The national disability charity, Sense, in partnership with Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), is inviting people with sensory impairments and complex needs living in Birmingham to participate in a major new programme: Sensibility, aimed at making art more accessible to people with sensory impairments by changing the way art is made.

How do you experience art if you don’t know what art is?  Sense’s Sensibility project aims to answer this question by exploring how art is experienced by people with sensory impairments, and using this knowledge to build a new way of making art – which puts sensory experiences at the heart of the process.

The programme is co-directed by Graeae Theatre and Stephanie Singer (BitterSuite). Four artists, Justin Wiggan, Saranjit Birdi, Lyn Cox and Becca Thomas (InterAction), have been commissioned to develop art with people with sensory impairments, and both the process and results of these pioneering collaborations will be shared with the wider arts sector at the inaugural Sensibility Festival in May 2018.

The festival, which will be hosted at Touchbase Pears & MAC Birmingham, will invite audiences and art makers into an experiential world dedicated to exploring, listening to and savouring the details of the bodily experience. It promises to be a combination of commissioned work, guest speakers, artists and a sensory installation co-created by the Sensibility participants.

Stephanie Tyrrell, National Art Manger at Sense, said: “The programme will challenge conventions of established art making methods and provide progressive, socially engaged, experimental art opportunities that nurture and inspire the creative potential of people with sensory impairments and complex needs and the wider artistic community.

We hope that it will enhance creative opportunities for people with complex needs, which will in turn enrich current contemporary art.”

Funded by Arts Council England, the programme has already received attention for two summer events: ‘Descriptive Realities’, a digital installation for the Birmingham Weekender, which invited customers at John Lewis to experience how people with sensory impairments experience the world; and ‘Kinesthesia’, which brought together professional dance artists and participants  to explore dynamic practice for Inclusive Dance 2017.

Sense would like to hear from people with sensory impairments and complex needs who are interested in participating in the project, through exhibitions, workshops and performances.

City Year UK volunteer Holly O’Shea, from Selly Oak, Birmingham, has been awarded one of the first Domino’s ODEs - Order of the Domino’s Empire - in recognition of her charity work.

Loughborough University student Holly, 20, will now receive free pizza from Domino’s for a year after being nominated for the award by her boyfriend Jonah.

Holly is spending her placement year volunteering full-time with City Year UK at Bristnall Hall Academy in Oldbury, where she serves as a mentor and role model to pupils as part of a team.

As part of Bristnall Hall’s inaugural Lighthouse Team, Holly serves as a peer mentor to the pupils, being a part of their school day from breakfast club to homework club. As well as taking a whole school approach, each member of the team has a focus list of pupils who particularly benefit from extra support, which could be related to attendance, behaviour or curriculum results.

City Year UK is a youth social action charity which believes that through a year of full-time volunteering, 18 to 25-year-olds can make a real difference to the life chances of school pupils from the most disadvantaged communities, whilst gaining valuable leadership experience and boosting their own career prospects.

Holly said: “Winning this award was honestly such an amazing surprise! Helping people already comes with so much satisfaction and to receive this recognition on top of that is really just an incredible extra.”

As well as giving her time to volunteer with City Year, Holly was also the youngest ever athlete to compete in the Dubai Ironman Challenge to raise money for Palestinian refugees and spent a summer teaching children in Uganda how to read and write. Whilst at university at Loughborough she ran campaigns to support the LGBT community.

Each recipient was presented with the pizza-shaped ODE medal and will receive free, freshly made Domino’s pizza for a year. Only a limited number of people are being awarded the honour each year, based on nominations from the public via Domino’s UK Facebook page.

Nearly one in five adults are unlikely to wear a poppy to mark Remembrance Day this year including nearly one in three under-25s, a nationwide study from independent researchers Consumer Intelligence shows.

Its research found 11% of adults will not wear poppies, while another nine per cent are unsure about supporting the annual Poppy Appeal, which raises around £43 million a year for Service personnel and veterans. Among the under-25s, around 21% will not wear poppies and 11% are unsure.

