Illustration of five hybrid foot-hand creatures. They are each a foot joined to a hand and are holding a pair of bionic eyes on a wire. The hand has a prosthetic finger. The foot-hands are white, green, purple, blue, and red.

Producing knowledge and art through collaborative exploration.

Working with community organisation The Love Tank, we will produce an exhibition of disability stories from disabled people of colour and migrants from marginalized LGTBQ communities in the UK. These artworks will be displayed in a digital exhibition. 

Working with our academic partners from Stavanger and Stockholm, we will also collaborate with disabled artists from the Caribbean, North America, Europe and North Africa to develop understandings of how speculative arts may disrupt and challenge disability injustice. These explorations will produce a podcast as well as a symposium in Stockholm.

These collaborations will transform how the project team works together as producers and facilitators of knowledge. Academic writings, including an anthology, and original illustrations will emerge from this work.

The
Phases

Phase 1: Peer-led research

Led by The Love Tank and Dr Ingrid Young, this peer-led research draws on arts based methods for disability justice in marginalized LGBTQ communities, culminating in a digital exhibition. We will work with LGBTQ+ disabled people who identify as a person of colour and/or have experiences of migration in a series of three workshops, which will draw on speculative and playful methods to imagine a future where disability justice is centred.

  • In Workshop 1: Identifying disability artefacts, telling disability stories participants will be supported to identify and describe artefacts that help narrate their experiences of disability as community members.

  • In Workshop 2: Re-imagining disability artefacts, playing with disability futures we will draw on speculative and playful methods to imagine a future where disability justice is centred. Participants will be asked to create a ‘vision’ of this future for LGBTQ+ communities and wider society that builds on the discussion from the previous workshop.

  • In Workshop 3. Sharing LGBTQ+ disability stories participants will be invited back to review how the stories and futures created in the first two workshops can be refined and shared in a digital exhibition. 

Phase 2: Events & podcasts

Led by Dr Donna McCormack with Dr Ingvil Hellstrand & Professor Lisa Käll, this programme of podcasts, public event, and workshop will explore colonialism, eugenics & disability in speculative arts with artists, disability justice practitioners and academics. We will examine how a disability justice framework changes how we conceptualise and analyse European colonialism across the Caribbean and the intersections with histories of eugenics in the Nordic countries. Disabled and non-disabled artists will be invited to individual podcasts, which will be conducted in English, Swedish or Norwegian where relevant and translated into the other languages.

Phase 3: Outputs

  • Artist & Illustrator Lynne Zakhour will be the project virtual artist in residence and work across the case studies and with the project team to reflect on and engage with emerging themes through original illustrations. 

  • Working with community organisation The Love Tank, we will produce an exhibition of disability stories from disabled people of colour and migrants from marginalized LGTBQ communities in the UK. These artworks will be displayed in a digital exhibition.

  • The project will produce an anthology and other publications.