To get a drink the way you like it at the Epic
Arts Café – a coffee spot amid farms and
colonial French architecture in sleepy Kampot
town – one can try ordering in sign language
from shy, mostly deaf baristas. But it’s for a
good cause, of course.
Apart from precious employment for staff
with disabilities, coffee sales here fund projects
for local non-profit Epic Arts, an organisation
looking to give locals a leg up for a career in
the arts, in a country with scarce government
policies to protect the disadvantaged.
“In our education programmes, we work
with young people with learning disabilities
because the education system isn’t set up for
them, so there is nowhere for a child with
Down syndrome to go to school,” explains
programme manager Hayley Holden. “It’s a
two-year course that focuses on the arts, but
it’s much more about them learning about
themselves and working out that they can do
things: They can dance, they can sing, they can
write a song.”
Cambodia’s environment of near-constant
political conflict has resulted in a higher than
average trauma and intellectual disability
rate among the population. Yet many still
ascribe this to misinformed stereotypes about
disability, something the organisation is
working to remedy.Disabled performers comprise the
internationally-touring theatre company Epic
Encounters, as alumni of a programme giving
disadvantaged Cambodians an arts educationAn Epic Experience
DRAMATIC OPPORTUNITIES
DATA SOURCES: EPIC ARTS, UNICEF, UNITED NATIONS STATISTICSARTS
Text Jennie Pearson and David Olsen
Photos Charlotte Hodges/Photographers
Without Borders10%
of Cambodians aged
five and over have
some form of disabilityEpic Efforts: disability in cambodia3.6%
of deaf Cambodians are
taught to speak with
sign language12
new students
participate in the Epic
Arts course each year14,611
customers served at
the Epic Arts Café (as
of 2016)2,039
participants in Epic
Arts workshops or
performances (2016)