Our Creative Lab gathers selected national and international experts from the inclusive cultural sector with cultural practitioners from the performing arts in Germany.
Hard Facts /// Programme /// Experts
HARD FACTS
Date: Thursday, 25.09.2025, 3:00 pm until Sunday, 28.09.2025, 1:00 pm
Location: Akademie der Kulturellen Bildung (Academy of Cultural Education), 42857 Remscheid
Target group: Art and culture workers, especially educators of all disciplines, from venues and the independent scene
Number of participants: max. 25 – 30 participants
Experts:
- Dr. Nanna Lüth (she/her), art pedagogy/art mediation
- Stopgap Dance Company / Lily Norton (they/them), Content and Access Artist, and Hannah Sampson (she/they), Senior Dance Artist
- Natalie Dedreux (she/her), activist and writer & Anne Leichtfuß (she/her), interpreter and translator for Easy Language
INCLUSIVE ART MEDIATION: CREATIVE. PARTICIPATIVE. POLYPHONIC.
In this Creative Lab, we turn the situation upside down: What if participation and art mediation were part of artistic processes from the very beginning?
With Prof Dr Nanna Lüth (D), the internationally celebrated inclusive dance company Stopgap Dance Company (UK), and with Natalie Dedreux (D), activist and writer, together with Anne Leichtfuß (D), translator and interpreter for Easy Language, a space for new perspectives will open up: In interactive workshops with practical examples from dance, theatre and museums, you will experience how inclusive art mediation and participation can be central elements of the overall artistic concept from the very beginning. Together we will reflect on power relations, explore creative forms of participation and develop concrete ideas for our own practice. For all those who rethink art mediation – open, accessible and in dialogue.
The Academy of Cultural Education in Remscheid, located in the middle of nature, has very beautiful, spacious, barrier-free event rooms in which your collective creativity can fully unfold from a wide variety of perspectives in exchange with international speakers and colleagues.
LANGUAGE:
The creative lab takes place in easily understandable German and English spoken language. Simultaneous interpreting is available during the entire creative lab if required, see “Accessibility”.
ACCOMMODATION:
Single or double room with shower, full board
ACCESSIBILITY:
All meeting rooms are accessible. Assistance dogs are welcome
The academy has a limited number of single and double rooms with varying degrees of accessibility – please be sure to specify your exact accessibility needs when registering.
We will provide the following assistance if needed, please be sure to indicate your requirements when registering:
- Professional simultaneous interpretation English spoken language – German spoken language
- Professional simultaneous interpretation German spoken language – German sign language (DGS)
- Peer to peer audio description
- Work assistance or mobility assistance on site
Contribution to costs according to self-assessment
Category 1: 210 € + advance booking (e.g., students, freelance artists)
Category 2: 250 € + advance booking (e.g., employees of independent ensembles)
Category 3: 290 € + advance booking (e.g., employees of large cultural institutions)
For questions and further information, contact:
Charlott Dahmen (she/her)
E-mail: beratung@un-label.eu
Phone: +49 221 5501544
PROGRAMME
THURSDAY
Seminar times: 3:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Keynote: Prof. Dr. Nanna Lüth
Join Stopgap Dance Company’s Lily Norton for a 30-minute introduction to Stopgap Company and their role as Access Artist.
The session begins with a broader reflection on what it means to be an Access Artist today. Is it a recognised profession? Together, we’ll explore the evolution of this role and its growing importance in the performing arts.
Lily will share insights into their unique position, which blends access and artistry—part of which involves exploring audio description not just as a tool, but as a rich, creative form. You’ll experience a sample of Lily’s work through a live reading or audio playback, offering a glimpse into how access can reshape the way we experience dance.
The session will also highlight how the diversity within Stopgap’s ensemble – comprising Deaf, disabled, neurodivergent and non-disabled artists – shapes the company’s artistic processes. Who are Stopgap’s audiences? Who feels addressed and in what ways?
Beyond its performances, Stopgap also reaches a wide community through trainings, workshops, and online content – extending its commitment to inclusive artistic practice far beyond the stage.
FRIDAY and SATURDAY
Seminar times: 9:30 am – 12:45 pm / 3pm – 6:15 pm
To ensure an intensive work in small groups, the workshops of Stopgapdance and Natalie Dedreux/Anne Leichtfuß will be offered parallel – with alternation, so that participants can attend both workshops.
Describing Dance: Where Access Meets Artistry / Stopgap Dance Company
Led by Access Artist and audio describer Lily Norton, and supported by Senior Dance Artist Hannah Sampson, this workshop explores how cultural mediation, access, and artistic practice can come together in meaningful ways.
Using examples from Stopgap Dance Company’s performances Dance Tapes and Lived Fiction, participants will explore inclusive mediation strategies such as creative captioning, art projection, and accessible formats like Audio Flyers, Touch Tours, Visual and Sonic Stories, and Relaxed Performance Settings. These approaches enhance audience engagement and open up dance to a broader and more diverse public.
