Posted on: 3 Nov 2026
Extant – Post Enhance – Evaluation Summary – 2025/26 (Year 2) Contributions from Caroline Jeyaratnam-Joyner (Enhance Training Manager), Ian Abbott (Operations Director) and Matthew Cock (Independent Evaluator) Background This is a summary of the outcomes of our Yr2 Post Enhance project. Post Enhance is a 3-year project working with up to 54 touring theatre companies […]
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Posted on: 28 Sep 2026
Reflections on the Unexpected By Tam Gilbert “Fifteen months – that’s a nice long time!” It’s flown by. I’m now in my last week as Trainee Artistic Director and have been reflecting on my time at Extant, and can honestly say, it’s been eclectic! But rather than focusing on the artistic side of my time […]
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Posted on: 2 Sep 2026
Extant’s extensive impact at Edinburgh Festival 2026 – including Meta partnership Building on the success of our work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2025, we returned this year with a significant increase in the number of activities, partnerships and profile delivered by the entire Extant team. This impact could not have been achieved without […]
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Posted on: 23 Jun 2026
Heliocentric Revolutions and Universal Design By Dr Maria Oshodi, Extant Artistic Director & CEO. The regional cultural centre in Torun, Poland invited me to contribute to their international conference, Universal Design in Performing Arts in early June 2026. This marked the culmination of their Universal Art Design (UAD) project that had worked with 36 artists […]
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Posted on: 16 Jun 2026
Testing The Future: How organisational R&D and Collective Dreaming informed the new shape of Extant By Ian Abbott, Extant Operations Director. Since 2023, Extant has been working towards a known transition. Our founder, CEO and Artistic Director Dr Maria Oshodi will be stepping down at the end of March 2027. In these intervening years, we’ve […]
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Posted on: 17 May 2026
Design and Disability / Beyond the Visual By Aisling Keavey, Extant Thinker-In Residence. In the last six months at Extant, I have explored recurring themes of access, perception, and knowledge prioritisation across archiving, exhibitions, conferences, symposia, and academic texts. A core tension stands out: while inclusion is attempted, cultural institutions still favour visual conventions. Efforts […]
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Posted on: 17 May 2026
Hawkwood – Matter and the immaterial Artistic Director, Dr Maria Oshodi reflects on the path to her PhD; as well as how the echo of the place Hawkwood, past and present, has played its part for Extant. What is the Matter? It is that in 1998, Blind and partially sighted theatre practitioners, Liam O’Carroll, Damien […]
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Posted on: 9 Mar 2026
Ladder of Access for Visually Impaired Audiences After the success of our work at Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, Extant will be returning to the Fringe this summer with even more ambitious plans! We’ll be announcing more details very soon, but in the meanwhile, our Artist Development Manager Louisa Sanfey has been working alongside the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and Visually Impaired Creators Scotland (VICS) to provide training and resources to artists […]
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Posted on: 2 Feb 2026
Attending Online Training as a Visually Impaired Trainee Creative Producer By Ava Brewster, Trainee Creative Producer As a Trainee Creative Producer, I’m keen to learn as much as I can, build my confidence, and develop skills I don’t yet have much experience in. When I was offered the chance to attend two online training sessions […]
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Posted on: 21 Jan 2026
Dance Description –Phenomenon or Fallacy By Dr Maria Oshodi, Artistic Director & CEO I’ve witnessed a range of visually impaired accessible dance presentations and am involved on consulting and dramaturgy on some dance R&D’s and up-coming dance performances. The question with this form is always whether something so visual, in motion an often wordless, can […]
Read more Posted on: 18 Nov 2025
Performing Ethnography and Diaspora: Irish Women Migrants and the Lived Archive By Aisling Keavey, Thinker-In-Residence. My practice-led research uses photography, moving image, and archiving to explore the experiences of Irish women migrants in the UK. In this piece, I look at both the performance and performativity of ethnography and diaspora from an Irish migrant perspective. […]
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Posted on: 18 Nov 2025
What is the difference between access consultancy, access dramaturgy and a car crash? By Dr Maria Oshodi, Artistic Director & CEO My experience of three recent AD consultancies has prompted this question in the ever confused, grasping and turbulent world of theatre making, where including integrated audio description (IAD) or VI representation in productions has been a desire, to do […]
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