Salamanda Tandem Film (7 Minutes)
This 7 Minute film gives an overview of Salamanda Tandem, and the work of director Isabel Jones, commissioned by People Dancing: The National Organisation for Community Dance in the UK. The film was made by Ben Williams, directed by Louise Wildish, including film extracts and photography of Salamanda Tandem’s work by Geoffrey Fielding, Richard Hughes and Geoff Young. The film featuring performers: Indra Slavena, Mickel Smithen, Takashi Kikuchi and narrative Isabel Jones.
Isabel and Geoffrey together with other colleagues and fellow artists, lead an arts charity dedicated to inclusion and diversity in the arts, and access to well-being. Salamanda Tandem aims to nurture and celebrate the deepest resources of human creativity and creative expression: working across movement, dance, sound, music, voice, live performance, installation and hybrid forms.
The work is led by Disabled people, seldom heard carers, loved ones and family, peers and friends working in collaboration with education, arts, healthcare, and well-being professionals, where people with lived experience of discrimination are at the heart of the leadership, invention and creation of the work – finding a place on their own terms.
We are dedicated to an inclusive, somatic and various art – that supports the realisation of well being and potential. So we go where the people are and the work is devised in homes, parks, public spaces, outdoors and in buildings of all kinds where participants become creators, and audiences are part of the art itself.
Equally committed to the provision of professional training and the documentation of its work, the charity was founded in 1989 on a series of values and principles: at a time when Disabled people were segregated from society for a lifetime, living in Water Tower hospitals, and institutions. Salamanda Tandem worked directly in those places, across Nottinghamshire and the entire UK, bringing person centered practice and pioneering attitudinal change. As part of the work, Salamanda Tandem designed and published a wide range of training publications and courses, leading courses for thousands of healthcare, arts and education professionals,across the country, and internationally, embedding the principles and practice of inclusion and equity.
Our work continues, it is still urgent, despite a different environment, where positive change has happened and the Equality Act of 2010 makes discrimination illegal. We saw how the Pandemic and its aftermath have created huge disparity, on top of years of austerity, permanent loss of healthcare services, socioeconomic inequity, where people’s basic care needs, housing and health are neglected. A mental health crisis has emerged, and it appears that although we have greater awareness of discrimination and are making efforts to remove it, this requires redistribution of resources and wealth, and we are seeing a backlash in the UK and internationally, and a swing towards self centered attitudes.
The yoga sector is a multi million £ industry in the UK, and offers great benefits to our mental and physical health, yet we still see great disparity there, and very little of this industry reaches Disabled people, or others with protected characteristics and suffer discrimination. Over the last 4 years, Salamanda Tandem has stepped up its work in the arena: yoga teachers can clearly make a big difference and reach thousands of people on the ground annually. However, the demographic is largely missing the contribution of Disabled people and others who need it, either as students, or as teachers. So as part of our work we are helping develop yoga, as we did in the community Dance industry over 3 decades, helping raise awareness, develop training and make it inclusive of all bodies.
All the board members are yoga practitioners, our Artistic Director Isabel Jones is a senior Iyengar yoga teacher, and our board member Geoffrey Fielding is an Intermediate Iyengar yoga teacher, with 30 years of experience as a registered Osteopath. Through award winning Movement 4 Health and our studio: Iyengar yoga Studio West Bridgford, the daily practice of yoga is an essential part of our well-being. Built on the inclusive principles of Salamanda Tandem, and the classical tradition of Iyengar yoga from India, the studio is a supported environment, a safe and welcoming space that celebrates and welcomes ‘difference’.
https://www.communitydance.org.uk/programmes/disability-and-inclusion/films