disability arts

back	Disability Arts

Above: 'Three Faces' by Kevin Hogan of art + power

During the 1980s disabled people who were influenced by new ideas promoted by the Disabled People's Movement began to use their artistic skills to express their feelings, life experiences, beliefs and attitudes. Disabled artists came forward, either as individuals, or through performance groups, community arts projects, publications and Disability Arts Forums to use the Arts to say something about being a disabled person.

Pino Frumiento from Heart 'n Soul summed up one of the main reasons for Disability Arts when he said: “Some of the people watching us are disabled people and they’ll be thinking ‘I wish I could do that.’ We’re teaching people how to be strong, and it’s important that they can create their own stuff. They don’t have to copy us but we show them how we do it and they can do it in their own way.”

In the early 1970s, disabled people used their personal experience of disability and institutional life to show that it wasn't their impairments that caused the ‘problem’, but the way in which society failed to make any allowances for their differences. This way of thinking about disability became known as ‘The Social Model of Disability’. Disability Arts developed as part of a struggle for equal rights for disabled people in response to the Social Model.

The London Disability Arts Forum (LDAF) was founded in 1986 (the same year that Heart 'n Soul was established) by a group of disabled artists and activists frustrated by the lack of provision for disabled people in the arts world. LDAF established DAIL Magazine so that disabled people could find out about Disability Arts and express their thoughts and ideas in print.

At the beginning of the nineties LDAF commissioned Tony Heaton to make an artwork titled 'Shaken not Stirred.' It consisted of the artist throwing an artificial leg at a seven foot high pyramid of charity collecting cans, paving the way for work looking at the basic inequalities faced by disabled people in everyday life. ‘Defiance’ was the first major public exhibition of Disability Arts to tour to major public galleries, showed painting and sculpture by Eddy Hardy, Stuart Bracking and Nancy Willis, amongst others. In 1995 Tony Heaton’s Great Britain from a Wheelchair, shown at the ‘Unleashed’ exhibition, summed up the ideas behind Disability Arts for many people involved
in the new language that
was emerging.
Right: Great Britain from a Wheelchair by Tony Heaton
Below: Hover Chair by Margaret Martin of Creative Arts East

Graeae Theatre Company was the first professional theatre company of disabled people. It was set up to combat the exclusion of disabled people from the theatre by giving disabled actors professional experience. Graeae wanted to celebrate disability and counter society’s view of the lives of disabled peoples’ lives as tragic and helpless. Graeae asked disabled writers like Maria Oshodi to write plays for the company. Her play ‘Hound’ toured nationally in 1992. Set in a Centre that trained visually impaired people to use guide dogs, the play explored the negative impact of having to rely on charities for vital services.

In the same year disabled photographer and writer, David Hevey published The Creatures Time Forgot. This book showed the negative attitudes presented in photographs within charity advertising, the Left and Social Services, as a contrast to his own photographs, presenting disabled people in the way they wanted to be portrayed.

By the end of the nineties public galleries had begun to seek out work by disabled artists. The ICA in London put on an experimental multi-media show called 'Wrong Bodies' with collages by Tanya Raabe, and confrontational performances by Katherine Araniello and Mat Fraser. Fabrika gallery in Brighton showed 'Pale Outline' an exhibition of photographic work including portraits by Alison Lapper exploring issues of identity and sexuality.

Over the last few years there has been an emphasis on access as the Disability Discrimination Act has given more power to disabled people. Public venues and galleries are being encouraged to include British Sign Language and audio-description to make their shows and exhibitions accessible to deaf and blind people. Artsline has set up the Attitude is Everything campaign to get music venues and music festivals across the UK to look how they can improve their access both in front of and behind the stage.

Funding bodies like the Arts Council, have continued to support Disability Arts through funding schemes like Programming Innovations for individual artists, as well as giving funds to large annual festivals like the Disability Film Festival and the Xposure festival in London and DaDaFest in Liverpool.