dao reported on the latest innovative capital project to come out of Holton Lee, at the beginning of 2005. Colin Hambrook attended a steering group meeting to find out how the project is moving on.
The development of a National Disability Arts Collection & Archive at Holton Lee has evolved out of more than six years of planning, consultation and visioning. The pressing need prompting its creation is that, at present, there is no organisation systematically recording and cataloguing material relating to Disability Arts. The survival of much of this work is entirely dependent on being preserved by a local organisation or private individuals. Those wishing to research the contemporary Disability Arts movement are also hampered by a lack of coordinated information linking this material around the country.
There have been many radical arts movements, whose relevance has only really been appreciated by a wider audience once society has had time to digest their value. Disability Arts has reached a cross-roads where its importance is beginning to be understood outside of the disability community. Certainly, at least issues around the arts and disabled people are reaching the headlines more and more. Partly, in effect to do with the impact of the DDA. For example there are still perhaps barriers which prevent disabled people from going to art college - but in principle the acceptance of disabled students is not totally frowned upon, as it was 15 years ago.
Alongside the critical fact that disabled people, generally, have a much shorter life expectancy than the rest of society, it is extremely important that we lay the foundations now for a record of the events, the magic, the moving, the magnificent genius that has taken place and passed on.
last updated: 2005-11-01 00:00:00
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tags : disability arts history art works