Their main objection is that they feel bullied into supporting the appeal, but around a fifth of those who object to poppies say they believe the Remembrance symbol glorifies war. One in six oppose current military action by UK armed forces.

The study also highlights ongoing support for the Appeal, which last year aimed to ‘Rethink Remembrance’ in recognition of the sacrifices of a generation of veterans and service personnel. Around 32% of donors plan to give more for the Poppy Appeal this year.

It also underlined acceptance of different views on the Poppy Appeal –  just 29% of adults believe poppies should be compulsory in the run-up to Remembrance Day, which falls on Sunday November 12^th this year.

The Poppy Appeal has been the subject of controversy in recent years with a debate raging around wearing white poppies to symbolise pacifism, and criticism of politicians for not wearing poppies.

Consumer Intelligence’s research found one in 12 people (8%) have suffered hostility from others for wearing poppies, or experienced arguments. Around one in 20 parents say they would not encourage children to wear poppies in case they are targeted.

Ian Hughes, Chief Executive of Consumer Intelligence said: “The Poppy Appeal commands widespread support and raises huge sums but not everyone agrees with it or backs it.

“It is interesting however that tolerance of those who oppose poppies is so high with most people accepting it is a matter of personal choice.”

Around three out of four adults say that their workplace or college marks the two-minute silence and even 72% of those who are not at say they expect to mark the two-minute silence.

National disabled people’s charity Revitalise has a mystery on its hands…

Revitalise recently launched ‘Wish You Were Here’, a campaign to highlight the importance of holidays, fronted by the charity’s Vice President Dame Judi Dench, shortly to be embroiled in a whodunnit of her own in cinemas as Princess Dragomiroff in ‘Murder on the Orient Express’.

The Wish You Were Here campaign is inviting celebrities to send the charity a doodle or some words about a treasured holiday memory on specially designed postcards.

All the postcards received so far, from celebrities such as Sir Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Christopher Eccleston, Warwick Davis and Zoe Wanamaker CBE, have been signed – with the exception of five (actually, says the charity, one of the five has been signed, it’s just we can’t work out the signature!).

Revitalise is now calling on the celebrities in question to come forward and claim credit for their contributions.

The mystery postcards can be seen on the Revitalise’s website, www.revitalise.org.uk. Supporters are also welcome to offer up their own theories and leads as to the identity of the celebrity contributors, including translating the mystery signature. Revitalise has come up with a special hashtag, #whosedoodle, for this purpose.

The charity devised Wish You Were Here to highlight the importance of holidays, especially for disabled people and carers, who find getting away particularly difficult. The campaign celebrates the sharing of holiday memories, since the opportunity to share one’s stories with others is something we all love about a good holiday.

Revitalise is to hold a special exhibition of the postcards it receives next year. The celebrity contributions will then be auctioned to raise much-needed funds for the charity, so it is important that all the postcards be ascribed to the individuals who drew or wrote them.

Revitalise CEO Chris Simmonds commented:

“Here at Revitalise we love a mystery, and all we know about these unsigned cards is that each one was contributed by a celebrity. So who are the ‘Famous Five’?

“If we can’t put names to the postcards we won’t be able to auction them, so there’s a lot at stake!

“That’s why we’ll be posting the mystery celebrity postcards on our website and social media and urging the mystery celebrities to come forward and claim credit for their handiwork.”

The mystery celebrities are urged to claim their handiwork and send Revitalise a signed picture so that the postcards can be auctioned to raise money for the charity’s vital work. Celebrities can contact Revitalise directly or make themselves known to the charity on social media, using the hashtag #whosedoodle.

