In February I alluded to my world being full of words. Two weeks ago I reflected that the words aren’t working. Somehow, I am dancing amongst these clashing truths.
Vanessa Machado de Oliviera offered a frame that’s stayed with me ever since picking up her book, ‘Hospicing Modernity’, back in the thick of a world health crisis.
If the primary orienting project of modernity/coloniality is to control and engineer reality through objective unequivocal knowing, this process can only happen through fixed categories of meaning. I refer to this as ‘wording the world’
Worlding stories are not focussed on the aesthetic of perfect form, but on the integration of form and movement. They are not supposed to be ‘thought about’, but thought, felt and danced with and through. They play with the ambivalence and dynamic force of meaning. In this sense, meaning will change as a worlding story lands deeper into the body, a story will have many layers of changing meaning, and some layers will only reveal themselves when the story arrives.
Where possible, I want my words to be part of an undoing - to offer more questions and loose threads than statements or proclamations. Can we queer our understandings and disrupt our certainties? Everything I self initiate aims to be a small part of that project. But, occasionally, I’m employed to deal with information that feels counter to that act of ‘worlding’ - the data, statistics and outcomes of relationship. This might look like a percentage, a timeline or a proclamation stated by someone else and reported by me. Often, the commissioner or funder or other member of the food chain is concerned with wording - This is, after all, how knowledge is created, power is gained and future certainty of income is preserved. I am glad, through a combination of intentional and trusting relationships, that I increasingly find myself in a position of being able to bring some rebellion to these spaces. Whether it’s in the words that are published, or the words that are spoken in the conversations I’m hosting, there is worlding. Bodies are at stake. Alternatives are not ‘thought about’ but created and felt in real time. And then I try and write a report that says so in a way the word-ers might feel.
Some of the words that were filling my working Spring have been making their way into the public conversation and I’d like to share them with you. They take the form of resources, case studies and templates - formats that have been repeated and distributed a billion times over. I hope you’ll find nuggets of something new here. Since they were written, the landscape of British politics and attitudes towards disabled people have become infinitely more hostile. If it’s a surprise to you that we’ve ended up here, I encourage you to take a look through history - Dabble in the disability social justice movement and consider how previous fascist movements have further oppressed marginalised people. None of what we are seeing unfold is new or accidental. Words are one of the tools I have in my armoury - The pen is a precious sword.
Disabled bodies inherently queer the modernity world view. A quarter of the UK working population identifies as disabled - That’s nearly 17 million people. This percentage leaps to nearly 40% when we include long term conditions and chronic illnesses. And this refers to the working population - The numbers rise again when we acknowledge the changes many of our elders experience as they age. (Aging which has been afforded by medical research, but the national conversation now considers an inconvenience…) The need to gather our tools for the push back is pressing. Lives, as well as livelihoods, are at risk.
So let me share some windows. Over the last year, I’ve worked closely with leading disability arts commissioners, Unlimited. I’ve been part of three pieces of work, and want to share some new resources for you to take into your contexts. Use them like Trojan horses, maps and conversation starters. They’re wildly practical - Live them, skew them. Make them real! Disabled friends - I hope you might also use them instead of spoons you don’t have.
Over 2024/5, I led a programme that aims to increase accessibility for disabled artists and audiences in cultural spaces and programmes across West Yorkshire. Here are 11 case studies detailing the change it supported for a handful arts organisations, as well as approaching topics like ‘creating connections via access’ and why putting disabled people at the forefront of decisions that affect disabled people makes sense. I particularly want to draw attention to ‘I’d love to do more about access, but…’: based on conversations with well intentioned and under resourced folks.
Small capital grants made up part of the programme, and the learning went into two, new resources:
This led to further commissions; co-leading research into the realities for disabled-led, regularly funded organisations in the North of England, commissioned by Arts Council England. (Details on how to request the whole report are at the end of the article)
And interviewing ten disabled artists who have worked internationally about their experiences of doing so. Here’s one I particularly enjoyed pulling together, but there are nine more where that came from - just filter the blog section by ‘International’ and you’ll find them.
Not my work, but I also want to highlight the recently updated access rider resource, edited by my brilliant pal, Emma Bentley-Fox. They did such a good job, it even made me write my first rider…
I have always maintained that this is a ‘newsletter’ - Sometimes the ‘news’ is the way the light struck a particular blade of grass, other times its a report reflecting what your belly feels to be true. All are tools for the unfolding revolution, I think. I hope you’ll throw them around liberally wherever you can.
I'm overjoyed that you're in the world, my friend, and worlding things a little more ✊🏼💚✨
💪💪💪 you're amazing