about this a lot. Here are some resources by Mencap which explain some of the similarities, differences and crossovers.
Why is this important to us?
We’re proud to be a Learning Disabled-led company and it’s important to us because:
We share experiences
It’s very different being with people who don’t have learning disabilities
We can use our voices
We want to share our lived experience in our plays
Having a learning disability means you can have all different types of feelings and at Firebird we explore that
It’s no one person’s decision, it’s all our decision
If one person doesn’t have a learning disability, they might tell us what to do, or they might not understand us, or they might speak over us.
How are we Learning Disabled-led?
We use the Firebird Way: an inclusive way of working together to make decisions and have control over our work.
Members make all important decisions about our art and organisation, facilitated by our team and supported by our Board of Trustees.
We develop our own artistic ideas, and make decisions about who works with us and how. That includes involvement in recruiting every artist, collaborator and Trustee.
We are facilitated to make all our decisions in our weekly workshops where there is often lively debate about what we want to do and how we want to do it. This includes:
The plays we want to make and how we want to make them
What new skills we want to learn
What we want to put on our social media including our Instagram
Other things we want to do as a company, like going to see shows
Decisions about what we should spend money on
We are a membership organisation, with important decisions about the future of our company made at our annual AGM where we all have a vote.
We have written the Firebird Charter - it describes how we work and what venues must do in order to work with us.
Our guiding principle is “We only work with people who plan with us, and not for us.”
In the past we have had members who are Trustees. Once our new members join us this year we will decide who should be our new member Trustees.
