"The OGMIUS project is the result of the collaboration between three theatre companies working with learning-disabled (LD) professional artists. These three producing and touring companies, which have been operating for more than 30 years, also offer professionnal training for LD people, with little to none equivalent in mainstream training programmes. After the success of their first European project, Crossing the Lin (2014-2017), the three partners have decided to join forces and focus on improving training opportunities for LD actors by:1. sharing existing approaches to training and LD artists support, 2. designing a common and transferable tool for LD artists to evaluate and self-evaluate professional practice and skills, 3. compiling the evidence and learning from this project to work towards a European certification;4. reducing the gap between mainstream VET for non-LD artists and LD artists; 5. creating a transnational work force of suitably skilled support workers (educateurs); 6. raising the profile of professional training for LD artists among the wider arts sector.OGMIUS has gathered more than 60 LD artist, 12 support workers or ""éducateurs"", 3 technicians, 6 guest artists and facilitators, 14 staff members and managers. Over 100 people have taken part, directly or indirectly, to the project activities. 10 training (3 virtual), 4 transnational project meetings and 2 multiplier events activities were realised.The partners have conceived three intellectual outputs:- one open educational ressources collection from data gathered during training activities;- 9 filmed documents;- 1 good practice guide including two evaluation and selfevaluation tools created and tested during the project, the ""doodle book"" and the ""photo-elicitation"" method.The project has enabled the partners to share their experience and expertise in terms of creating and operating training for LD artists and to improve their respective processes. The ""éducateurs"" or support workers from the three countries benefited from the experience and said it has had long-lasting impact on their practice. The partners have connected with mainstream organisations: University of York St John, the Université d'Artois, the City of Malmö...Nearly 350 people attended multiplier events. The ""doodle book"" was distributed in the UK during the lockdown (3,500 copies). Partners have shared the project with more than 120 organisations from the so-called ""art and disability"" sector.OGMIUS has enabled the partners to start long-term projects which will last beyond the project: the certification project led by Mind the Gap and the University of York St John and the creation of a performing art school by Moomsteatern with the City of Malmö.Despite the complex circumstances caused by the Covid crisis, the partners have moved collectively to reach the project objectives and improve the training opportunities for LD people."

"The development of the skills of young people with disabilities who are very handicapped in their exchanges and who have specific communication needs, whether they are deaf with associated impairments or who have complex speech disorders without hearing loss, is at the heart of the concerns of families and professionals. who accompany them. In fact, the lack of a suitable means of communication can lead to isolation or the appearance of behavioral problems and thereby further complicate the disability situation. This project has the ambition to focus on this complex population, poorly identified that requires specific expertise and an adaptation of the entire entourage. It is based on an approach to access communication and language using media: situational drawings, pictograms .... The foundation of this approach is anchored in mutual trust, mutual recognition that includes the credit we give the child to have things to say and to share with us. It is therefore not a matter of setting up a simple alternative communication method. But rather to share a way of being that is based on a conception of exchange with a child in great difficulty of communication. It sets the first steps in the construction of a multimodal training device for professionals and families. It aims to model the approach to access to communication and language in a European context, develop the pedagogical tools associated with the approach and develop a repository of skills of professionals using the approach.The transfer of the approach will be implemented during experiential training sessions in Madrid, Cluj and Stockholm. It will concern three groups of five young people and the professionals of the multidisciplinary team who accompany them.The partners mobilized around this issue (the Robert Laplane National Resource Center, the Laboratory of Applied Psychology and Ergonomics (LaPEA) of the Paris Descartes University, Centro edocativo de Ponce de Leon, Liceu tehnologic special pentru deficienţi of Auz Cluj -Napoca, Comparative Research Network) will realize:. Modeling an approach to access to communication and language. A lexicon, tool for contextualization of the key definitions of the project. A skills framework for professionals working with young people and adults with disabilities and with specific communication needs. An assessment of the impact on youth of the quantitative and qualitative approach to language access that will be developed with the support of two Canadian consultants.. The formalization of tools for the development of the skills of the professionals accompanying these young people will be supported by the expertise of the CRN.. A strategy for disseminating intellectual productions. A set of policy recommendations regarding the needs and potential uses of the approach, to be defined by the partners based on their own experiences and results of project activitiesA wider diffusion of the approach for access to communication and language will thus be possible. The teaching tools will support the resource persons initially and then a multimodal training device will be built as part of a new European partnership so that professionals ""resources"" and families ""resources"" in all territories are able to intervene as soon as possible with young people with specific communication needs and all the actors in their environment."

In our society, deaf children are confronted to the problem of communication with all their surrounding. The technology of cochlear implant gives the possibility to deaf children to access to the comprehension of hearing people and so also to access to oral language to be understood. This technology is used all around Europe, not at the same level, because of the cost, but more and more children can benefit from the cochlear implants. Specialised institutions for deaf ensure the rehabilitation process necessary to improve the comprehension and oral language (multidisciplinary team composed of ENT specialists, neuropsychologists, speech therapists, social workers, etc. )In the same time, the development of this technology has revealed that 30% of the beneficaries can not develop oral language, and so revealed neurolinguistic disorders. It is very difficult to assess and to quantify some of these disorders. The work of specialists requires significant multidisciplinary cooperation and regular observations. This project will enable this collaborative work to give at EU level a better understanding of practices, explorations and materials used in the support of these children. Even though the objective is to produce a protocol of assessment and rehabilitation for a multidisciplinary team to improve the support of these children, this step of explorations is very important to get the good knowledge of the situation in Europe. We will develop two main times of training for participants, one of this event will be to understand the explorations of all the partners and to introduce the question of language disorders to define a consent on the definition. The 2nd one will be more focused on clinical cases, giving a good comprehension of the situation. That will provide a presentation of practices and explorations at EU level, with the implementation of a canadian partner, who get better results in the development of oral language. Their practicies and the North American situation will provide an added-value in the comprehension. In Montreal, Institut Raymond Dewar which follows the children with cochlear implants has pointed out only 3 situations of problems of development of oral language among the 108 deaf children implanted between 2015 and 2018. Such results are great opportunities for our partnership to know more about what is working practically. 20 participants will attend each training event - they will be representative of the question in their organisations and there will be ENT specialists, neuropsychologists, psychologists, social workers, speech therapists, specialised teachers, all the professionals which form the multidisciplinary team in the support of these children. The outcomes of the project will give the possibility to continue in the development of a protocol of assessment and rehabilitation for professionals (participants mentioned) working with these children, in a development of innovation, for the benefit of deaf children and their parents.