News and Opportunities

Call Out: Organisations with experience of visually impaired prisoners and prison systems

Posted on: 2 Oct 2025

Call Out: Extant seeking organisations with experience of working with visually impaired prisoners and the prison system process. Extant, the UK’s leading company of visually impaired artists, is developing a new project exploring the realities of prison life from a visually impaired perspective. We are looking to speak with organisations/individuals who have either firsthand experience […]

Call Out: Visually Impaired People with Prison Experience

Posted on: 2 Oct 2025

Call Out: Extant Seeking Visually Impaired People with Prison Experience Extant, the UK’s leading company of visually impaired artists, is developing a new project exploring the realities of prison life from a visually impaired perspective. We are looking to speak with visually impaired individuals who have either firsthand experience of prison or who have visited […]

A group of Courtyard Hereford staff members standing in a line posing for a photo with Anthony, Post-Enhance VI facilitator.

Enhance Year 1

Posted on: 12 Sep 2025

Extant – Post Enhance – Evaluation Summary – 2024/25 (Year 1) Contributions from Caroline Jeyaratnam-Joyner (Enhance Training Manager), Ian Abbott (Operations Director) and Matthew Cock (Independent Evaluator) Background Over the last 10 years we’ve created and honed the idea of ‘Enhanced Performances’, a form of affordable access provision to support small-scale touring companies to engage […]

The Extant team VICS and Holly Gifford stand for a group photo outside ZOO playground. Louisa and Ellen are holding the ZOO playground show board.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025

Posted on: 21 Aug 2025

Extensive BBC Press Coverage for Extant at the Edinburgh Festival 2025 Our aim to make the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 more accessible to visually impaired audiences has been a resounding success. Thanks to funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation who support our Enhance programme, we’ve been able to attract a lot of press attention, demonstrate […]

A wide landscape shot of two white people onstage. One is fully lit and wearing yellow. The other in shadow. The stage is lit a smokey blue.

Collective Dreaming Callout

Posted on: 24 Jul 2025

Collective Dreaming – October 2025 and January 2026 Opportunity This Collective Dreaming is part of a series of Extant wide interventions across 2025/26 including: organisational research and development periods and a brand-new role we’re currently recruiting – Thinker-in-Residence. Extant are in the middle of a period of planned leadership and organisational change and are exploring […]

Ava is a young white woman. She has long curled light brown hair, wears a necklace and a navy lace-patterned v shaped dress.

Starting Out In The Arts

Posted on: 23 Jul 2025

What’s Useful To Know – Insights for Blind and Visually Impaired People When Starting Out in the Arts After completing a Masters in Applied Theatre and gaining experience through internships, placements, and a mix of freelance and contract-based work, I began to reflect on all the things I wish I’d known when starting out. These […]

A trio of performers on stage. From left to right, a bald white man wearing a beige jumpsuit with his neck craned to the middle, a person wearing a full body white hazmat suit standing elevated, and an older woman with curly grey hair smiling with hands clutched.

Thinker-In-Residence (Internship)

Posted on: 11 Jul 2025

Applications are now open for our Thinker-In-Residence (internship) Extant is delighted to be offering a Thinker-in-Residence (Internship) as part of the Get Set Progress scheme. Extant is the UK’s leading professional performing arts company that explores visual impairment to create unique and innovative artistic experiences, placing visually impaired people at the centre of all it […]

The Extermination of Disabled People at Work

Posted on: 27 Jun 2025

The Extermination of Disabled People at Work – Access To Work in 2025 Each week at our Extant team meeting we offer a nugget of information from the arts news world that has caught our attention. My initial go to place is Disability Arts Online, so imagine my alarm last month (23rd May to be […]

Exterior of ZOO Southside, a large stone church-style building with pointed towers and arched windows. A sign reading 'ZOO SOUTHSIDE' in bold black letters on a white background hangs above the entrance.

Visually impaired access doesn’t need to break the budget

Posted on: 19 Jun 2025

Access for visually impaired audiences doesn’t need to break the budget At Extant, we are often approached by artists keen to make their work accessible to visually impaired audiences, but commonly they feel blocked by lack of knowledge, time and resources. We know that for many artists, particularly those working at fringe level, these can […]

Extant’s First Trainee Creative Producer

Posted on: 9 Jun 2025

Welcome Ava Brewster Extant are delighted to announced that Ava Brewster has been appointed as our first Trainee Creative Producer and starts her role in June 2025. Our Artistic Director, Maria Oshodi states that “with the current paucity of skilled theatre producers in the industry, I am proud that we are going some way […]

8 visually impaired people and a sighted access worker are moving around the space during a status exercise. They’re holding low body positions with their heads down.

No Dramas- The Process of a National Pilot

Posted on: 13 May 2025

No Dramas – The Process of a National Pilot From October 2024-March 2025, we delivered 20* (*actually 21 but who’s counting?) No Dramas workshops across the country. No Dramas had previously only happened in London and online with a focus on improvisation, so our task with this pilot was to create a new 5 session […]

Announcing our second Trainee Artistic Director

Posted on: 29 Apr 2025

Extant are delighted to announced that Tam Gilbert has been appointed as the second Trainee Artistic Director (TAD2) and will start her role in April 2025. Our Artistic Director, Maria Oshodi states that “it is with great excitement that we welcome Tam as our second Trainee Artistic Director to Extant – I am sure she […]