Midlands Arts Centre have announced a three-year project supported by Film Hub Midlands entitled Expanding the Frame. The initiative seeks to significantly improve access to cinema for disabled audiences in the West Midlands.

With Film Hub Midlands’ support, MAC will pilot new programmes and events, ensuring that disabled people with long-standing physical and/or mental conditions and those identifying as D/deaf or neurodivergent can experience film in an accessible environment.

In the first year, Expanding the Frame will rapidly increase the number of screenings featuring Closed Captions and Audio Description across our programme, as well as launching a new monthly sensory screening in conjunction with the team behind MAC’s popular Colour Box family screenings.

The first year will also feature a season of films which look at how disabled people have been portrayed on screen, put together by Conor O’Donovan, a guest programmer with lived experience of disability who is keen to get audiences to think beyond the usual tropes.

The project will also allow MAC’s Associate Cinema Programmer, Elaine Lillian Joseph, to utilise her extensive experience working within the world of audio description, ensuring that even more of the arts charity’s new release films are open to the visually impaired.

Expanding the Frame looks to make meaningful changes to cinema programming, promoting a culture of disability equity in the arts sector.

For more information, visit: macbirmingham.co.uk