In the hands-on portion of the workshop, participants will learn about sound and audio description as powerful entry points into dance. Through guided experimentation with voice, narrative, and sound, each person will create their own “audio signature” – a personal, auditory expression of movement. Audio description will be presented not only as an accessibility tool but as a creative practice in its own right, offering transferable skills for inclusive cultural mediation. The workshop concludes with a collaborative exchange focused on adaptable ideas, practical approaches, and creative strategies for inclusive cultural mediation and audience engagement across different contexts.
Participatory and understandable – from the idea to the exhibition in Easy Language / Natalie Dedreux & Anne Leichtfuß
How do you participatively plan an exhibition? How can people with and without Down’s syndrome decide on the choice of topics, exhibits, presentation and design? What language should be used in such an exhibition so that it is understandable for different groups of people? This is what Natalie Dedreux and Anne Leichtfuß, who were part of the TOUCHDOWN exhibition team from 2016 to 2018, will be reporting on. The exhibition was shown at five different locations, accompanied by tandem tours consisting of people with and without Down’s syndrome and a training concept for the respective venues. At all locations, people with Down’s syndrome contributed their own content to the exhibition, so that the concept continues to grow and change to this day.
In a next step, the participatory working method will be transferred from the medium exhibition to the field of theatre. How did the piece Anti-gone in Easy Language at the Münchner Kammerspiele develop?
For working together in the workshop, please bring an object of your own. This object will be part of a small exhibition that will be created in the workshop.
SUNDAY
Seminar time: 9:30 am – 1:00 pm
Starting the day with Hannah
Physical intro with Hannah Sampson, Stopgapdance
Presentation of the Results from the Workshops
Participants of the workshops present their respective work results and main findings in a plenary session.
Question & Answers
The concluding part of the creative lab offers plenty of space for questions from the participants and further joint transfer of the findings to participants’ own work.
Experts
Prof. Dr. Nanna Lüth (she/her)
Nanna Lüth, Dr phil., works and researches in the fields of art, art education and media education. She is committed to contemporary artistic practice and deconstructive, inclusive educational work. After gaining diverse professional experience in art mediation and research, she was a junior professor for art didactics/gender studies at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) from 2013-21. 2018-20 she held the professorship for art education at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Since 2021 she is chairwoman of the Berlin BDK – professional association for art pedagogy. In winter semester 24/25, she held the W3 professorship for art didactics at the UdK Berlin. Previously, she held the guest professorship for discrimination-critical didactics in the field of the arts. Her main areas of work are: Cooperative and interdisciplinary pedagogy; development of contemporary didactic approaches to art; reflexivity of difference and humour in art education.
Stopgap Dance Company is driven by a diverse creative team who uses dance as a movement for change. Our mission is to create an inclusive world where diversity is not just accepted but pursued, a world where no one is limited by prejudice against Deaf, Disabled or neurodivergent people.
What Stopgap does:
- Tours dance productions across the UK and internationally. Our current touring production, Lived Fiction https://www.stopgapdance.com/production/lived-fiction/, won the One Dance UK award for Artistic Innovation in 2024.
- Drives change for Disabled artists in the dance sector through training, advocacy, collaboration and partnerships.
- Creates community through Youth Companies and Outreach.
Lily Norton (they/them) Access Artist
Lily is an autistic dancer and visual artist who plays a key role in Stopgap’s online communication, and ensures accessibility throughout artistic, educational and online projects. They are interested in developing creative methods of increasing accessibility to dance and choreography.
Lily is the live audio describer, access artist & co-writer of Stopgap’s most recent stage production, Lived Fiction.
Hannah Sampson (she/they) Senior Dance Artist
Hannah joined Stopgap as a company dancer in 2016, after growing from a long-time youth company member, to a trainee and apprentice. She has toured nationally and internationally in numerous productions; most recently collaborating and performing in Stopgap’s latest award winning indoor production, Lived Fiction. Hannah is a person with Down’s syndrome, and is passionate about dance and an advocate for equity in the arts, she hopes to be a leader and role model for other Disabled artists.
Natalie Dedreux (she/her)
Natalie Dedreux is an activist and author of the magazine Ohrenkuss https://ohrenkuss.de/ohrenblog/page-1.html. She prefers to write about music and travelling. She is an activist and campaigns for the rights of people with Down’s syndrome. She is also an examiner for Easy Language. Her first book was published in 2022: My life is cool: Our world and what I have to say about it. Natalie Dedreux enjoys going to concerts and loves Bollywood films.
Anne Leichtfuß (she/her)
Anne Leichtfuß is a translator and interpreter for Easy Language. For more than 10 years, she has worked primarily at the intersection of Easy Language and art and culture. Together with colleagues, she founded the participatory research institute TOUCHDOWN 21. In 2023, she translated Anti-gone into Easy Language for the Münchner Kammerspiele, the first piece to be staged entirely in Easy Language. She plays the ukulele and collects glasses.
Experts from left to right: Lily Norton, Hannah Sampson, Natalie Dedreux, Anne Leichtfuß
The advanced training and professional development program is made possible through the project Access Maker – Innovationshub
