Disability Arts Online launches new archive to preserve disability history

Disability Arts Online (DAO) today launched Cripping Culture: A Journey into Disability Arts Heritage, an archival initiative preserving the history of disability arts and activism.The timely project fights erasure and champions the storied history of disability activism against the backdrop of rampant hostility towards the community from the Labour government and media establishment.

Disability visibility and fighting erasure

In Cripping Culture, DAO are creating a digital archive where the public can discover testimonies and memories from key figures and moments within the Disability Arts and activism movements from the 1970s to the present.

Thanks to a £249,607 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Cripping Culture will save the stories of the Disability Arts movement from being lost. They will be shared through a digital archive, interactive timeline and podcast series. This incredible collection will, DAO says

research and reveal the achievements of the disabled artists and activists who put disability rights on the map.

Over the next three years, DAO will collect memories from those who were, and many who continue to still be, involved in the Disability Arts movement. The platform will spotlight untold stories and little-known chapters in disability history.

As part of this, the organisation will make nationwide call-outs for activists to share their written, spoken and video testimonies. These will then be used to create the accessible archive, interactive timeline and the podcast series, with BSL video version also available.

Disability Arts Online is a disabled-led charitable arts organisation that, since 2004, has documented the development of disability arts. DAO will work in partnership with the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive (NDACA), so as to build on the first archive’s historical significance and impact.

A legacy on the brink

The aim of Cripping Culture, DAO said in a press release is:

to support the development of a culture that embraces disabled people’s stories, saving the heritage of the Disability Arts movement from being lost and filling in gaps in existing knowledge.

After serving for more than twenty years as the editor of DAO, founder Colin Hambrook will step into the role of Heritage Project Director of Cripping Culture. Hambrook said:

We are in imminent danger of losing our heritage as activists central to the movement are ageing and many elders have already died. Their memories, stories, and interpretation of artworks make a critical contribution to society and disabled people’s culture.

He continued:

There’s an urgent need for Cripping Culture to digitally preserve this heritage and present it through the prism of lived experience in accessible and inclusive forms. My hope is that the project adds significant material as a statement of record of the Disability Arts movement we can hand down to younger generations of disabled people.

Dennis Queen, Co-Chair of Disability Arts Online’s Board of Trustees, said:

Anyone can become disabled at any time, yet it is very hard to find a sense of community and empowered disabled identity without a rich cultural heritage to refer to. Cripping Culture’s digital archive, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world, will be invaluable for disabled and non-disabled people alike.

Stirred by the imminent danger of disabled voices and histories disappearing from public view, Cripping Culture is a decisive act of preservation — writing disability activism back into history.

If you have previously, or are currently, engaged in the Disability Arts movement, you may register your interest in contributing to Cripping Culture here.

Featured image via Disability Arts Online