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1. Report of the First National Audio Description Conference organised by the Royal National Institute for the Blind and AUDEST (Audio Description Training for Theatres) Nottingham Playhouse Wednesday 19 March 1997 Audio Description Association Archive Series No. 1 ‘Purveyors of Happiness’ Report of the First National Audio Description Conference Nottingham Playhouse, 1997 Archive Series No. 1 published online by the Audio Description Association 2015 © Audio Description Association, 2015 www.audiodescription.co.uk Print copies are available on demand for the cost of production and delivery Contact [email protected] Report of the 1st National Audio Description Conference, Nottingham, 1997 1 Foreword The 1997 Nottingham Conference was held almost a decade after the first audio described performance in a mainstream British theatre: Stepping Out at Theatre Royal Windsor on 6 February 1988. The conference was a milestone in the development of audio description in the UK and, as audio description passes its quarter century, it seems a fitting moment to reproduce the report of the proceedings which was approved for publication by RNIB but never printed. The conference resolution called for a national organisation of describers which would work with other professional bodies and visually impaired users, and RNIB undertook to set up a steering group which would carry out a survey of audio describers in the UK to determine their needs and views; develop a blueprint for a national association based on the findings of the survey; and organise a founding conference at which the blueprint would be presented. The second national conference on audio description, which took place at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on 30 April 1999, was also the founding conference of the new organisation. Conference delegates voted to change its name from Audio Describers Association, chosen by the steering group to match the intention of the Nottingham resolution, to Audio Description Association, reflecting RNIB’s subsequent shift towards the broader concept of a national organisation with audio describers, theatre managers and visually impaired people as fellow members. The following report of the discussions which led up to the conference resolution is based on a transcript of the recording of the conference proceedings made by RNIB. It highlights the main issues and examples of good practice in theatres which emerged during the day, and illustrates them with excerpts from platform speeches, workshop reports and comments from the floor. Reading the report certainly bears out the old saying that you need to look back occasionally to see how far you have come – many of the topics debated at Nottingham and the views expressed in 1997 are still current, while the examples of good practice remain as relevant as ever. Much has changed, of course, in the post-Nottingham years. Possibly the most striking difference is the technology involved, a subject scarcely touched on at the conference. For theatregoers, listening conditions are steadily improving as Report of the 1st National Audio Description Conference, Nottingham, 1997 2 modern radio equipment eliminates the problems inherent in the infrared systems popular in the 1990s. For audio describers, advances in information technology have had a dramatic impact on the way they work. The photocopied and handwritten describer’s script is fast becoming a relic of the past. Play scripts arrive as Word documents for the describer’s script to be typed up on screen, and delivered live from printout, laptop or tablet. DVD recordings of the show for use in script preparation are now the norm. If the run is long enough, the describers’ introduction to the audio described performance is written and recorded for advance distribution on CD, by email, or via the venue’s website. The status of describers, at a time when approximately 97% of the UK’s theatre describers were volunteers, was hotly debated, with both describers and service users divided on the payment versus non-payment issue. Progress towards ‘professionalisation’, meaning payment, was described as inevitable, and this has proved to be the case. Many more theatre describers now work freelance, though few rely entirely on audio description for their livelihood: for most, it is part of a wider employment portfolio. Interestingly, the influx of freelance describers appears to have had little effect on the gender balance of the workforce in general, which remains predominantly female. ‘Professional’ implies more than payment, however, as delegates were quick to point out. Other hallmarks of the professional include qualification and conduct. The volunteer workforce of 1997 included describers from a range of professional backgrounds who brought the same approach to audio description that they applied to their professional jobs – a situation which is still true today. But deep concern was expressed about the variation in the standard of audio description across the country, leading to a call for a nationally recognised standard and an accredited training programme to support it. Training was therefore high on the agenda of the newly-formed Audio Description Association; the RNIB-backed prototype course known as ‘the Audest Model’ was redesigned to comply with current vocational training requirements, and accredited by the West Yorkshire Region Open College Network (now Certa) in May 2000. The course, which is available to all describers working in professional theatre paid or unpaid, leads to the Certificate in Audio Description Skills which is the UK’s nationally recognised qualification in this field. A parallel course for film and television describers has also been developed. Report of the 1st National Audio Description Conference, Nottingham, 1997 3 Endorsement of audio description as a profession has also come in a form undreamed of in 1997. In July 2011, Equity, the trade union for the UK’s entertainment industry, effectively recognised audio describers as creative practitioners, thereby entitling paid describers to membership of the union in their own right, rather than as actors or other theatre professionals with audio description as one of their ancillary skills. But perhaps the most encouraging development in the post-Conference years has been the positive growth in the climate of awareness surrounding audio description, and the increased degree of support for describers and service users at managerial and operational level. Among the factors that have contributed directly or indirectly to audio description’s raised profile are equality legislation, public funding, and promotional activity of various kinds. Although the 1997 Conference was only concerned with theatre, advances in other areas – notably television – have had a significant impact on public awareness and expectations of audio description in general. Looking back to see how far you have come invariably leads to looking forward to see how far you have still to go – which suggests a theme for a third national conference, possibly in 2017, twenty years after Nottingham and an appropriate time to reassess the status of audio description in the UK and formulate another ‘agenda for the future’. ____________________ Mary Plackett, Editor Audio Description Association, 2013 Notes: ‘Visually impaired’ is used as a general term throughout the report, reflecting its use in the conference title. Other terms current at the time, such as ‘programme notes’, have also been retained. RNIB is now the Royal National Institute of Blind People. AUDEST (an RNIB initiative) was disbanded when the Audio Description Association took over its training role. Report of the 1st National Audio Description Conference, Nottingham, 1997 4 Contents Page Conference Report 1. Introducing the Conference 5 2. Marketing Audio Description 7 3. Caring for Customers 9 4. Involving Consumers 11 5. Funding Audio Description 12 6. Developing Audio Description Standards 14 7. Boosting the Status of Describers 17 8. ‘Into a new Era’ 19 Conference Programme 21 List of Delegates 24 Introduction to the audio described 28 performance of ‘The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband’ at Nottingham Playhouse, 19 March 1997 Report of the 1st National Audio Description Conference, Nottingham, 1997 5 Conference Report 1. Introducing the Conference Welcoming delegates to the conference, Ruth McKenzie, Executive Director of Nottingham Playhouse, set the tone for the day with an upbeat declaration of consumer rights: ● We have a very simple philosophy here at Nottingham Playhouse, which is that every single person in the community pays for this Playhouse one way or another, through their community charge or through their taxes, and we feel every single person in the community should have access to all the work we do. Indeed, that is their right. RNIB Arts Officer, Marcus Weisen, who chaired the proceedings, began by setting audio description in its historical context. He quoted an item from the first issue of RNIB’s magazine The Beacon, published in January 1917, reporting a visit by visually impaired war veterans to a film show, which was enhanced by “Lady Waterlow’s happy way of creating mental pictures by flashes of suggestive description interjected at appropriate moments”. Much like audio description in the theatre as we know it, he added, but now with some significant differences: ● One is the enabling technology, however problematic it may be; two, we have a skilful commentary that may take 40 hours or more to prepare; and three, it is aimed at giving independence to visually impaired audiences. Whenever we want to set up a service and monitor or measure its quality, that has to be at centre place. His account of the current status of British audio description was encouraging: ● It is provided by nearly 40 theatres in the UK, there are about three in France, one in Sweden, one in Japan, 40 or 60 in the US. In sheer quantitative terms, the UK has become the leader. As far as I can judge, in qualitative terms – around management, user involvement and description – the UK does have a leading edge on a number of issues.

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