Vision and Principles

Salamanda Tandem’s work is established within a framework of guiding principles.

The original impetus for the work began from lived experience at home with disabled family members, and then through person centred music practice with children & families on the autistic spectrum; working to change the tough and cruel medicalised environment of the early 1980’s, and simultaneously as detached youth dance work, with ‘kids at risk’ and shared leadership in dance with disenfranchised & criminalised black young people on the streets of Nottingham. Returning over the last 4 years and now in lockdown to our roots, our work has returned to the street and outdoor environs. Using the tools that have been carefully honed by Salamanda Tandem with 30 years of contributions from talented and committed artists, friends, family, participants and colleagues.

‘Equity’ ‘equality’ and ‘creativity’, are embedded at the heart of what we do, while we investigate the process of how to shift power to the excluded person and support them to move from passive recipient to active participant. We don’t know anything till we listen, and the art of listening to people of difference is a process to be learnt. So we aim to enquire, activate, and challenge hierarchy’s, to create an environment of attunement, and friendliness where people can share and change  an inaccessible space into one that supports their wellbeing.

Background

Salamanda Tandem aims to nurture and celebrate the deepest resources of human creativity.

Est. 1989, we are a company of collaborating artists, working across disciplines, to integrate socially disadvantaged, disabled people, seldom heard carers and their loved ones into a vision of a world where expressive potential is not constrained by social preconceptions or physical barriers.  The company is dedicated to an inclusive and various sensory art, led by Isabel Jones and developed by visually impaired and blind people,  beginning with Isabel’s father Lewis Jones, who developed a unique culture, within our family, and with his two brothers. All three: Lewis, Griff and Bill were blind from birth and became deafblind in early adulthood; but while the world saw disability and discriminated against them, the three, highly attuned to their inner imaginations were thought leaders in creativity.  This extra-ordinary spark for change, created this body of politicised artists, disabled people and seldom heard carers. We grew up to be the engineers of participation, and developers of socially engaged performance art, committed to the realisation of wellbeing in self and others.

Salamanda Tandem does not place its work in typical arts venues, where disabled people, and seldom heard carers with their loved ones cannot gracefully go. Yes we have knocked on many doors, worked in available corridors, taped off many a staircase, but the body of our work has been devised in homes, institutions, outdoor and public buildings of other kinds – in which people can find a place on their own terms.   A huge part of our work has been dedicated to institutional change in the UK: where it was normal for disabled people to be  incarcerated, humiliated with policies like behaviour modification, normalisation, cruel methods and medical practices, this led us into professional education, the training of artists, arts organisations, health care professionals, and into the publication & documentation of our methods and practice.

And on this point, we want to congratulate Arts Council England who have supported us to to play our part, and through careful policies and funding are transforming the arts from the elite it was, to one of the only places where disenfranchised people have an opportunity to be creators.

Blog

Salamanda Tandem’s sensory art is always growing, as it involves communion with nature, environment, and people, the art made out of these ingredients is our daily bread and what  improve our quality of life, and that of people around us

Read our selection of detailed project blog posts on this site, for a flavour of our work in sound, words and photographs