Malta, an archipelago located in the sunny Mediterranean, has been one of the best kept secrets for a Jewish Heritage Experience. Exploring a Jewish presence that dates back to the Roman Period, over 200 guests attended the American Sephardi Federation and New York Jewish Travel Guide’s special Jewish Heritage Malta program created in partnership with the Malta Tourism Authority (MTA), Exclusively Malta, and the Corinthia Palace Hotel, held recently at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

The Jewish Heritage Malta evening was opened by Jason Guberman, Executive Director, American Sephardi Federation, who praised Malta’s cultural diversity, including centuries-old Jewish connections still visible at several heritage sites, and noted how some Maltese are discovering Jewish ancestry.

The program included welcome remarks from H.E. Carmelo Inguanez, Malta’s Permanent Representative to the UN, and Joel Levy, Past President and CEO of the Center for Jewish History, who shared his Malta experience from when he lived there as a former Foreign Service Officer at the US Embassy in Malta, at which time he helped the community relocate the synagogue to an historic building.

The featured speaker, Dr. John Baldacchino, Director, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Arts Institute and Professor of Arts Education, a scholar of Mediterranean aesthetics, discussed the history of the Jews in Malta. Jewish roots in Malta date back to the 4th and 5th Century during the Roman period as evidenced by several Jewish Catacombs with drawings depicting the Jewish Menorah (candelabra) that can be found at the St. Paul’s Catacomb site near Rabat. The long Jewish history includes periods of enrichment as well as slavery, depending on who was ruling Malta at the time.

Michelle Buttigieg, MTA Representative North America, then told the audience that the Jewish Heritage Malta program was launched in May, 2016, in recognition of the importance of the Jewish Heritage niche travel market in North America. “MTA invited, with the support of Exclusively Malta and Corinthia Palace Hotel, an American Jewish journalist, Harry Wall, and world-renowned photographer Richard Nowitz, to visit Malta and create a video and story about the Maltese Jewish Experience”, said Ms. Buttigieg, who then shared the video with the audience.

Jason Allan, Managing Director, Exclusively Malta, then presented the Jewish Heritage Experience in Malta program that his company designed. He spoke about today’s Jewish Community in Malta, which although small in numbers (less than 200), is still very vibrant. The majority of the contemporary Maltese Jewish Community originate from Gibraltar, England, North Africa, Portugal, and Turkey during the French and British rule from 1798. During the early 20th century, since the islands did not have a rabbi of their own, rabbis would often be flown in from Sicily to perform religious ceremonies. During World War II, Malta was the only European country that did not require visas for Jews fleeing Nazism and numerous Maltese Jews fought Germany in the British Army during the war.

Exclusively Malta can make arrangements for visitors to meet the local Jewish community and to attend Sabbath and holiday prayers at the Synagogue. Allan noted that two years ago Chabad set-up the first Kosher restaurant in Malta, which is centrally located in St. Julian’s.

Points of special Jewish Heritage interest on Malta include old landmarks and street signs. In the walled city of Mdina, where the Jews made up almost one third of the population, there is a “Jewish Silk Market”; and in Valletta, Malta’s Capital and European Capital of Culture 2018, one can see the old “Jews Sally Port”.

Even the Island of Comino, almost uninhabited today but famous for the Blue Lagoon, has Jewish roots. Comino is where the well-known Sephardi-Jewish mystic and self-proclaimed messiah, Avraham Abulafia, lived from 1285 until his death in the 1290s. During this period, he compiled his Sefer ha Ot (“Book of the Sign”) as well as his last, and perhaps his most intelligible work, the meditation manual Imrei Shefer (“Words of Beauty”).

There are three Jewish cemeteries in Malta which although kept locked, can be visited through prior arrangements with Exclusively Malta. The stories gleaned from the tombstone inscriptions, are a rich narrative which includes Jewish soldiers who fought in WWI and were buried in Malta.

Ms. Buttigieg, commenting on the enthusiastic response to the New York event, said, “The Malta Tourism Authority, together with its partners for the Jewish Heritage Malta Program, Exclusively Malta and Corinthia Palace Hotel, look forward to increasing the number of Jewish tourists by hosting similar events to introduce the Jewish Heritage Malta experience, not just in the US and Canada, but in Israel and other countries as well.”