Sophie Partridge has performed in several productions with Graeae Theatre Company, including the award-winning Peeling and Flower Girls. She has worked with David Glass Ensemble, Theatre Resource and Theatre Workshop. She has a French Canadian Mum, an 82 year-old Dad, two sisters, one brother, various uncles, aunts and cousins, great friends, good PAs and several virtual dogs. What more does a Girl need?!

London, my London

27 April 2016

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London. It was a fluke, my moving here and nearly 20 years ago now... Oh I had visited - weekend trips and skives off school (I was a boarder down in Hampshire. Lunchtime concerts at the Royal Festival Hall (amazing how appealing classical music becomes when you have Saturday lessons!), then freezing outside after, with our packed lunches and cuppa soups!  Posh London: Once an evening trip to the Royal Opera House for the Magic Flute and falling asleep on the way home… Throwing...

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Blending the personal and the political

8 March 2016

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As no doubt many of you will know, it’s hard work being a freelance artist, especially if you’re what I lovingly call a 'Bendy Person' – someone like me with a very obvious physical impairment and what are deemed high access needs – and recently, this has taken a toll on my “well-being”...  Government Cuts, however rosy a picture they try to paint, have made it increasingly difficult for disabled people, including those of us who work in the Arts...

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Is the only time Cripplies get a look into `mainstream’ arts when we’re ‘spilling the beans’ about impairment?

16 October 2015

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I seem to have seen more shows in recent months than I’ve done in quite a while! The most recent, which I’ve genuinely loved, being Jess Thom’s 'Backstage in Biscuitland' and Caroline Bowditch’s 'Falling in love with Frida'.   In both I’ve had moments of being caught up sharp, as if by red flashing lights when things have started to go all ‘Medical Modelly’. It feels to me that all of a sudden we come to a section intended as...

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And after the defeat of the AS Bill... the need to lobby for better palliative care, support packages

14 September 2015

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What a difference a day makes; a day and 4 months plus if I’m honest. Last time I wrote here, I was so sunk into the gloom post-general election I’d actually turned to poetry! Friday morning, I set off on a train to Manchester, on my way to the AGM of my impairment group (the politics of that deserving its own blog!), knowing many of my friends were ensconced outside parliament, urging MPs to vote against the Assisted Dying Bill. As the sun came out at my destination, so the news...

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Battle is not yet over. This tide must be turned...

2 June 2015

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Plunder It was there in the skies. The storm was upon us. Grey, howling winds - doom.  so broke the storm but no land was Ahoy.   Not for us. The vote was cast and once again, We are set adrift; their admissions of plunder whistle in the wind, Hushed confessions of Others votes.   Notes of discordant guilt are clear; knowing they X marked the spot for their own treasure, leaving Us with.. sand? Should I judge? Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is still ignorance at best. Lies, at...

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Ambitious? For many disabled people, our main ambition is to stay well and keep going!

9 January 2014

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I don’t think of myself as being ambitious but thought I’d look it up – just to check! This is what the online dictionary said about it. Ambition, noun the object, state, or result desired or sought after:  Interesting, a challenge for me personally as I think half (of what I consider to be my) lack of ambition, is not knowing what the desired result is...  Desire for work or activity: Okay so this is more like...

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Sophie Partridge on being 'bendy'

2 August 2013

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Well I don't think it's controversial to say it's a tough time in Crip World right now! Surely there must be a disabled oracle somewhere that tells of the impending doom to be expected in 2015; DLA to become PIP, tax credits go `universal' and the Independent Living Fund closes... Now that, gentle reader, IS controversial. I've been involved (surprise surprise) in the campaign to halt the ILF's closure and cause a veritable government u-turn.  We've called the...

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Public bodies, disability on display...

10 October 2011

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On 15 September I was asked by the Royal College of Surgeons to speak about `public bodies, disability on display’. As someone with a very visible impairment, I do feel I’m always on display.  Display itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. I’d certainly rather that than being shut away somewhere, hidden from view.  The quest for me always, is to gain as much control as possible over how I’m displayed. Whether that’s simply by my choice of clothes as I trundle up...

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Big Lounge versus Big Society?

3 August 2011

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Yesterday, having had a Care Manager / Social Worker imagine I can walk because she "didn’t want to wrongly assume I couldn’t", I’m really not in the mood to do the ConDems any favours. Not that I ever was! On realising I was not, as she had wrongly assumed, "able to manage a few steps(!?)" she then wrote in my Care Plan of my inability to Mobilise. What am I? An armoured tank?! In this so-called Big Society, I’d probably be better supported if I was. In an attempt to...

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Sophie Partridge goes workshopping at the Huddleston Centre, Hackney

7 March 2011

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Sun is out tho’ still not much warmer than when I wrote my last Blog’! Weekly workshops at the Huddleston Centre, Hackney with a group of young learning disabled peeps, began beginning of December & culminated in a short performance last week as part of DYH – Develop Young Hackney Festival. Co-leading, our remit was to focus on the transition period for these young people. All participants were post 16; some now attending College, some not. All are bright young things and...

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Sophie Partridge gets through the January Bluze...

19 January 2011

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So here I sit, snug in my flat. A bluish sky through the window (above newly installed traffic lights!) while the world in various corners, suffers climate change’. Me, I’ve already had a bit of a year. So far, broken vans,chairs (no bones tho thankfully!) and last week was topped off with a fire up-stairs at 2am! My mind casts back to late November 2010. DaDaFest. Me with a Proper Cold and blocked-up ears, more deaf than usual. And freezing cold outside the Black Box in Liverpool....

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Sophie Partridge asks Who's Spasticus?!

1 November 2010

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Crikey it’s all been happening; what with Jenny Sealey’s cast pulling off a coup with Graeae’s Reasons To Be Cheerful. (see review in The Stage The show gives a chance for some true Crip Lovies to sing & sign + audio-describe Dury’s Spasticus Autisticus - loud & proud. Meanwhile, back at the Royal Festival Hall last week, Candoco hosted a panel discussion on How much progress has there really been on the main stage for disabled artistes? The challenge in...

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Sophie Partridge gets ready to get her kit off for this years' DaDaFest in Liverpool

12 October 2010

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I’m up to Glove Peel, in Jo Weldon’s Burlesque Handbook. The page is marked with a Sainsbury’s voucher for £3 off. Not very Glam’ but hopefully I will be! Jo from The School of Burlesque will be working with several of us Crip-Lovelies towards a performance at DaDaFest 2010 next month. I’m envisioning shivering with cold & nerves semi-clad in the `Pool!  Not unlike the first time I got my kit off for what was to be public viewing...  a cold...

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Sophie Partridge goes in search of pirates in Leyton and ends up running away with the circus

19 August 2010

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Ah, that difficult second blog; expectations to live up to, reputation to safe-guard, the angst, dead-lines.. Or not as the case may be! Last week was quite momentous, not least because it was a good friends 50th Birthday celebrations. Lets face it, if nothing has managed to kill us Cripplys off by that age - it’s an achievement in itself! I also weathered three days in a caravan in Hastings and got caught up in a Pirate Parade - 6000 of em! All trying to break the World Book of Records...

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Sophie Partridge takes a look at some images from the Royal College of Physicians' Museum collection

15 July 2010

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Been a busy rabbit lately. Last Tuesday, attended the Royal College of Physicians’ Rethinking Disability Project Focus Group at Shape. The aim of it was to look at some of the medical illustrations in their archive and talk about what the images say about disabled people. Our discussions are to be part of an exhibition doing the rounds early next year. The blurb participants were sent told us we would be interviewed and also photographed, with a prop and/ or costume if we so wished! The...

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