The latest round of our Connections Through Culture grants are now open, supporting new cultural partnerships and collaborations between the UK and China. The grant scheme provides seed funding for small to medium-sized organisations, offering space to test artistic ideas, and explore audience engagement and public platforms across cultural contexts.
A previous grant-supported project, Diversity After Dark, shows how visibility can help build new audiences, attract partners, and establish the foundations for longer-term viability.
Diversity After Dark: growing programmes with commercial support
For the Disability Arts sector, this can be a particularly important entry point. As venues and festivals continue to recover post-pandemic, disability-led work is not always seen as a programming priority and can struggle to identify opportunities to showcase new work. The indefinite postponement of the Shanghai International Deaf Festival in 2023 due to funding and permit constraints, illustrates some of the challenges that the independent infrastructure is weathering.
At the same time, audiences and producers are clearly eager to bring disability-led cultural activity into public spaces. The Connect+ Festival, developed by Shanghai-based Accessivation in collaboration with London-based Deaf Rave, is one recent example. Supported through Connections Through Culture, the project centred around Diversity After Dark, a series of public events coordinated by Alice Hu and Troi Lee, including performances, DJ workshops and rooftop dance parties for Deaf and hearing audiences.
As the project developed, increased visibility began to open up further opportunities, helping test audience demand, and identifying potential avenues or trajectories for growth. Commercial partners offered venues and in-kind contributions, enabling the work to expand from Shanghai to additional events in Haikou.
More broadly, there is growing interest from private companies in supporting Disability-led cultural work, often linked to Corporate Social Responsibility priorities or brand alignment. In a stretched funding landscape, corporate support can offer a way of scaling capacity, but requires careful alignment of values and expectations. For example, the 2022 Disability Arts Festival Diverse As We Are secured sponsorship from a variety of partners including Ottobock, Porsche, and Oatly who contributed access equipment, staffing, and free coffee stands run by Deaf baristas.
Shaping the story: media attention and representation
For Connect+, one of the most unexpected outcomes was the media attention the project garnered. Coverage in regional media such as Shanghai Observer, alongside an interview published in the state-owned digital platform The Paper, helped amplify the project’s reach. By framing the coverage through an interview format, Alice Hu foregrounded the creative work behind the events, and offered an alternative narrative to Deaf-led practice– one centred on nightlife, joy, and cultural participation rather than stereotypes of adversity or inspiration.
