LIFF Partners with Purple Patch Arts to Engage Learning-Disabled Audiences

This year at Leeds International Film Festival, we've teamed up with Purple Patch Arts to create an inclusive, multi-sensory experience of the short film House Phone for learning-disabled participants.

Yorkshire-based Purple Patch Arts is an award winning charity that supports learning-disabled people to thrive by improving their understanding of, and engagement with, themselves and the world around them. Its unique Purple Patch Approach uses creative activities and inclusive learning methods, and creates safe environments where everyone is empowered to express themselves. 
 
During this year’s Leeds International Film Festival, the team at Purple Patch Arts are using their innovative approach to support learning-disabled people to experience a LIFF short film in a whole new way. The LIFF x Purple Patch Arts partnership will provide a community of people who are often excluded from cultural activities the opportunity to participate in LIFF in a way that meets their needs, while raising awareness of the festival and of the work of Leeds Film more widely within the learning-disabled community.  
 
House Phone, a short film from first-time filmmaker James McGlade will be shown in Purple Patch Arts’ 12 Lifelong Learning Programmes across Yorkshire. Through multi-sensory experiences exploring different emotions, creating landline maps of participants’ significant places, writing messages that can’t be read, and celebrating loved ones with kind words, Purple Patch participants will explore themes such as perspective, memory, connection and disconnection, and nurturing our relationships.  

House Phone offers the short but perfectly formed story of Anne, making a call she's put off for a long time. House Phone cleverly eschews actors on screen in place of an empty, but intimate domestic environment in which a life lived has left personal traces in the objects and furnishings.

By exploring the story of House Phone through inclusive activities designed to inspire and involve their participants, Purple Patch Arts will be enabling 130 learning-disabled people to engage with LIFF’s programme through meaningful experiences that bring the central themes of the short film to life. 

House Phone will also screen as part of the Yorkshire Short Film Competition at Leeds International Film Festival.