On 29 and 30 July, the Relaxed Festival Site at TouchBase Pears will be a joyous, welcoming Games experience for everyone. Out inclusive sports and arts programme will allow everyone to be themselves, as well as offering an opportunity to learn and try new things.
Come and visit us for an engaging and enriching couple of days, focusing on people's senses; great smelling food, familiar sounds, and friendly faces. The Relaxed Festival Site will connect anyone who identifies as disabled, neurodivergent or has specific access needs to the Games in a in a way that has never been done before.
Please note that capacity is limited, to ensure your place book here: sense.org.uk
Travel Information
Bus Routes: 11A/11C, 61, 63, 76, X21, 20, 46, 10S
Nearest Rail Service: Selly Oak Rail Station
Limited amount of parking available to blue badge holders
Friday 29 July
Throughout the day, look out for:
- Inclusive music workshops - 15 minute workshops breaking boundaries between what we hear and what we feel, experience live musicians performing improvised experimental music through our vibrating platforms. Come in and listen with your whole body, or pick up an instrument and join in. This is music you can touch!
- Bring the Power Workshops: Bring the Power will delivery a range of themed workshops for young people in Birmingham and the West Midlands. The workshops offer interactive ways to engage and develop the knowledge and skills of our young people, through fun physical and creative activity bringing them closer to Birmingham 2022.
- Sense Internal Garden: Did you know that every plant has its own unique 'voice'? Experience a garden like never before as you listen to and feel the vibrations of plants in real time as they grow around you.
Scheduled Programme |
||
| TIME | PROGRAMME |
INFO |
| 12.00 & 13.20 | Incredibubble Bubble Show |
In the Garden (Grass Area) Incredibubble Bubble Show is a Sandwell based non-profit org, and we run a huge variety of workshops across different physical and creative arts. Multi generationally, engaging and inclusive activities for all ages and abilities. They fill outdoor areas with millions of bubbles, using different equipment to create waves of different sized bubbles, mega giant, snow, and a wall of bubbles! |
| 12.05 & 18.55 | Q Sermon |
At the Buzz Q Sermon is a poet, DJ and sharer of experience, bringing a DJ set which highlights the sounds of the Commonwealth. Combining Afro Beat, Hip/Hi Life, and spiritual sounds from the diaspora and ancestors. |
| 13.00 & 14.00 | Sensory Walks | A sensory exploration of the canal leading from Sense TouchBase Pears to the University of Birmingham, a host Venue for the Games. Delivered by Gro Organic. |
| 13.40 | Table Tennis |
At the Buzz Come and have a go at table tennis and learn new skills! |
| 15.00 & 19.25 | Ascension Dance: 'The Other Side' |
In the Garden (Grass Area) A physical dance performance that tackles ideas of consumerism. |
| 16.00 | Advocacy Matters: Personal Best |
At the Buzz Personal Best has been inspired by the stories, reflections and hopes of five participants at different stages in their lives, who have been/are challenged, not only by their disabilities, but by the limitations mainstream models of infrastructure impose upon their day to day. It is a sensory screening of a film about lived experience and optimism - hitting the wall, but how to go about pushing through and onwards, towards a more inclusive, represented future. It will contain five short segments, with sensory props for audience members and BSL. |
| 16.40 | Ascension Dance Workshop |
In the Garden (Grass Area) Ascension Dance workshop for children and young people (7-14), aimed to get people moving, shaking and creating their own dances. |
| 17.45 | Ascension parkour workshop |
In the Garden (Grass Area) Parkour workshop for children and young people and young people using one of Ascension bespoke scaffold sets. |
Saturday 30 July
Throughout the day, look out for:
- Birmingham REP Early Years Workshop - Interactive storytelling and relaxed performances aimed at children aged 3-5 and their families to encourage play and drama within a home setting using songs, stories and simple props.
- The Creation Station - Event experiences designed to spark each child or adult's natural curiosity, to help create magical moments, treasured keepsakes and fantastic memories of a wonderful experience.
- Inclusive Sense arts workshop with Sarah Millin - Come and explore colours, textures and patterns inspired by the Paralympics. Create shapes and make marks using everyday waste materials.
- Sense Internal Garden - Did you know that every plants has its own unique 'voice'? Experience a garden like never before as you listen to and feel the vibrations of plants in real time as they grow around you.
- Inclusive Sense music workshop - 15 minute workshops breaking boundaries between what we hear and what we feel, experience live musicians performing improvised experimental music through our vibrating platforms. Come in and listen with your while body, or pick up an instrument and join in. This is music you can touch!
Scheduled Programme |
||
| TIME | PROGRAMME | INFO |
| 11.00 -12.00 | Birds of Paradise Theatre Company: 'The Super Special Disability Roadshow' | Drawing on stories and experiences of disabled children and adults, the show explores what it means to be disabled and how different generations of disabled people feel about their identities, with characteristic BOP humour, hearty and honesty. |
| 12.00, 13.35 & 15.10 | Balloonatic |
In the Hub Here, we'll be decorating people with incredible hats, giant costumes and hilarious balloon toys! Undisputedly the UK's most extravagant balloon artists! |
| 12.10 |
Chair Volleyball |
At the Buzz Chair volleyball sessions which are open to all, with a range of resources for those with additional support needs. |
| 12.25 & 18.20 | Bill Read: Forbidden Identity |
In the Garden (Grass Area) Bill Read is a fresh, exciting deaf choreographer, and an inspiring teacher of dance. His outdoor performance 'Forbidden Identity' explores the personal struggle of a Deaf child growing up in a hearing world; denied access to British Sign Language and a Deaf community. Using street dance, tutting, mime and sign language, the story of Forbidden Identity is rooted in the deaf experience of growing up in the hearing world and the message will speak to anyone who has felt like an outsider. |
| 15.15 & 17.15 | Incredibubble Bubble Show |
In the Garden (Grass Area) A bubble filled sensory experience using bubbles of all shapes and sizes from the smallest to giant, snow and even a wall of bubbles. |
| 16.35 | Table Tennis |
At the Buzz Come and have a go at table tennis and learn new skills! |
