This section of DAO provides disabled artists and writers with a space to give our readers an inside view of their art practice, share thoughts and receive comments and feedback.
These blogs provide an informative and entertaining insight into how disability and impairment are experienced from a disability perspective.
The opinions expressed in these pages are not necessarily those of DAO.
I was due a return to the Arts Camp at Cambridge's Strawberry Fayre. The theme for the year was love. Love is not my most concentrated theme. I needed to start putting things together. I decided to write a guide poem as a means to building a set. Then I found I had a health ...
With support from Arts Council England, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, and the Knight Foundation (among others), Step Change Studios represented UK inclusive dance at a festival of physically integrated dance in the US. This was Step Change Studios’ first international project since it was established two years ago. Lauren Russell, who is ...
We all have a ‘Joker’ within us, I know mine and it isn’t nearly as severe as the ‘Joker’s’ in the film, but it is plenty enough to gain understanding in my work as a psychotherapist. In Primary Care where I worked for 12 years, one of my old patients came to mind while I ...
If you’ve read any of my blogs, you’ll know I am neurodiverse and have had chronic pain for over a decade. Last weekend I had a flare-up, a scary one, where all my usual tricks to calm the nervous system didn’t work, and I spent hours tracing the outline of light and shadows in my ...
It’s been a very busy few months for me and I have been meaning to write a blog for the last 3 months. What have I been doing over the last few months? Well, I must say that it’s been overwhelming. In between being a full-time employee for the council, a mother, a writer and a ...
The latest read Piece for Orchestra by the indomitable Yoko seeks music from windows and stars. Strangely the instruction invokes a memory of heavy drug use. Please tell me what you think about the pic or poem below. Juice; Mysteries In summertime He opens the windows Plays Oye Como Va To any passing stranger Night enters A balcony beckons Deep electric blue Polluted skies ...
The majority of the filming of Bedlamb has been done. BEDLAMB is my film project on conversations on mental health on a bed covered in cuddly toy lambs, funded by Future’s Venture. The title ‘Bedlamb’ is a nod to ‘Bedlam’, the nickname for the original Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital. The conversations were located into two very ...
I finished glazing my tea set last Thursday. It’s weird to think now, but when I applied for the Emergence bursary I didn’t include any money for ceramics in the budget. I was just asking for money to work on Seaworthy Vessel, I was only interested in working in print and origami. I had a ...
What a great launch night from Oska Bright. The festival has stepped up a notch yet again with production values, cinematography and its overall diversity and feel. The originality of the stories being told and the general quirkiness of what's on offer is the real appeal of Oska Bright. It seems that as Oska Bright is ...
So the book said remember the first mothers day gift. Where did it lead for you? Initial; A Mother’s Day Present An African Violet Deepest, dark blue petals Brightened by specks Of yellow stamen The cracked pot It lived in The stony ground It moved to Symbolic somehow Of a changed relationship 30th November 2018
