You have Total Permission…

Total Permission film poster - Sue Austin's underwater wheelchair between coral and with fish, text also reads push me.And today is International Day of Persons with Disability (not our choice of words, but we’re not arguing with the United Nations). As they say: Persons with disabilities, “the world’s largest minority”, often face barriers to participation in all aspects of society. Barriers can take a variety of forms, including those relating to the physical [...]
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Giving Total Permission to the National Media Museum in Bradford

Screen grab from the National Media Museum website of the Total Permission page.Our PUSH ME documentary is coming to Bradford! Yup – you don’t have to sit and watch it on your little computer screen – you can watch it in full beautiful enormous loveliness at the National Media Museum in Bradford on the 3rd December – as part of International Day of People with Disability. It’s [...]
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Total Permission

screen grab of arts council england's case study page mentioning total permissionIt’s all kicking off today – Total Permission, our 30 minute documentary on the Unlimited Projects is up in The Space – AND the documentary and the PUSH ME project are one of Arts Council England’s new case studies celebrating 18 years of lottery funding and showcasing just what lottery cash can do.
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Push Me Unlimited

A screen shot of the Watershed site featuring Push Me, the image is Sue Austin in her underwater wheelchairWe aren’t the only ones counting down – Watershed, the executive producers of PUSH ME are also on a roll, showing one PUSH ME short a day too until 2nd Dec and then hosting the cinema premiere of the documentary Total Permission at their base in Bristol.
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Pushing Claire Cunningham and Ménage à Trois.

Claire Cunningham, dancing in a slip with her crutches. Text reads menage a trois, claire cunningham, push me.Remember this one? Beautiful movement captured beautifully. Claire Cunningham turns her crutches in to exquisite partners in her darkly humorous and deeply personal portrait, Ménage à Trois. This film is a taster, atmospherically exposing her signature movement skills in a dim underground basement of The Arches, Glasgow. Go on. It’s only 90 seconds (you’ve got [...]
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De-Superhumanising

claire cunningham_jpgFantastic to see PUSH ME’s  Claire Cunningham and Caroline Bowditch alongside Marc Brew featured  in this great blog by Kelly Apter at the scotsman.com. Shows such as Ménage à Trois not only give the younger generation of disabled dancers something to aim for, they play a crucial role in helping audiences to see beyond the [...]
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Close Encounters

Push Me in 90 secondsPUSH ME has been sighted at a handful of events in the last month and  it’s been very exciting to guage people’s reactions to the first 12 short films in the PUSH ME Collection and to see what people make of them under the radar. At DigitalBrighton on the 4th September we were able to [...]
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Who is pushing Claire Cunningham?

text on a gauze at the front of a stage - it reads the arms that hold me up, that carry me softly, but can never wrap around me.Continuing our series of posts on various collaborators, this time our attention turns to Gail Sneddon – who has been working alongside Claire Cunningham for her piece Menage a Trois. Gail’s website states that she ‘makes performative work that brings an immersive and sensorial experience to the audience through the orchestration and design of different [...]
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Colin Hambrook discusses the audio-described short film of Claire Cunningham’s ‘Ménage à Trois’

A still from the film of claire, dancing in a cellar with her crutches, one of which is on the floor in front of her out stretched legThis blog was first published on Disability Arts Online. With their permission we are reprinting it here: In my commissioning role of gathering responses to Unlimited @ Southbank the performance that DAO writers have been most enthusiastic about seeing in their communications with me, has been Claire Cunningham’s ‘Ménage à Trois’. Watching the audio-described version [...]
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Push About

Claire Cunningham on Channel 4We have spent much of the weekend bumping into our Push Me artists out there promoting their work and in repose, soaking up the atmosphere of this extraordinary week for disabled people everywhere. The Southbank is awash with people enjoying not only the rich feast that the Unlimited Festival has brought to the capital but the [...]
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Our first set of 90 second films now complete!

A screen shot of the Push Me Collection on The Space - showing 6 of our 12 'boxes', one for each artist.It is with immense pride (and quite a bit of sweat) we can finally announce that all our 12 PUSH ME artists now have their first 90 second films in The Space!
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Ready Get Set – hold on !

British LionMany of us are now tapping into Jon Snow’s C4 Paralympic  show as he builds GB excitement and connection with the Paralympic Games but being disabled doesn’t mean you have to enjoy watching or playing sport, does it? Hell no! So says our very own Push Me comedian Laurence Clark and runner up in the [...]
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Are Claire Cunningham’s crutches the reason there isn’t a human partner in her life?

a long shot in a dark theatre. Claire Cunningham is dancing with a male dancer who lifts her up, her crutches outstretched as she turns.We popped up to Glasgow last week to film the second 90 second short based on Claire Cunningham, who was just about the open Ménage à Trois - a darkly humorous and deeply personal portrait that explores Claire’s 20-year relationship with her crutches and asks if it’s possible to find love when there are already three [...]
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Dancing on crutches

the bottom half of a man, feet on a skateboard, with crutches being used to propel the figure forwardsClaire Cunningham is famous for dancing on crutches, but where did the idea to utilize the creative potential of crutches within dance come from? For Claire it began when she was awarded a Creative Scotland Award in 2006, which enabled her to investigate her own movement potential. She was mentored by 
US performance artist Bill [...]
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